[Phpwm] Fwd: criticising other agencies

[Mark Shercliff]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Shercliff <mshercliff at gmail.com>
Date: 23 May 2013 17:59
Subject: Re: [Phpwm] criticising other agencies
To: db_developer at o2.co.uk


I thought cowboy coding was "in"?
On 23 May 2013 14:28, <db_developer at o2.co.uk> wrote:

> When does it become acceptable to critisize agencies and their work? I
> have inherited some code from a well known agency in Birmingham and
> just thought I'd let off some steam.
>
> The agency in question (who shall remain nameless) is quite famous:
> well at least they appear quite high in search engine results if you
> are a one the many hapless businesses or individuals searching for
> someone to carry out some web work for you. Their work "looks" really
> nice. It's compliant with various standards, the designs are very
> modern, the javascript probably works really well if you have a modern
> browser. But my problem came when I looked under the hood of one of
> their projects: it was a mess. It is badly organised, has very poor use
> of inline tags, has loads of sql queries where they don't appear
> necessary, there are hundreds and hundreds of scripts, and the database
> structure is horrid. After that description you can relax, breathe
> calmly again in the safe knowledge, no it's not you.
>
> Looks pretty: like this week's 'new shape' Vauxhall, if you know what
> I mean.
>
> I stick to the old design principle 'Form Follows Function'. So when
> building a project for someone, first I set down how the application
> will live and work: will there be a project lifecycle, how will it get
> maintained. A 'boxy but good' solution.
> I'm having a bad time maintaining this project and not looking forward
> to doing an audit. I guess they didn't think about audits when they
> "Designed" the website.
>
> I think it  is easy to critisize; maybe this design agency provided
> something that I have missed, maybe they were really cheap or delivered
> the project to very tight deadlines. Sure there are times when one is
> forced to write a kluge, but you need to autograph it with a comment
> and apologise to the next developer. But how one makes a whole web
> application into giant-sized xxxx up I don't know! Maybe I should ask
> the Win 8 design team.
>
> Rant over.
>
> TS
>
> _______________________________________________
> Phpwm mailing list
> Website : http://www.phpwm.org
> Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/phpwm
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2361609907
>
> Post to list: Phpwm at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Archive etc : https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/phpwm
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/phpwm/attachments/20130523/c16fd89f/attachment.html>