[thelist] What's a Programmer To Do?

[Hassan Schroeder]

On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 2:03 AM, Martin Burns <martin at easyweb.co.uk> wrote:

> Which is all well and good, but I'm going to play devil's advocate
> (actually, client's advocate) for a minute:

I'll see your devil and raise you two :-)

> Unless you can convince me that custom coding is faster/cheaper than
> configuring a CMS

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. For the record, I've never had a small business
client even mention a "CMS" by name, much less a specific one.
(Enterprise clients are a different story, but I don't think we're really
discussing that space.)

And I'd say there's a place for the TDD concept of "the least amount
of code that will make the test pass": simple, lean, focused. Fewer
moving parts to break.

And speaking of tests...

> All you'll leave me with is a less maintainable, less
> tested site where time has been wasted re-solving standard problems.

"Popular" or "widely deployed" doesn't to my mind mean "tested".  :-)

If the CMS in question doesn't have a comprehensive set of unit tests,
and setting it up involves substantial tinkering and customization, I'd
say it is, at the point of delivery, basically *untested*.

YMMV!
-- 
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder at gmail.com