After years in IT it has occured to me that this is how things work –
The customer wants a giraffe. They buy a jelly fish because it is much cheaper (also they don’t want anything to do with Microsoft Giraffe). The jelly fish must be made to behave like the giraffe. It must appear to eat arcacia leaves and poop like a giraffe. To a developer this is pretty cool, it gives them a chance to do some really cool code. However, problems arise when the client says “We need our giraffe yesterday. Our competitors implimented a giraffe in a week, so that’s our timeframe”.
“But they started with a giraffe in the first place”
“I have absolute faith in your abilities”
Later – the client has the need for a jellyfish. They buy a giraffe because “Hey, Microsoft stuff is pretty good” and it is the developers job to make it behave like a jelly fish. To the client this isn’t a problem as the Jellyfish-Giraffe code is available and it should be a piece of cake to make it work the other way.
Someone suggests that they actually unbolt the Jellyfish giraffe code and replace it with the newly acquired giraffe, which then frees up the jellyfish for the jellyfish requirement.
The client poo-poos this idea claiming that if they do this then they lose all of their investment in the Jellyfish-Giraffe code, which they hope to recoup by selling to the public because they percieve a need for Jellyfish-Giraffe interfaces.
Ho well it pays the bills.
