Can you just stop asking that question?
April 2010
As a web developer, without doubt the worst questions I have to deal with always begin with the words "can you just". Whenever someone starts a sentence with those 3 words it makes my buttocks clench and my ears bleed!You see by using a phrase like that you can make anything sound easy. "Can you just learn Latin?", "Can you just explain the meaning of life?", "Can you just tell Osama Bin Laden to stop hiding and not be such an evil prick?" Or if you’re American "Can you just please not sue me?" They all sound really easy when you say it but have you actually tried getting an American not to sue? It can’t be done.
Now, designers have it relatively simple. They just design something pretty, hand it to the customer and then spend the rest of the day smoking marijuana. A punter just wants a nice looking website and they don’t really give a flying Fokker how it works just as long as it does work - and therein lies the problem. Most people don’t appreciate the complexity and sheer weight of coding behind a database driven website, let alone the resources needed to power some of them.
I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life learning how to write code in various different programming languages and I consider myself pretty good at it. If I were to show the average customer what I’d written and tried explaining what each command did, they would look at me in the same way I’d look at someone if they started rambling on at me in French because that is essentially what I’d be doing – only without the body odour.
I think I should start inviting customers to view the code behind their websites just to get the point across. For example, I recently had someone commission me to build them a website. I spent about a month building quite an advanced content management system and video library to complement the site and, just as I was putting the finishing touches on the website, I got a call asking if I could just change a few things around on the site. Not a major problem until I looked through the list of changes and realised that I wasn’t being asked to move a few things around, I was actually being asked to change the entire technical structure of the database which of course meant re-coding the whole administration area and website. Oh and I was asked if I could get it done that afternoon.
Have you ever tried explaining quantum physics and philosophy to a monkey? Me neither but it’s pretty much the same principle as trying to explain to someone that I’m going to have to charge them all over again because they are asking for something way outside the original specification and, no, it is not possible to re-do a month’s work in a single afternoon.
The analogy I always like to give people is this: If you commission a builder to construct a bungalow and then wait until he is putting the roof on before you change your mind and tell him that you want a second floor on the building he will most likely batter you to death with a sledgehammer and bury your remains in cement. You see it isn’t as simple as “just” putting a roof on. The foundations will have to be dug out and reinforcements will have to be put in place to take the extra load of an additional floor. The same laws apply to code. If you start just building things on top of other things and take other bits out of the middle and plonk them somewhere else, eventually the whole thing will collapse and you will be left with a pile of rubble and a website that doesn’t function properly.
Even seemingly small changes can be a pain in the proverbial. You see a 5 minute fix does not take 5 minutes. If, for example, someone phones me up and wants to change a couple of images or links around, I have to stop what I’m doing, spend 10 minutes on the phone while I’m given typically incoherent instructions, spend the 5 minutes making the change, test it, upload it for the rest of the world to see, phone the customer back and then get my head back into what I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted. When you take all that into account it will easily be 15 minutes or more. It only needs four people to do that to me every day and that is an hour down the toilet. An hour I’m losing on more important projects like choosing whether or not to have another Cappuccino down my local café.
The other problem is that if people make the assumption that something is simple, they will expect it to be free as well. The number of complaints I’ve had from people demanding to know why we charged them for carrying out updates on their site beggars belief. What people don’t seem to realise is that if we do everything for free we aren’t going to make any money. If we don’t make any money we will go out of business. If we go out of business they won’t have a website. Also, I don’t particularly fancy sleeping on the streets.
So the point is that a website can be re-developed as long as there is a plan. In fact I always like to encourage a review of a site every couple of years if only to keep it looking fresh and up to date with the constant developments and new techniques being applied to the wacky website world every 5 minutes. I just need to get the point across that things are rarely as simple as they seem. Or to put it another way arrêter votre pleurnicher salauds bon marché et apprendre à apprécier que peu de choses dans ce monde sont gratuits. Comprenez?
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