What the difference between Consulting and Contracting
In regards to programming, what is the difference between being a contractor, and a consultant? ...
contractor
When the lead developer is convinced the project will fail
What is there to do when the lead developer is convinced the project will fail? This happened to me recently on a project, and I wound up losing my job, because I spoke up. In a little over a month, I had successfully improved a prototype, using a UI framework I had no prior experience with. So much so in fact, that when demonstrated ...
On being a contractor at a shop where they don't use database indexes
I've been freelancing for 5 weeks at a Rails shop where I just learned today that the "Technical Lead" of a team of about a half dozen engineers, never applies indexes to the databases backing the websites being developed. I have a week left on my contract and have no idea if they intend on offering an extension. I feel like I owe it t...
Avoiding cruft when design catches up with implementation
I'm a contractor and am often brought in on projects to be heads down and just implement features for a deadline. Oftentimes though my pace becomes faster than that of the underlying design. So I often wind up having to create functions/methods to perform a task in a preliminary way while awaiting the final design. Case in point, cu...