Rampid Byter

Frankly they’re doomed to failure because someone decided to save money by outsourcing overseas. I’ve worked on several projects that dealt with outsourced code and each one was a borderline complete failure until an on-shore developer cleaned it up. I’m sitting here looking at code created for my client and it’s a complete mess.

That brings me to a correlation I never thought possible. If you take code created in India that was an outsourced project the results of this may be a working project on the outside. However, the moment you start getting into the guts of the application it’s the same quality as if you threw three fourteen year old teens into a room that ‘think’ they’re awesome programmers, give them one reference book to share, and provide free liquor to them through the whole project. Some of it is good (the simple aspects), some is a complete mess, no standards, no documentation, no structure, repeated code everywhere, and the spelling of English words and phrases is ridiculous. That reminds me the word ‘please’ has an ‘l’ in it. I’m so tired of having to correct spelling on output message from “Pease” to “Please.”

For those of you who consider outsourcing keep this point in mind when deciding how much you really want to have to rework. I’ve been working on this project for three days, consolidated about 15 pages into a base page class, consolidated five master pages into one with a new custom user navigation control (only difference between them all was menu options), and have had to actually put exception handling into this project. From the time stamps, and fixed copyright dates I know that this project took from 2004 until 2008. Pathetic software development turn around for such a small project. The backend was developed on LLBL Gen Pro with a custom front web application UI, and let me tell you everything on the UI side almost nearly has to be rewritten. This isn’t unique, I wish it was, but I’m just saying I hate the quality of code brought back from overseas.

If you think you’re saving time by having developers overseas who can develop while you’re asleep so you think you get more done, or the costs justify the move just think twice. You may complete the project on time and under budget but the project will be so unstable you’ll just end up eating the costs of poor judgment based on fiscal desires, heck look at Microsoft’s initial launch of the Xbox 360. Cheap material (or code) equals freaking expensive rework costs.

As I mentioned before I started a company. It’s been going pretty slowly, had some ups, had some downs, slowdowns that is, and it seems things are back on track. I am still working to complete an in-house software product but the development cycle was halted so that I could upgrade my knowledge base to LINQ and ADO.Net Entity Framework. During this knowledge gathering period I’ve had a lot of personal life events taking place, getting near a marriage, looking for a house, and getting myself into a regular schedule. Development at work has been going well, slower than I thought, but going well none the less.

Today I sold my companies services to a midsized printing company. The initial project has been slated as a six month task with many more projects waiting in the wings. I’m looking forward to starting on this project, but of course have to do some initial project requirements gathering. From there I’ll talk about the business processes that are currently un-documented, and get an idea of the pain points in the data entry roles. So far the client has been nothing but cheerful and pleasant to work with, and I’m looking forward to a very successful delivery of an updated website ready to deliver the results they’re looking for.

In other news I recently took part in a Frisbee golf game that netted me the first hole in one of my life. I think the hole was more than 280 feet and I was able to toss the Frisbee in such a way that it swopped down, hit a tree, and fell directly into the hole. It was fantastic, truly a one in a million accomplishment that I’m sure I’ll never repeat. I can’t wait till I witness another one of my comrades performing the same maneuver.

Finished a new company website recently and I think it looks decent. I started to flex some more artistic muscle but luckily I still have my artist that I’ve been working with. I had to shelve one of the designs and go with mine because the customer started to like it more and more while I was just demoing content. So to my surprise they shelved the artists theme and went with mine.

I am kind of thrilled by that since I’m not much of an artist, at least not anymore, but I think I can get the hang of it. I’m proud of the site, even with its small size, and I think it will turn out very well for the company. I’ve started doing SEO marketing, keyword concentrations in content, and in general this is just version 1.0 of the site. We’re seeing a lot more things being added, new pages, new content, and I think we’ll over take some of the competition quickly.

I’ve found a good niche group that I’ve been working with. I have a load more clients starting to knock, meetings being set up, and things are looking bright. This site went through a bumpy patch, miscommunications, and a missed deadline of a week.

Communication, communication, and communication is the key to success it seems. If there is a delay, tell them, and if there is a disagreement resolve it. Don’t let the left hand start doing work when the right hand hasn’t even found the arm yet.

Simple but costly mistakes I tell yah. Anyway, the client didn’t seem to mind, even said they’d been in business 15 years without a website already so another week wouldn’t hurt anything. The sad thing was the site didn’t take all that long to make. I think more time was spent on the CSS layout than content simply because of lack of expertise on the subject and limited client facing.

Taking away from the project is that communication is an absolute must. It really must be true that in most things IT it’s at least 80% communication and probably 20% technology. I’m looking forward to more opportunities and will be taking away some valuable life lessons from the experience at the beginning. It’s been a semi-smooth ride with a few bumps. So here’s to http://www.jwhexcavating.com going live!