What Does Work Cost? (was RE: Call for comments: Rev as a Second Language)

[Dave]

Hi Lynn,

On 27 Jan 2009, at 23:14, Lynn Fredricks wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
>> b)  The £1000.00 was to actually do the work, (which,
>> incidentally, had the same effect as point a!). I reckon it
>> wouldn't take more than an hour or two. In fact if I had the
>> code then I'd be willing to bet it wouldn't take me more than
>> 30 mins to add the code and test it.
>
> Dare I add fuel to the fire, but a few considerations. I don’t know  
> the
> scope of the project. Something that may take an hour of work may take
> longer depending on what expectations are. The coding may take an  
> hour, but
> testing and overhead considerations may take more considerably more.

Heather has the emails, take a look at the request if you are  
interested. I'll forward it to you if you like - if I can find it.

> If its something that will effectively be a "bug fix", ie changes  
> to the
> base code of Revolution, then something that takes an hour of  
> actual coding
> time is going to take many hours of testing and possible recoding  
> time. A
> code change in Revolution in some places can have a huge impact on  
> other
> functions of Revolution.
>
There was no need to make it a general release, in fact if it cost us  
£1000.00 why should I share it with the general RunRev user base? It  
would be propriety code. The fact that I offered it to the general  
RunRev community out of good will is beside the point. It was up to  
you to test it if you used it. I also said I'd take any risk on  
myself and report any problems I found.

> If you need something that can be solved in an external, then there  
> are
> several external developers on this list that may be able to get  
> the work
> done for you for considerably less.

I've written at least 10 externals for RunRev from image processing  
to basic fast file I/O to retrieving Icons from iPods, so would have  
written it myself if it would have worked.

The problem was in a Password protected stack in the IDE. If the  
stack in question had not been protected then I'd have changed it  
myself and posted it to anyone that wanted it. All that needed to  
happen was for someone at RunRev that had just the basic skill to  
unlock the stack, look at the code in question and apply maybe 5 or 6  
lines of code at most, re-protect the stack and send it to me. I'd  
have done the rest. It didn't need a system's engineer just someone  
with a rudimentary knowledge of RunRev could have done this.

Of course without seeing the code in question, it's hard to know for  
sure, but honestly if it were so very different to the way I had  
envisaged it, then it would have been good to have been told this,  
then I'd at least be able to justify the decision.

At the same time, if it were that different then the stack is  
question was probably badly written, but I really can't see that it  
could be that bad.

As I say, get Heather to send you the emails or I will forward them  
to you and judge for yourself.

All the Best
Dave