- May 21, 2001
- 26,047
- 4,691
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The very small company I work for has used me as a programmer for their custom software. I have no programming training, but I do have minimal experience with several self-taught languages. I got a fairly professional looking Visual Basic program written, but ran into a few issues that I couldn?t solve. My boss has a friend who owns a company that does contract programming. So we sent the code with a vague list of seven changes that were wanted. For example, one of those changes was to give all forms an identical look and feel (I consider that a requirement to appear like a professional software product). After several emails and phone calls, I created an explict, detailed list of tasks and they gave us a price to do them all within 3 months. We figured it was a decent price and it fit our timeline needs.
9 months later, we still do not have a functioning program from them. It went from very rare error messages (we use my program every day and had an error roughly once a month or so) to error messages (and program crashes) with just about any click of the mouse. I keep sending lists of every error and how I got them, and they keep sending ?updates? which just have different errors at every turn.
Some of the detailed lists of things haven?t even been touched, and now they are trying to wiggle out of it. For example, I provided two forms to get user input for the same task. One form was overly-simple but had the exact look and feel that I wanted. The other form was far more advanced, but I just threw it together at the last minute to show them what inputs were needed (thus it looked like crap and was full of bugs). I said the second form ?is unfinished and has bugs but I want it to be used exclusively instead of the simple form?. I also attached a list of the bugs that I needed fixed on that advanced form. What did they do? Delete the simple form and leave the advanced form as is. They keep sending me the words I used above ?to be used exclusively? as meaning that they were not supposed to change it. I keep mentioning my ?give all forms an identical look and feel? requirement as well as my list of bugs in their quote. Nope, they refuse to do that work. Arg.
I also had many functioning parts, such as graph displays, which were not discussed in the list of changes since they functioned perfectly and had the look that we wanted. What did they do? Delete all of that, and put in shareware crap components that look horrible and don?t have the features that my programming did. I?ve requested that they (a) return it to the state it was in or (b) program it to look as good as I had it and to have at least as many features as it did have. They say the only thing that they can do is to have me find my own shareware components, purchase them, and give them the components. Is that at all normal? Why replace functioning code with components that need to be purchased? How am I to know what to buy, or how to find them? Why wouldn?t this be in the original quote if they felt it was necessary? Are components commonly used in coding? Arg.
Luckilly we only paid half the contract amount up front. And they aren't getting another dime if I can help it. Now for months of angry emails and phone calls from that company demanding the rest of the money.
Rant over.
9 months later, we still do not have a functioning program from them. It went from very rare error messages (we use my program every day and had an error roughly once a month or so) to error messages (and program crashes) with just about any click of the mouse. I keep sending lists of every error and how I got them, and they keep sending ?updates? which just have different errors at every turn.
Some of the detailed lists of things haven?t even been touched, and now they are trying to wiggle out of it. For example, I provided two forms to get user input for the same task. One form was overly-simple but had the exact look and feel that I wanted. The other form was far more advanced, but I just threw it together at the last minute to show them what inputs were needed (thus it looked like crap and was full of bugs). I said the second form ?is unfinished and has bugs but I want it to be used exclusively instead of the simple form?. I also attached a list of the bugs that I needed fixed on that advanced form. What did they do? Delete the simple form and leave the advanced form as is. They keep sending me the words I used above ?to be used exclusively? as meaning that they were not supposed to change it. I keep mentioning my ?give all forms an identical look and feel? requirement as well as my list of bugs in their quote. Nope, they refuse to do that work. Arg.
I also had many functioning parts, such as graph displays, which were not discussed in the list of changes since they functioned perfectly and had the look that we wanted. What did they do? Delete all of that, and put in shareware crap components that look horrible and don?t have the features that my programming did. I?ve requested that they (a) return it to the state it was in or (b) program it to look as good as I had it and to have at least as many features as it did have. They say the only thing that they can do is to have me find my own shareware components, purchase them, and give them the components. Is that at all normal? Why replace functioning code with components that need to be purchased? How am I to know what to buy, or how to find them? Why wouldn?t this be in the original quote if they felt it was necessary? Are components commonly used in coding? Arg.
Luckilly we only paid half the contract amount up front. And they aren't getting another dime if I can help it. Now for months of angry emails and phone calls from that company demanding the rest of the money.
Rant over.
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