| ??? 12/06/10 04:53 Read: times |
#179886 - free advice Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Per Westermark said:
You have spent 40 years making sure you have never needed to do something creative. Whenever there have been open issues, you have stopped working until some one else have pointed you in the right direction. I don't want to turn this into a fight, but it's your standard practice to go ad-hominem in every case that you can't understand. I've spent 40 years doing what my customers wanted, and the last ten of those were spent in doing only what they came after me begging me to do it rather than making them look for someone else, even though, for most of those ten years, I've been trying to retire and close my business. I've never had to pursue work. I've rejected a lot of it. That is not the way to move the world forward. Just the way to again, and again, build new wheels. Judging from the inherent quality of the "wheels" I see out there, it's time someone took that problem on. I'm not interested in "wheels," though. You think someone with money is a fool if they ask a developer to create something for him. Yes, I do, if they don't know what they want. Would it be better for that person (who might actually be a genius in other areas) did fumble himself trying to write 100 page of specifications and they order: "build this"? Possibly getting a seriously broken product because the developer blindly followed the specification without pointing out the problems? I think it's a lot better than guessing. You have located a sub-box of the development process, and decided to call that box your home. That is fine. But at the same time, you are trying to order everyone else to redefine "development" into being equivalent with that sub-box, and to consider everything outside it as lunacy. I don't consider everything outside my specialty lunacy. I do consider taking on work that's ill-defined to be a mistake, though. Many customers don't want a radio. They want a better radio. But marketing can't magically help them make a better radio. Very often, it takes a development process. Many developers are actually liking working with that part of development - figuring out what limitations old radios have had, and how technology changes or different views can be used to redefine a radio. Yes, and the customer who wants to develop a new radio needs to know what it would take to make a radio that's "better" and in what ways he wants it to be better. Design engineering is only a part of that development process. It wasn't marketing that changed a hammer into a nail gun. And the ones who did improve a hammer into a nail gun - or spent the money - were not fools. Marketing didn't magically specified a pen that writes under water, and then they had such a pen. How could marketing have specified a LED lamp, before someone did invent the LED, and did manage to improve it enough that someone got interested in using it? Anyone who's gone to engineering school in the U.S. in the last 50 years, and probably before, has hear from professor or instructor that engineering is the art and science of applying technology to the needs of man. It doesn't require the invention of new technology. It requires that the technology with which a product is devised already exist so that engineering principles can be be brought to bear against the task. Many customers really do come and say: I have this product. It's outdated - or some of the components are. How can you replace it with something new? It needs to match the old requirements, so we have a replacement product for current buyers. But we would very much like to know how it can be improved, to allow us to also interest new buyers. Such a customer isn't a fool. A fool does what he hasn't the skill to do. A clever person knows his limitations and tries to buy that competence. If he can't tell me what he considers to be an improvement, I'd not waste my time on it. Of course, it's safer to just follow order. Implement the 10000 lines of code that does exactly what a specification says it should do. But it is much more rewarding trying to help a customer figure out how an existing product or idea could be improved upon. Being good at that, also gives repeat customers. Because customers who buys that help really are not fools. They value, and pay for, good advice. If they don't know what they want, I'd advise them to figure out what they do want, and I wouldn't charge them for the advice. RE |
