POLL (rather, a question)

I am preparing to hire a general web programmer and in the process talked to
one who said something that surprised me. He laughed and said, "Nobody codes
anything from scratch. We all take code from other pages out there and put
'em together. It's crazy to code from scratch!"

Is it true?

re: POLL (rather, a question)

"Lorem Ipsum" <Lorem@ipsum.xxx> wrote in message
news:11dvhf5q5crff1@news.supernews.com...[color=blue]
> I am preparing to hire a general web programmer and in the process talked[/color]
to[color=blue]
> one who said something that surprised me. He laughed and said, "Nobody[/color]
codes[color=blue]
> anything from scratch. We all take code from other pages out there and put
> 'em together. It's crazy to code from scratch!"
>
> Is it true?[/color]

I personally do a lot of coding from scratch though I may start with a
skeleton page.

I also use custom ASP templates files for a page's header, navigation, and
footer.

Ask him for the details of how he develops the initial home page for a new
site.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

I would think about ideas, accessibility and code.

1. Ideas

Life would be a much more rudimentary affair if we did not share ideas.


Unless protected by patent, we all learn from and indeed copy/perhaps
improve on the ideas of others.

2. Accessibility

If you are creating a widely accessible site then you may have a
controlled amount of actual code, as you will be trying to cater for
those without javascript etc.

3. Code

It is rare indeed that a complete novice can just copy web pages and
re-use them. You need to be fairly competent web developer yourself to
understand what you are doing.

In which case you can probably write it yourself or you would be better
off employing an expert. Often you will really just learn from the
ideas and methods, and re-write it in your own way, to avoid copyright
issues.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

"McKirahan" <News@McKirahan.com> wrote in message
news:wPmdnZRhVqnpUULfRVn-pQ@comcast.com...
[color=blue]
> I personally do a lot of coding from scratch though I may start with a
> skeleton page.
>
> I also use custom ASP templates files for a page's header, navigation, and
> footer.
>
> Ask him for the details of how he develops the initial home page for a new
> site.[/color]

I just had the good fortune of getting his code for a project I know about.
It was clearly lifted from an inventory project (variables like
'backordered', and so forth), but the application it served was completely
different, had nothing to do with inventory in any way whatsoever, but the
database routines worked.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

"Baconbutty" <julian@baconbutty.com> wrote in message
news:1121963868.258544.163120@g47g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...[color=blue]
>I would think about ideas, accessibility and code.
> [... snip thoughtful insights ...][/color]

Thank you. In this case I need to hire someone who is more than a code
adapter. I fear two things: first, that the person who 'adapts' widely will
get in over her/his head because he/she won't be experienced enough to have
learned what was implemented. My second issue is somewhat philosophical: by
choosing someone elses code, one may obviate opportunities to be as creative
as truly neccessary. We require some originality in the type of projects we
accept.

I am certainly still listening to opinions here. The person in question is
successful in a way, a college graduate with experience... and I just need
to know the paradigm, what's going on 'out there' now.

sharing is good
not understanding what one appropriates is bad, IMHO

re: POLL (rather, a question)

I think that we all can learn by looking at examples of other people's
code - you see a variety of styles and ways to get things done. But to
say that we all just put things together that others have written is a
sign that he's not actually a programmer. Just piecing together other
people's code is a surefire way to get yourself a pile of barely
functional, unextensible and unmaintainable code.

-f

re: POLL (rather, a question)

"Lorem Ipsum" <Lorem@ipsum.xxx> wrote in message
news:11dvhf5q5crff1@news.supernews.com...[color=blue]
>I am preparing to hire a general web programmer and in the process talked
>to one who said something that surprised me. He laughed and said, "Nobody
>codes anything from scratch. We all take code from other pages out there
>and put 'em together. It's crazy to code from scratch!"
>
> Is it true?[/color]

While it is true that the internet renders the proverbial reinvention of the
wheel obsolete, to say "nobody codes anything from scratch" is 100% absurd.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

"nybble" <fsheng@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1121969512.942638.274210@g49g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...[color=blue]
>I think that we all can learn by looking at examples of other people's
> code - you see a variety of styles and ways to get things done. But to
> say that we all just put things together that others have written is a
> sign that he's not actually a programmer. Just piecing together other
> people's code is a surefire way to get yourself a pile of barely
> functional, unextensible and unmaintainable code.
>[/color]

This comment from "nybble" here is very important!

If those of us that do this for a living worked by just
slapping together "ready-made" snippets from existing sites,
one would have a beast written in umpteen different coding
styles.

And to be able to maintain such a site/application, we would
have to carefully walk thru each "snippet" to be sure we understood
exactly what and how it worked. (Not to mention all the issues of
global namespace collitions).

And in my book, "Proffesional" also means "well documented". How
should we be able to do that if the code was written by 15 different
programmers?

I think you can safely say that while he might be good at what he's
doing, he is not a professional programmer in my sense of the word.

--
Dag.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

Lorem Ipsum wrote:[color=blue]
> I am preparing to hire a general web programmer and in the process
> talked to one who said something that surprised me. He laughed and
> said, "Nobody codes anything from scratch. We all take code from
> other pages out there and put 'em together. It's crazy to code from
> scratch!"
> Is it true?[/color]

Don't hire him, he has no clue.

I code from scratch all the time. I've been hired to make updates to other
people's scripts, and found so many of them to be so poorly programmed, that
I finally gave up on that idea. As bad as some are, it's faster to build it
myself.

I also recently interviewed for a position at a (fairly large) company - and
all their stuff is built from scratch, too.

My thoughts, at least...

--
Tony Garcia
Web Right! Development
Riverside, CA
www.WebRightDevelopment.com

re: POLL (rather, a question)

Lorem Ipsum wrote:[color=blue]
> Thank you. In this case I need to hire someone who is more than a
> code adapter. I fear two things: first, that the person who 'adapts'
> widely will get in over her/his head because he/she won't be
> experienced enough to have learned what was implemented. My second
> issue is somewhat philosophical: by choosing someone elses code, one
> may obviate opportunities to be as creative as truly neccessary. We
> require some originality in the type of projects we accept.[/color]

How would I go about getting an interview for this position? :)

--
Tony Garcia
Web Right! Development
Riverside, CA
www.WebRightDevelopment.com

re: POLL (rather, a question)

"Tony" <tony23.no@dslextreme.com.spam> wrote in message
news:11e06thrtblebef@corp.supernews.com...[color=blue]
> Lorem Ipsum wrote:[color=green]
>> Thank you. In this case I need to hire someone who is more than a
>> code adapter. I fear two things: first, that the person who 'adapts'
>> widely will get in over her/his head because he/she won't be
>> experienced enough to have learned what was implemented. My second
>> issue is somewhat philosophical: by choosing someone elses code, one
>> may obviate opportunities to be as creative as truly neccessary. We
>> require some originality in the type of projects we accept.[/color]
>
> How would I go about getting an interview for this position? :)
>
> --
> Tony Garcia
> Web Right! Development
> Riverside, CA
> www.WebRightDevelopment.com
>
>[/color]

re: POLL (rather, a question)

>It was clearly lifted from an inventory project (variables like[color=blue]
>backordered', and so forth), but the application it served was completely
>different, had nothing to do with inventory in any way whatsoever, but the
>database routines worked.[/color]

Personally, at this stage of my career, I would not hire anyone who
always coded from scratch. This is a trait of someone who's
self-interest is placed way ahead of the interest of the project.

On the other hand, if I found code that looked like that described
above I would not hire the author unless I could put him under the
tutelage of a much more experienced developer. Code that is full of
mis-named variables is difficult to maintain.

I steal a lot, I always credit it in the code and I always tweak it to
conform to the style and naming conventions of the project I'm working
on. And if it's a big improvement on the original, I send it back to
the author if I can.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

Quoth bgulian@gmail.com:[color=blue]
> I steal a lot, I always credit it in the code and I always tweak it to
> conform to the style and naming conventions of the project I'm working
> on. And if it's a big improvement on the original, I send it back to
> the author if I can.[/color]

It's still illegal, though.

--
\\kristian

re: POLL (rather, a question)

Lorem Ipsum wrote:[color=blue]
> I am preparing to hire a general web programmer and in
> the process talked to one who said something that surprised
> me. He laughed and said, "Nobody codes anything from scratch.
> We all take code from other pages out there and put 'em
> together. It's crazy to code from scratch!"
>
> Is it true?[/color]

No, but there are many individuals working in web development that take
that attitude. But the average standard of web development (and so web
developers) is abysmal. Which is itself a good reason not to be
borrowing too much from public sources.

There are places on the web that you can go and find 2000 odd published
scripts for free use by anyone. And 98% of those scripts can be
somewhere between bad and actively harmful. To pull the scripts that are
worthy of interest from the dross you need to know how to recognise the
difference, and so pretty much how to write the script form scratch (the
alternative being to find a source for such code that you trust to have
done a good job in the first place, and so still need some knowledge to
base that judgement upon).

Maybe the test that should be applied is not whether an individual
actually writes much code form scratch, but whether they could write
what they would otherwise use, from scratch, if they needed to. If they
could then their deacons not to should be well informed, otherwise the
quality of the end result may be at the mercy of their ability to
compose a good google search or some such.

Richard.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

bgulian@gmail.com wrote:[color=blue][color=green]
>>It was clearly lifted from an inventory project (variables
>>like backordered', and so forth), but the application it
>>served was completely different, had nothing to do with
>>inventory in any way whatsoever, but the database routines
>>worked.[/color]
>
> Personally, at this stage of my career, I would not hire
> anyone who always coded from scratch.[/color]
<snip>

I would be as concerned at employing someone who never re-used code I
would be employing someone who never wrote original code. To have
acquired any genuine understanding of the language and its application
the programmer will have had to write a fair bit of actual code for
themselves, and in doing so should have recognised many recurrent
themes. Not realising that those recurrent themes are good candidates
for implementation in re-useable components would be very remiss.

There is reasonable debate as to the level at which re-usable code
should be pitched in browser scripting, but a decent programmer will
always re-use as much code as is practical. Programmers should be lazy,
in the sense of; 'do it properly and you only have to do it once'.

Richard.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

Kristian Thy wrote:[color=blue]
> Quoth bgulian@gmail.com:[color=green]
>> I steal a lot, I always credit it in the code and I always tweak it
>> to conform to the style and naming conventions of the project I'm
>> working on. And if it's a big improvement on the original, I send
>> it back to the author if I can.[/color]
>
> It's still illegal, though.[/color]

Yes it is. Intellectual property rights reside with the original author
(or the employer of the original author) of any script, so scripts may
not be used by third parities without the explicit agreement of the
original author.

The reverse-engineering of scripts is allowed but is probably rarely
done in a way that would eliminate copyright issues.

I recall a description of the reverse-engineering of BIOS code for
desktop PCs where a third party was commissioned to analyse a
competitor's BIOS and create a technical specification for the resulting
code and then that specification (only) was used in-house to re-create
the BIOS code. Thus any similarities between the original BIOS code and
the results of the reverse-engineered code could then be demonstrated to
result from nothing more than coincidence.

I doubt is many who 'copy' the scripts of others are able to demonstrate
that level of detachment from the work that is being reproduced, or that
going through the process of having the original decomposed into a
technical specification would be of much interest to those who's problem
was not knowing how to implement the specified functionality in the
first place.

One of the problems with always crediting the author of original code is
that the author may not want their name associated with many possible
applications of that code (being cited as partly responsible for what
you (but not necessarily its authors) would consider bad web site is not
positive publicity).

Richard.

re: POLL (rather, a question)

On Sat, 23 Jul 2005 13:50:51 +0100, "Richard Cornford"
<Richard@litotes.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Lorem Ipsum wrote:[color=green]
>> I am preparing to hire a general web programmer and in
>> the process talked to one who said something that surprised
>> me. He laughed and said, "Nobody codes anything from scratch.
>> We all take code from other pages out there and put 'em
>> together. It's crazy to code from scratch!"
>>
>> Is it true?[/color]
>
>No, but there are many individuals working in web development that take
>that attitude. But the average standard of web development (and so web
>developers) is abysmal.[/color]

My view is that the problem is mostly in testing, client side web
development is almost always simply under tested. Is Yahoo Search
really so underfunded that they've not got a tester that tests that
they've set a CSS background colour, or is there some more fundamental
problem with QA on the web - why's it so hard?

Anyone can write good code with good testers, there just don't seem to
be good testers.

Jim.