Published on: 24 Nov 04:06

Some schmuck asks

A new software developer spent four days to make a simple HTML button and CSS, should I fire him?

Md Abu Taher answers

Did he create a button like this? Just one line of code and a plain looking button?

Fire him before your business goes in the wrong way. He who takes 4 days on a button like this should be fired. Also fire whoever made the decision to hire him. He who cannot hire properly can only bring you down.

If it’s not that, fire whoever made the decision to fire him. Web development is not that simple.

• Maybe you asked, “It should look and work same in every browser including Internet Explorer 6, Chrome Mobile and Opera Mini”.
• Revisions after revisions is a developer’s nightmare. Did you ask him to change things while he was making it?
• Maybe you asked for too many revisions, and maybe you wanted it to be pixel perfect.
• Maybe you overwhelmed the new developer by constantly pressuring him about the button.

Look at the following button (see original design by Slava Shestopalov here, no code unfortunately, yet),

If it looks simple to you, fire yourself for expecting the wrong from the web development industry.

My comment

Hah. I’m a web developer, rather than a web designer; I read through your question and my mind charged off in a totally different direction. I could rattle off tons more tasks that a mature web-dev shop might require.

Specialist jargon incoming:

• Learn enough about your client JS SPA to know how to write the correct DOM event handler function connected to the button, then write that
• Learn enough about your app’s web servers’ API endpoints, yes, endpoints plural, to write an AJAX function to connect to the right location
• Maybe the server has some specialist auth, meaning you’ve got to fuss around with the HTTP headers or similar. More auth, more docs, more chasing up the auth-devs.
• Now you’ve got to write automated tests. Are you using a specialist framework? Client or server? Mocha or RSpec?
• You’ve built the button, its functions, its tests, pushed your Git branch to the VCS server, got feedback, completed your PR, merged your Git branch to … say, the ‘development’ branch. Now you let the QA people know it’s time for their manual testing to begin.
• They’re done? Awesome. Deployment time. They’re not done? Aah. Paw through their feedback, incorporate it, let them know, repeat.

Anyone who isn’t a web developer will read all that and think “what the hell does that all mean?”

Anyone who is will probably be thinking “geez dude, you wrote all that before your first morning coffee, didn’t you, I can rattle off another half-dozen steps you missed.” Guilty as charged!

Though I tell you what, there are more than a few items you’ll get on the lists of both developers and designers. Revision after revision. Argh. Horrible. That’s what brought down the Nazis. The panzer manufacturers were banging out thousands of brand new Panzer V Panther tanks, the Third Reich’s answer to the T-34 … but Nazi High Command kept approaching the manufacturer with tweak after tweak, mod after mod, and the Panther devolved from the Nazis’ latest greatest wunderwaffe to an unmaintainable kludge. This is why you batch revisions.

Source: https://www.quora.com/A-new-software-developer-spe...