[thelist] What's a Programmer To Do?

[Martin Burns]

On 5 Apr 2009, at 23:29, Hassan Schroeder wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Martin Burns <martin at easyweb.co.uk>  
> wrote:
>
>>> What? No convincing needed -- a client comes to me with a use case:
>>> "I want to be able to update my site myself".
>>>
>>> The details of that requirement, as well as the best solution, are  
>>> up
>>> to me to propose.
>>
>> Yes, true. But are you telling me that you're not going to give me  
>> the
>> option? Are you relying on my inexperience to not call you out on it?
>> "Dear client: I'm billing you more because I want to have fun, but  
>> you
>> don't realise it, and I'm not telling"
>
> Uh, "billing you more"? What? Where does that come from?

Which is quicker: write a (eg) login system from scratch, or take one  
off the shelf?

Which is more likely to be mature: the system that you've knocked up  
in a few days, or the one that's had thousands of days, and hundreds  
of implementations behind it?

Where's your time better spent: understanding the client and doing  
customisations to a system that's 80+% there already, or building bog- 
standard functionality from scratch?

Cheers
Martin
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