Re: Re: Planning your software before writing

[belize]

I see your point. Overview to specifics and if the specifics can be broken into teams the better.

I am coming from a little smaller company (9 employees) that are struggling to fill the niche of customers that have around 10-15k to spend instead of the 800k or more for the big boys.

I have often wondered whether it is better to built something form scratch or to look for something that has already been done and modify it. The first way takes more time, but gives you exactly what you want. The other takes less time, but often does not give you what you want.

Programming always seems to be a trade off between time, money,and functionality (maybe we should add reliability?).

[KM]

The other takes less time, but often does not give you what you want.

Well, that depends on what you find to build on. If you find something (or some things) that were well designed to build off of, it can save you time. If you download crap to use, then you have crap to work with. I once had to do a calendaring system.. I found a Perl one on Sourceforge (don't recall the name right now) and it was decently written, and had much of the functionality I needed, and was easily expandable (I added tons of things, and now use my version for my own personal use). So, in that case it saved time. Before finding that one I looked at another, which was crap, and I saw a long hard road ahead. I didn't start from scratch because of my task load, and I happened to find something very usable.

Programming always seems to be a trade off between time, money,and functionality (maybe we should add reliability?).

I say, let the managers worry about money (and maybe the time) and the programmers worry about functionality (reliability, readability, scalability, and all other bilities). If you happen to have a boss who isn't afraid to tell a customer 'it will take an extra two weeks, because we want to make sure it is a good piece of software now, rather than fix things later', all the better. Crap gets created when you have someone saying 'Well, just make it work they want it on Friday'. Personally, I think a programmer should say 'No, it will be done when it is right', but some value the paycheck to much :)

Anyways, when you have the 1000 foot view, it is a good time to research what is available that can be a base to work from, IMO.

Cheers,
KM