Reply to: My Revised Contract

[MarillionFan]

I dunno is a $1 Billion turnover an SME?

[milanbenes]

you luv working at SME's don't you

personally I would dread to do a project at an SME

[MarillionFan]

"big system them, 400 Users LOL"

big system then

[milanbenes]

MF,

'deployed it and rolled it out in the whole of Europe to 400 people and backed up/maintained by IT',


big system them, 400 Users LOL

Milan.

[Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon]

Go to bed!!! You have a busy day tomorrow posting!!!

GET A ******* LIFE!!!!

[MarillionFan]

"Agile"

Not at my age, but I'm still quick around the block.

[Diestl]

Agile

[MarillionFan]

"Eight weeks is impressive, lucky you never had an anal code monkey making you go to endless meetings. Get the job done but with high quality results."

I am the anal coder!!! I believe in document, document, document, process, document & code.

But I dont have to get developers around to discuss it. + No management either, thats the bit I interface with.

They tell me what they want, I tell them what they really want.

[Diestl]

Within eight weeks I had documented it, rewritten it, redesigned it, redeveloped it, automated it with full error checking, email/sms alerts to key personal, reactivating jobs to cover screw ups, deployed it and rolled it out in the whole of Europe to 400 people and backed up/maintained by IT.

They appear a little impressed.

Plan B was crap, back to Plan A.

Eight weeks is impressive, lucky you never had an anal code monkey making you go to endless meetings. Get the job done but with high quality results.

[DimPrawn]

System was critical, previous bloke was the guru and hadnt taken a holiday in 2 years, making sure everything was done every day including weekends!!!! Only one copy on his laptop, no documentation, no backup, no one else could do it, all in his head..

Yep, that sounds like one of this lot.

[MarillionFan]

Toss up between SQL Server 2005 and Reporting Services or Business Objects Enterprise Version with relevant backend.

Havent touched Crystal on this one, took it as a 2 monther when the shop fell in Nov, though to cover a manual reporting monkeys job in Access with manual text downloads from different systems. System was critical, previous bloke was the guru and hadnt taken a holiday in 2 years, making sure everything was done every day including weekends!!!! Only one copy on his laptop, no documentation, no backup, no one else could do it, all in his head.

I had to work 4-6 weeks including running it at weekends. The baby went into hospital, I should have walked and I was running it from the patientline system in the hospital!!!

Within eight weeks I had documented it, rewritten it, redesigned it, redeveloped it, automated it with full error checking, email/sms alerts to key personal, reactivating jobs to cover screw ups, deployed it and rolled it out in the whole of Europe to 400 people and backed up/maintained by IT.

They appear a little impressed.

Plan B was crap, back to Plan A.

[Diestl]

Do you know the difference between performance and scalability?

What do you think is more important, a high performance piece of code or a scalable solution?

I'll let that be your homework for today.

Depends on the system, embedded systems have little resources to work with, and overall its better if the code is more performant, than spending more money on hardware. (As long as any wierd optimized code is commented) Comments are useful is these situations, but the guy I used to work with wanted them everywhere even when the code was obvious.

[SallyAnne]

In 10 years time, the computers will run a 100x faster, so who cares if your code runs in 3ms and the well written structured code takes 60ms?

What's important in 10 years, is that an IT person that costs a company £1000/day minimum in 10 years time, doesn't spend 10x times longer trying to fathom your non-standard, unstructured, uncommented, unreadable, unreliable, unsupportable, unmaintainable, unextendable, unreviewed, untested spaghetti that you thought was "clever".

How many years? 10, was it?

[SallyAnne]

Plenty of code hackers on here. As long as you don't expect quality, they are much cheapness, plenty quickness.

Or you could pick a select few and they could take 6 months to produce one little program. But it would have been extensively peer reviewed, and you could be assured it would be to the highest standard and fully commented.

[jenever]

Do you know the difference between performance and scalability?

What do you think is more important, a high performance piece of code or a scalable solution?

I'll let that be your homework for today.

I assume you get performance with scalability - put my Access database on a bigger box and Bob's your Uncle.