would it be more efficient to:
- teach web development to the client and help him with specific implementation
- try to analyze the shit he progressively described for months in a dozen different overlapping and conflicting documents
no seriously this job is 60% guessing whatever the fuck the client is thinking about, and 30% writing code that will get deleted in the week, and 10% productive work
for a long time i thought the whole "client changing everything in the last minute" "multiple times" was mostly a funny horror story
but NO they're literally asking for "something" then "more like Duolingo" then "what about more like Skype you know"
(very literal examples) so now i'm writing a web chat software
wanna know the really *best*?
- it disables right clicking
- it ajax polls every few seconds because how do you even host websocket stuff
Web backend dev was actually the last thing I did that made any substantial income, though very sporadic.
I was heavily into putting together a requirements list, and having the client agree to it, before agreeing on a price.
The jobs where someone else was handling the negotiations and I just got the back-end stuff farmed out on a per-hour basis were easier.
@woozle @CobaltVelvet see that, I could manage.
@CobaltVelvet Did chat with websocket once, the end result is nice, but infra-wise it was hard.
@renatolond yeah, i wouldn't even know where to find a cheap and reliable and "very easy" way to host it. i'm certainly not going to manage and monitor a VPS for this.
@CobaltVelvet We had dedicated sysop team and still it was quite the challenge. Specially considering (at the scale we were doing) load balancing and all that jazz.
@taiz it's a naive project manager that hasn't got anything in writing and just started working on it optimistically for a relative
that was a terrible idea, i'll make sure to leave backdoors and not write any install doc until i get paid
@taiz but i can burn his house down without having to go too far so that's a start
but yeah if he wasn't a friend's friend's relative (and the project manager is the first friend) i wouldn't trust any of it
Also be sure to explicitly claim ownership of the copyright of your code and only transfer it when the check clears.
@CobaltVelvet Yep we all think it only happen to the others, and after all we know better so things will be perfectly fine.
Always define scope as precisely as possible, define a procedure and a price for any scope change, don't commit to anything if the requirements are vague. Have everything written down and agreed on.
@CobaltVelvet I've read the thread. My advice still holds, though. If not for this project, think about it for the next ones.
@CobaltVelvet Having done dev work in both largish and smallish companies, this "last minute change thing" is all too common, especially on contract work.
One would think larger companies serving clients would be good at generating smart dev contracts. To a large degree, they are not.
@CobaltVelvet fuck.... I hate web dev. did it once for a friend...I wish I never offered to do it for free, never again, probably even for money.