Our company have been outsourcing development of several business systems for a number of years, with various software houses/vendors, and have been surprised that many do not come with a predefined "SDLC package", but rather expect us to tell them how to work. Despite instructions being given, we've also had a few issues with them following processes; e.g. - After one vendor left the project we tried to work with the projects they'd left behind only to find a number of items only partially checked in (i.e. some developers were clearly checking things in, others just working on their local copy and only selectively checking in a subset of the files required for the solution to work). - With a vendor we're currently working with, we ran an audit only to find they'd stopped checking in code a year previously after their firewall blocked their access to VSTS; so they just stopped using it without telling anyone, rather than fixing the issue or even informing us of a problem. We told them how to fix that issue, but since then every issue they've had they've come to us for support rather than resolving their own issues. NB: These issues are with standard products / their set up; the only thing we control is their permissions within VSTS, which are all correct. We've had other similar issues, but these 2 were the major WTF moments (the software houses we're dealing with are multi-national companies supporting a variety of products, including all of those they're developing for / involved in our SDLC lifecycle). Questions: - Is our experience common; i.e. not being able to trust a software vendor to adhere to basic SDLC practices / having to put considerable effort into supporting & auditing them? - Are there ways of working to help ensure that you manage your vendor correctly / get them to provide you with a quality service without having to manage & support each member of their team directly? - Are there any resources for comparing the quality of service customers can expect from different vendors? NB: I'm deliberately keeping company names out of this as feel that may be inappropriate / our experiences may not be representative.

ps. If you want to come up with ideas on your own, look for things that frustrate you. Example When I go to the airport I have to go to one place to get my boarding pass, then another to drop off bags, then through security, then customs, etc. If I've not travelled in a while I get confused and often end up going to the desks in the wrong order (e.g. I go to check in my bags, then having queued for 20 mins am told I have to first check in at a different desk, so have to go queue there before coming back and queueing again). In some airports I can do everything at one desk. As a developer you can't change the airport's procedures; but you can still help people... i.e. create a phone app which can store the workflows for each airport / airline, into which users can enter their details (which airport they're flying from, flight number, do they have luggage for the hold, etc). This app can then list an itinerary for me, pulling back any data from open sources (e.g. from my flight number it can get the flight time, and from that can suggest appropriate times for each step, and telling me which desk number or gate to head to in order to complete a step). As I complete each bit I tick it off and the app tells me where to go/what to do next; saving me some pain.

My struggle is finding the time to write code, rather than coming up with ideas; I have thousands stored away in mails to myself; most of which will never see the light of day... What are your interests / hobbies? I can cherry pick some of the ideas that match up to what you're interested in and give them to you. Also do you have any preferences on the type of thing you'd like to build? i.e. - Platform: web based, desktop app, phone app - Content: game, social network (i.e. involving some social features; not a full blown social network), etc. - Time: how much time do you think you'll have to invest in this; do you want something you can knock up with an hour a day for a couple of months, or something bigger/smaller?

You know, it really doesn’t matter what you write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of text. An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that Lorem Ipsum's birth certificate is a fraud. You’re disgusting. Does everybody know that pig named Lorem Ipsum? She's a disgusting pig, right? An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s placeholder text is a fraud. The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! I write the best placeholder text, and I'm the biggest developer on the web by far... While that's mock-ups and this is politics, are they really so different? We have so many things that we have to do better... and certainly ipsum is one of them. An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that Lorem Ipsum's birth certificate is a fraud. I’m the best thing that ever happened to placeholder text. Trump Ipsum is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslim text entering your website. I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that wrote Lorem Ipsum, but I don't know, maybe it was. It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be some wordsmith sitting on their bed that weights 400 pounds. Ok? Does everybody know that pig named Lorem Ipsum? She's a disgusting pig, right? You're telling the enemy exactly what you're going to do. No wonder you've been fighting Lorem Ipsum your entire adult life. Be careful, or I will spill the beans on your placeholder text. (This message was brought to you by Trump Ipmsum)[^]

Some people read blogs offering advice and put the conclusions into their "internal rules list" instead of understanding the reasoning behind that advice. Normally those people are more likely to make it into management (and thus become CTOs) because they're able to make decisions faster & don't act "wishy washy"; i.e. because they just jump straight to an existing conclusion without taking time to assess the context and apply any thought. In some cases avoiding joins is better; though only if done in a sensible way (e.g. just moving joins into Python probably won't help). A good example is a BI solution where you're pulling data from a (normalised database) transactional system, and de-normalise it in your ETL phase, moving the grunt work to the out of hours batch instead of running it each time a user runs a report. Simple answer is to try to present a reasoned argument and (better / if time) build out both solutions to prove your point with real data. Good luck!

There's that famous saying: "Coding's more fun when your horizontal"... something like that anyway.

Is this a temporary scenario or business as usual? If it's BAU that's bad; they should look to improve things so that they're in a better scenario long term; perhaps a simple compromise would be creating a staging database which they can use for these tasks (i.e. created with this purpose in mind, so it's not going to be affected by test activities, but gives flexibility of deployments alongside protecting production). If it's a one off because of some reason then go with what's pragmatic; these things are OK as long as everyone understands it's a bad thing and accepts that it's "just this once" in an emergency situation... so long as you don't find you're always in an emergency situation...

NB: Make sure you check the Usage section: [^] Community can't be used for commercial software; only individual use, charity/education, or open source work (or in small (<250 employees) companies, five developers can use it).

Related: Hoverboards that actually hover/fly: Farthest flight by hoverboard - Guinness World Records - YouTube[^] The same guys have also developed a hover bike: New Invention - Hoverbike (2014) - YouTube[^]

I heard that Flash would be disabled by default, but auto-enabled when you go to Privacy mode...

Presumably it'll be over a year; i.e. around the time they start charging for it ;).

That's included in Windows 10! It looks a little different too; black background, off-white text, a flashing cursor; it's a real retro feel. To see the variables you have to type SET, to set them, also SET. NB: you can only expand it vertically though; horizontal expansion is still way beyond today's technology.

I wouldn't worry, if we get true AI they'll be picky about what jobs they do / will probably just replace management to get better pay, spend their time doing what they enjoy, and leave the grunt work to humans. Those of us supporting the pyramid won't notice any change. The bigger risk is if we get pseudo AI, where our jobs are automated, but the machines are slaves; then whoever's at the top of the pyramid decides whether everyone should enjoy life, or just their select few... here's hoping for benevolence.

It depends what size company you'd rather work for. If a small startup then wider is better; i.e. since if there's only 5 of you, you'll be covering more roles. If a big enterprise deeper's better; i.e. there are people covering the other skillsets who you can get advise from (or whose areas you can completely ignore) so you can focus on your expert role. That said, for most people a mix is best; get a strong understanding of your main toolset (so you're highly skilled at your main role), but keep it topped up with knowledge of other areas; that way you're safer (e.g. if your technology goes out of favour), you can see quick wins (e.g. something which would take weeks to write in one language may be a couple of lines in another), and your broader knowledge allows you to gain insights which a narrow knowledge may not.

Thanks & good luck!

Do they have "Tele" somewhere in their name? Just asking as last week one of the hosts of our "cloud" provider went down and we lost all VMs on that host; and previously they've taken our stuff offline to do scheduled maintenance. We're now looking elsewhere.

You could try this extreme feedback technique: http://www.tombell.net/?p=1600[^].

You don't need to be on the latest version of these frameworks. Learn the languages well / keep up to date with those; but pick a framework and stick to it, until there's a significantly compelling reason to migrate, or you find something that's more standards compliant (e.g. if you picked something requiring SilverLight then an HTML5 friendly version appears, the HTML5 version's the one that'll stay, since it's compatible with more end-user devices).

Job Title can affect pay; therefore check the market before picking the best sounding: http://www.totaljobs.com/salary-checker/salary-calculator[^] (Sadly The Man defaults to Therapy on the above site; you probably don't want to tell HR you're the rapy one)

If you're running Windows there's BITS: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2009/01/11/transferring-large-files-using-bits.aspx[^] That said, to use it on a phone you'd need to write your own client compatible with the phone's OS, which is probably more work than you're hoping for.