I'm rather partial to chocolate myself. I went semi-retired a few years ago and only do word of mouth now. Even before doing that, I skinnied my resume to a single page letter of some three paragraphs with about five bullets in it. The resume I did use when I got a response left out the first 10 years or so, but was always tailored to the respondent. Why do that when five minutes of letter tailoring works. Ultimately, word of mouth is best, though. Let someone else supply the donuts.
RSW
What I usually do when I am approached (interviewed?) for jobs such as this is to make it clear up front that a certain amount of time will be necessary, a month or so, give or take a little, to become familiar with the problem. I usually tell them that this is will benefit both myself AND them, so that I have enough understanding of the problem to find a good solution, and so that I don't screw up what they already have. Businesses don't really like it when something unexpected happens to software that they use everyday (in your case, maybe it doesn't work too well, but that's another story). This includes reading all the code, becoming familiar with the database and how it is being used when you arrive on the scene, spending time with the people that use the stuff (you can usually learn more from them than anyone with the money in their pockets). But that's just me, and I learned that through hard knocks. I won't try to analyze your situation, but consider the following: Is it worth it to approach the manager/management/owner or whatever and admit that the problem is actually more difficult than imagined when you first encountered descriptions of it prior to or during the time that you were hired? This is not so unusual in situations such as yours. You've been there for five months. That should be enough time to have armed yourself with examples of code, database, and business models that require more effort than you (and, perhaps your predecessors) were lead to believe. Do you have good analytical skills that you can portray in simple English? Do your analytical skills include diagramming old systems (yes, reverse engineering, I suppose), with projections into possible new ways of doing things that would satisfy the business model as you see it? Pictures are an excellent way of removing fog with management, especially if you can walk managers through the problem, how you think previous attempts failed (and maybe even added more fog), and what the steps might be to get through the fog, see the trees in the swamp, and reach dry land. You've been there five months. Taking a few hours now to diagram what you have learned and how you see it resolve might be a good way to go. Delaying some sort of direct communication with management is never a good idea. The worst that can happen is that they will tell you to go away. The best - that they'll listen, especially if you can present the evidence in such a way that it plants a few seeds in their heads, which is always a useful goal. If they a
It depends upon what I'm doing. Right now, most of my time is occupied in Visual Studio, which is reasonably good, since I move the icons around and use a couple of addins. It gets the job done and doesn't get in the way. The builds when testing are a little slow, but acceptable. I'm also partial to phpDesigner when I need that environment. For down and dirty, light weight noodling and coding, Crimson Editor is my choice.
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward. John Maynard Keynes
When I first started out, I did use pseudo code (done outside of the source). It didn't take long to realize that it about doubled the time that I worked on a project. Since then, I have applied other, more visual tools to break down complicated processes, but mostly, I use Freemind, a mind mapper, to document other people's code and to create basic structures for new code. A mind mapper is a wonderful tool that is completely visual and allows linking to other documents, the Web, and even other applications, if need be. For a particularly knotty problem, pseudo code might play a part in evolving a solution. Otherwise, I don't see much use for it in today's code environments.
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward. John Maynard Keynes