<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Mark Shercliff</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mshercliff@gmail.com">mshercliff@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: 23 May 2013 17:59<br>Subject: Re: [Phpwm] criticising other agencies<br>To: <a href="mailto:db_developer@o2.co.uk">db_developer@o2.co.uk</a><br><br><br><p dir="ltr">I thought cowboy coding was "in"?</p><div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5">
<div class="gmail_quote">On 23 May 2013 14:28, <<a href="mailto:db_developer@o2.co.uk" target="_blank">db_developer@o2.co.uk</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
When does it become acceptable to critisize agencies and their work? I<br>
have inherited some code from a well known agency in Birmingham and<br>
just thought I'd let off some steam.<br>
<br>
The agency in question (who shall remain nameless) is quite famous:<br>
well at least they appear quite high in search engine results if you<br>
are a one the many hapless businesses or individuals searching for<br>
someone to carry out some web work for you. Their work "looks" really<br>
nice. It's compliant with various standards, the designs are very<br>
modern, the javascript probably works really well if you have a modern<br>
browser. But my problem came when I looked under the hood of one of<br>
their projects: it was a mess. It is badly organised, has very poor use<br>
of inline tags, has loads of sql queries where they don't appear<br>
necessary, there are hundreds and hundreds of scripts, and the database<br>
structure is horrid. After that description you can relax, breathe<br>
calmly again in the safe knowledge, no it's not you.<br>
<br>
Looks pretty: like this week's 'new shape' Vauxhall, if you know what<br>
I mean.<br>
<br>
I stick to the old design principle 'Form Follows Function'. So when<br>
building a project for someone, first I set down how the application<br>
will live and work: will there be a project lifecycle, how will it get<br>
maintained. A 'boxy but good' solution.<br>
I'm having a bad time maintaining this project and not looking forward<br>
to doing an audit. I guess they didn't think about audits when they<br>
"Designed" the website.<br>
<br>
I think it is easy to critisize; maybe this design agency provided<br>
something that I have missed, maybe they were really cheap or delivered<br>
the project to very tight deadlines. Sure there are times when one is<br>
forced to write a kluge, but you need to autograph it with a comment<br>
and apologise to the next developer. But how one makes a whole web<br>
application into giant-sized xxxx up I don't know! Maybe I should ask<br>
the Win 8 design team.<br>
<br>
Rant over.<br>
<br>
TS<br>
<br>
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