Small Business+Phoenix+Software

I must admit I am terribly impressed by Microsoft opening the BizSpark program to startups.  Especially right now, with the economy in the dumps.  Yes, I develop Microsoft solutions, almost exclusively, but this is more about enabling and nurturing small business and microbusiness.  Every software developer harbors the dream to build a killer application.  Now, even a small business owner who’s harbored the same dream can invest in their idea too.  With free software to base the startup on, all they need now is a developer.  I’d love to hear about any partnerships or success stories that grow from this Microsoft program.  Primarily, so that I can cheer them on.

Recently, I was challenged by a prospective client to explain why I should get the web application project when I only had 3 years of ASP.NET experience.  I’ll admit I was unprepared for the question.  My hesitant, but entirely valid, response was about how software development projects are made up of many important pieces including business analysis, project management, application design (i.e. middle tier), user interface, testing and maintenance.

This really got me thinking about the history of .NET, and therefore ASP.NET, and what is the best level of experience to have when working on solutions in 2008.  You see, .NET was originally released in version 1.0 in 2002.  As a matter of fact, the first demo of ASP+ was here in Phoenix at PDC (Professional Developers Conference) in 2000.  The .NET framework 1.0 (and 1.1) was easily dismissed as typical Windows development, i.e. you had better wait until the first service pack before developing anything really important on top of it.

I distinctly remember 3 weeks of experimentation with .NET 1.1 while I had some bench time in 2003 after .NET 1.1 was released.  Back then I wasn’t much of a web developer, I was more focused on Windows applications and SQL Server.  I didn’t know what I had.  ASP.NET 1.1 had real promise while the Windows Forms portion of the framework was very crashy.  Given that I developed (then and now) robust applications that my clients depended upon day in and day out to run their business, I dismissed .NET Framework 1.1.  I don’t regret it either.

The .NET 2.0 framework released in 2005 is when most developers, including myself, finally came on board.  Ask any developer (today), what their favorite version of .NET is and the response will be 2.0.  The introduction of master pages, web parts, personalization and declarative data access really made developers job easier.

So, given some time and perspective…my 3 years of .NET experience are right on track with the release of a stable version of the framework.  You can make the point that I might be a better .NET developer if I had those additional two or three years of .NET experience, because I would have experienced more pain and thus learned harder lessons.  I’ll agree with that if you’ll agree that, during that same period, I was providing my clients with robust software built on proven platforms (rather than working in immature tool-sets/frameworks just to advance my own knowledge).  I won’t even bring up the 6 to 10 new business models I learned in that same time-frame that might provide benefits to the business a prospective client would like me to learn today.

Since Google’s Chrome web browser has been SO much in the news lately, there have been tons and tons of blog posts lately about it.  I picked up on this one about the password manager mechanism because well, I am a software developer (er…ok…geek) and I am a bit tired of all of the prognosticating of what Google Chrome means to the competitive landscape of the world wide web.

What struck me about this well written article was how hard it is to communicate to the lay men what is involved when a simple requirement needs to be fulfilled in a software project.  In this case:  The browser should store website passwords at the users discretion.  Sounds simple right?  It’s not.  There are several reasons why.

1)  Architectural.  Which method shall I use for transporting the request?  What storage mechanism will be used?  What should happen in the request to store the data fails?

2)  Maintenance.  How much debugging code needs to be added to each procedure?  What debug values would be most valuable when debugging an issue that may or may not be expected?

3)  Data.  How much info should be stored that is merely related to the task and/or requirement that might assist in management of the application or troubleshooting after the fact?

4)  Users.  What prompts communicate effectively to the end user that a decision must be made by the user?  What prompts or messages impede the user or are effectively not needed nor add to the user experience?  If an error occurs, what should be displayed to the user?

5)  Developers.  Note the (almost) flame war that breaks out in the comments section between developers who either feel the need to point out the obvious, don’t like to be corrected, like to correct others, can’t stay on topic or will not give up an argument until all parties are not sure how it started.

As you can see, this ain’t easy.

Since I am in the freelance business (and contract business and consulting business and …), I get to monitor quite a few project sites for additional work, such as elance.com, rentacoder.com, odesk.com and getafreelancer.com.  My favorite kind of project posting, goes something like this:

“website is looking for a college student or a young web designer with a good knowledge of web design to help us design and build our website. We may be able to work out a limited payment arrangement now, but the majority of pay will be deferred. We have an aggressive, profitable business model and are confident in our success…we just need someone to help us get the ball rolling…”

Sounds like a very smart company bootstrapping their way to success right?  Well, not quite.  This comes back to the old adage “you get what you pay for.”  If you actually find a student or junior level person who is willing to go without payment, you will get just the same level of quality, customer service and long term return on investment that your company invested in the project.  In other words, you will get none.  You will also pay a lot more when a professional is brought into to assess and/or fix the damage.  I can guarantee there won’t be much savings there.

Let’s look at this from the perspective of the student or young designer, perhaps we need a new adage such as “you get what you invest”.  If it were me, I’d want “limited payment arrangement” defined.  Isn’t that a life insurance term, where the person actually pays a premium?  I guess the student or designer will pay the premium in hours but reap a lifetime of benefits?  Whose lifetime?  The web site’s?  The smart company that’s currently bootstrapping?  Can someone also define “majority of pay”?  My definition would come in at 50.1%.  If the ball isn’t rolling yet, how is it profitable?  Is it profitable when the first sale closes?

Sorry to rant.  Perhaps I’m just jaded from seeing too many haphazard development projects land on my door when the company owner discovers their true north or the junior person just flakes.