Newsletter Article, Programming Isn't Fun Anymore [modified]

[Pete OHanlon]

craigsaboe wrote:

is it frustrating when you want to build someone a relatively simple website with some standard features and a few new "things", and you have to spend however many hours evaluating not just languages but platforms and frameworks and communities and future plans and everything else.

That's why I never build stuff for clients in new tech. I'd rather we spent some time playing around R&Ding with a particular technology, rather than trying it out on the clients. By doing this, there's less pressure on you to lever code into solving one part of a particular problem - instead, you can spend time trying to get a broader understanding of how things work and what you need to do. This is why it took us 18 months from starting to play around with WPF to actually using it on a daily basis with our clients. Basically, never try out new tech on clients - it's only going to end up blowing up in both your faces.

Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

[Pete OHanlon]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

Embrace it, or die

You know, when you say that, I can't help imagining a gravelly voice and crosshairs.

Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

[craigsaboe]

I very much agree, when you have a singular situation that gives you your beans. However, when you have multiple bean providers, even just two, you are often guaranteed an unholy mixture of build engines, compilers, operating systems, databases, and languages themselves. Or even with a singular stack, as Mr. Bradford put it much more eloquently than me, you can still find yourself dealing with completely different toolsets on different projects within the same company. And if one uses version 2.7 of a compiler, and another uses 3.1, you get to play "what did they change?" and "would it break the build?" when you get an error. I know very well this is the nature of the beast... however, even if I'm married that doesn't preclude me from *****ing about the significant other.

[craigsaboe]

If I could, that would be what I would do. However, consulting work doesn't afford you that luxury. And it is my own fault obviously for going this route rather than going corporate and having nice two-year project lengths. But we're passionate about the work we're doing for NPOs, and will deal with their disparate environments until we can finish building out our "in-the-box" product that we can host and make this problem go away.

[realJSOP]

I think "gravelly voice and knife at your neck" is a more appropriate visage.

".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997

[Pete OHanlon]

craigsaboe wrote:

However, consulting work doesn't afford you that luxury

That's a problem with the way the consultancy works. I run a consultancy, and my comments are based on personal experience.

Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

[craigsaboe]

So how do you deal with the disparate setups of your clients? Do you take on only clients who allow you to use that platform, or are your solutions such that you can "play nice" with whatever they're running (i.e get a VM with your environment or something)? Or something else I'm missing?

[Luc Pattyn]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

Embrace it, or die

Seems like you abandoned VB.NET in favor of PHP now... :-D

Luc Pattyn [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

[Pete OHanlon]

Well, we mainly do desktop development for clients. Our particular niche is such that the environments tend to be similar, and where they aren't we do specify up front what will be needed to run it. Where we have done web development, we host the applications for the client so we aren't worried about server compatibility issues - and we have total control of the support which is always nice.

Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

[Vivi Chellappa]

Strip the jargon from all these new-fangled tools and you will find that you are doing the same old things the same old way. In the early 1970's, you had dumb terminals talking to centralized computers. Then came PC's but a whole lot of them had a 3278 emulation card inside them so that they could emulate a dumb terminal cconnected to the mainframe. Then people said they would write client programs on the PC and server programs on the server and everything would be hunky-dory.... except that, a few years later they felt they couldn't maintain all the distributed programs. So they went back to a browser on the PC but all instructions to the browser would be downloaded from the central computer, making the PC a brain-dead machine. Then of course, IBM and Oracle to come up with the dumbed-down NetPC concept too. So, just buy into the latest buzzword and it will keep you in a job that brings you a paycheck. Don't ask for job satisfaction. Just ask for the paycheck every two weeks. :wtf:

[S Douglas]

I would just be happy with well defined requirements, and no scope creep. Everything else (choosing the right tool for the job) is what makes it fun to do. :)

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Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.

[craigsaboe]

Knowing that a screw needs to be removed and that's all the job is ever going to be doesn't make it any more fun to try and figure out what screwdrivers can to be used. And determine if a given screwdriver allows you to turn it the requisite number of times to get the screw out. And whether the screwdriver can handle screws painted blue. And whether the screwdriver can be used anywhere else. Or if it would be cheaper just to buy a whole new [x]. [Apologize for the analogy.]

[PIEBALDconsult]

Hijacking... I seem to recall that around the time that VS 2010 came out you posted that activating a guideline in the editor required two registry entries rather than one like the earlier versions. From what I see today, that's not the case, but I wonder what it is I must be confusing with this. Do you recall something that requires an additional registry entry? Don't sweat over it.

[Luc Pattyn]

You are probably hinting at this thread[^]. Seems my article[^] could use an update... :)

Luc Pattyn [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

[CalvinHobbies]

I totally TOTALY feel your pain in this...

///////////////// -I’m a DHCP server at a local restaurant. This chick came up and asked me for my address, and I told her she was out of my scope -Why do Java Programmers wear glasses? Because they don’t C#

[CalvinHobbies]

I agree with Pete, gave me the image of Clint Eastwood from "Man with No Name". :cool: Good posting JSOP, needed to hear those words today. (beer)

///////////////// -I’m a DHCP server at a local restaurant. This chick came up and asked me for my address, and I told her she was out of my scope -Why do Java Programmers wear glasses? Because they don’t C#

[PIEBALDconsult]

I don't think so, but that's one I was able to find via search. It must have been some completely other feature. Thanks for the effort. Also, in regard to your 301: As you can imagine, I usually open Control and Form files in the editor, rarely in the designer, and a per-file setting isn't what I want, so I set the editor as the default... In Solution Explorer, right-click a Form file, click Open With..., select CSharp Editor, click Set as Default. This way the icons remain unchanged, but the editor opens when I double-click a Form file. To open the Designer instead, right-click the file and click View Designer.

[Alan Burkhart]

Dalek Dave wrote:

He is at the point of no return.

Gawd, that was corny. But I like it anyway. :laugh:

XAlan Burkhart

[Luc Pattyn]

Thanks for the suggestion, I never had tried it. Also, I'm still using VS2008 most of the time, that is why my article isn't up-to-date... :thumbsup:

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[Lost User]

That's the difference between a programmer and an architect.