Opinion: When do you need to develop software in-house?

[Kent Sharkey]

DeveloperTech[^]:

Is in-house software development the only way to get the best possible user experience from your software?

"You can go your own way"

[PIEBALDconsult]

Yes.

[jgakenhe]

An example of when it works for the organization. We have some vendor software that is very good. Unfortunately, it has grown to the point that it takes up half or our department. Interestingly, they allow us to own the data and I have admin rights to tens of terrabytes of the data. The catch is that I can't change it. If I change anything I don't like, like delete an empty table with the prefix _tmp on it, their proprietary software breaks. If I want to do something in house, then I have to create another schema that has rights to that data or write an ETL process to bring a copy of that data into my data structures. The proprietary software we use is used across an industry, so it has huge cost benefits. It seems like it costs about 200k a year plus database licensing. In contrast, if we built it in-house, we'd need a team of developers and or contractors to build it, then need to maintain it; even if our in-house software is not as good. Over 10 years you're looking at 2 million versus 4 or 5 million to build it then another half million a year to maintain it. Personally, I think my section should be shutdown and I'd imagine that in the future I'll be transferred into another.

[Evil Iceblock]

When you want it done properly.

[den2k88]

When you're the only one doing what you do, with the exceptions of your competitors :suss:

Geek code v 3.12 {      GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- r++>+++ y+++*      Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X } If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver