> One of the difficult things about being a one-man-shop is > there's no one to look over your work and make suggestions.
Unless you publish your work as open source, in which case you can get a wide range of responses from, for instance, everyone who wants to blog using BlogCFC and nearly nobody using the onTap framework because they open it up, see that it's thousands of files and feint dead away. :P > Something that surprised me when I first started doing > contract development was how few of my clients were > interested in the code. For the majority of them, if it > did what it was supposed to do, thats all they cared > about. Click the button- does it isave the data to the > database? yes= good. No=bad. It surprised me that > they weren't interested in whether the code was > commented or not, whether it had unnecessary loops, > pooly performing queries, spaghetti code, any of that > stuff. As a result, very few people have ever said > anything about my code, except works=good, doesn't > work=bad. And they never will. If you get a chance, pick up a book called the Inmates Are Running the Asylum. Alan Cooper makes the first half of the book very difficult to read with apparent, constant negative attitude about the state of software user interfaces... not that he doesn't have a good and valid point, but it'd be nice to think that once upon a time, someone, say in Austria on a Thursday in 1992 had an idea that was remotely close to "good user interface design" before he came along. In spite of that, he does a good job of describing (if not necessarily explaining) the difference between programmers who want to understand things and accept failure if they can understand why they failed, and other people who want to succeed and accept ignorance (without being pejorative) if the task is accomplished. Of course, no analogy is ever bullet-proof. :) But it's a pretty decent description of most folks. This is also the reason most users are willing to accept slower load times for individual pages if their user interface is pleasant to use (since most of them aren't) because a pleasing UI helps them succeed and doesn't make them feel stupid or incompetent. (As compared to say a typical Oracle error message which appears to be designed to intentionally belittle the programmer.) s. isaac dealey 434.293.6201 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.fusiontap.com http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/author/4806Dealey.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:236760 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54