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Trimming The Fat Off Your Project

Often times clients that come to me do so with a long list of "must have" features that just HAVE to be in the project. However, after an initial consultation it becomes obvious that those "must have" features actually boil down to fluff that does not further the goal of the project.

A couple of examples:

Wanting extensive member profile features when the project focus is not on the profile
Complex ways of editing and dealing with data
"Splitting" up functionality between different parts of the application
Introducing many on/off, active/inactive flags

By far, the profile features such as comments, ratings, picture uploads show up the most. This is due to social networking and the belief that a user won't use a particular service if it doesn't have a "Web 2.0" profile.

Reality is different. Users aren't going to bother with yet another profile, comment, rating, and picture system. They don't want to set their status, or add friends. They just want to use your application and make sure it does what you said it would.

So, as a client..look at your feature list and ask yourself. Does this particular feature move the project forward? Is it relevant to what you are trying to achieve with the project? If it isn't, then take a pen and cross it out. Doing this will make your projects get completed faster, with less bugs and even within your alloted budget. Imagine that! Your users will appreciate it too.

Or just hire Felecan to go through your project and make the necessary feature trimmings.

Posted on December 2, 2008

A New PayPal Developer In Chicago

That's right. It is me!

After about two weeks of back and forth with Arnold M. (PayPal's Education & Certification Manager) I was finally added to the PayPal Certified Developer Directory under Illinois.

To be honest it took a bit longer than I thought. It was roughly an entire month to get accepted and processed after successfully passing the test on September 19. Still, it happened and I am happy about that. Just need to get the certified graphic under my PDN username.

I've taken the time to add the PayPal Certified Developer graphic on the right column. It fits really well with the color scheme of the website and hopefully I'll be able to add a few more underneath (or on top!) of it.

Next step is the Zend Certified Engineer.

Wish me luck!

Posted on October 22, 2008

Top 3 Reasons I Love Django

After having spent a large portion of my years programming in PHP, coming to Python and the Django framework is a breath of fresh air. Honestly. Drum roll pleeeeeease:

Powerful template system

Hands down the templating system is flexible, and with tags can pretty much be tailored to do anything you want. This comes in especially handy when dealing with different clients and requests. It is also easy for designers to just pick it up and change it without having to explain to them a whole lot.

Not Having To Write SQL

Some really smart people built Djangi's ORM from the ground up and it shows. I have not had a single instance yet where I had to drill down and write custom SQL. It all just works, and does so without getting in the way. Coming from PHP where writing SQL in your code is the norm, this was truly a change for the better.

Admin application

With a few lines of code, and an admin.py file you can have a full fledged admin panel that works for your specific application. You can even make it work for other non-Django applications just by defining the models and letting it do the heavy work. It is flexible, it works, and it saves a lot of time for me as a developer in putting together a backend for my clients.

Just those features alone have made me a more efficient developer so I can spend time writing code that actually matters! I just wished I knew about it a bit earlier..would have saved me a ton of work.

Posted on October 9, 2008

Studying To Be A Zend Certified Engineer

After working with PHP for close to 5 years (yes, that long of a time) I have decided to jump ahead and get the Zend Certified Engineer certification by the end of November.

Getting certified gives my clients a piece of mind in knowing that they have hired a professional in resolving their web development issues.

At the same time, it gives me an opportunity to sit down and get a better understanding of the language and all of its pitfalls, features and operators that you don't use on a daily basis when programming for the web.

To study for this picked up the book "PHP Architect's Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide" and I've gotten about 1/3 of the way through it. Solid book overall but I was expecting some sort of questions at the end of each chapter and a bit more 'depth' on the chapter dealing with arrays.

I have about a month to study for this and there is a lot of material to cover..so wish me luck!

Posted on September 30, 2008

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