It sounds like this was a situation where you just passed off a project and got the result in the end. My experiences have taught me to make sure to do reviews often and recommend changes early. I think there are several issues that cause these kinds of problems (language, education and styles to name a few), and other than "hand-holding" there isn't very much you can do. Steve Mathews Sr. Technical Lead Flypaper Studio
On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Merrill, Jason < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm going to throw a question out there to see if anyone has experienced > something similar to this. Didn't get any responses on Flash_Tiger. > > If you have ever outsourced some Actionscript work to an outside vendor, > have you ever struggled with how to spec out how you want them to code > it? > > Reason I ask is we've had bad experiences with some vendors in India in > the past producing poor Flash/Actionscript sourcecode (we require them > to provide sourcecode in the contract, so if need be, we can tweak minor > things later). We've had better luck with U.S. vendors (nothing against > India or Indians at all, that's just been our experience). So we > decided to spec out how we would like them to code it (in general, not > extremely specific - for example, use AS3, use external classes, comment > the code, if they use a framework, tell us what it is, etc.). So the > new vendor we used in India did all this (did a pretty good job with the > final product), - they complied with our specs just fine, but they went > overboard in the coding in my opinion. They over-coded by making the > sourcecode EXTREMELY abstract, it was nearly impossible from looking at > it to determine where to make minor tweaks. There is virtually no way to > tell where to make a change, or what the change should be. They DID > comment their code, but it's at the function-level - not at the bigger > overall picture on how everything fits together. > > It's not a matter of being able to understand the code, I humbly > consider myself a semi-near-expert (not a guru, but certainly no where > near a novice) in Actionscript. The problem is figuring out how all the > classes tie together to make what you see on the screen. I could figure > it out, but it could take a very long time, and would require a lot of > diagramming to map everything out. So instead we are having to go BACK > to this vendor to have them make the change. I don't know if they > over-coded because they thought that is what we wanted, that's the only > way they knew how to tackle the project, or if they did it to ensure if > there were ever any updates, only they would make the changes, thus > ensuring future work (if so, pretty smart, but sneaky, which angers me). > > Anyway, that's the story, my general question is how do you define specs > for a vendor to ensure you get good sourcecode back, but it's not overly > abstracted, over-coded work? > > Jason Merrill > Bank of America Instructional Technology & Media * GCIB & Staff > Support L&LD > > > > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
