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Subject:Re: Eat the covers From:Peter <pnewman1 -at- home -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 20 Dec 2001 22:39:48 -0500
John Posada wrote:
>
> As my present to the list for the holiday, I thought I'd leave with
> you an email discussion between my lead developer and the product
> support desk. Read through...it is priceless, and I SWEAR, only the
> names and product names were changed....the words are untouched.
>
> I laughed by butt off. BTW...the developer referenced in this message
> is the same developer that in a previous message from me some weeks
> ago, ALWAYS returns his edits to my documentation within 24 hours.
> Its a pitty he retires next Feb.
On the other side of the coin:
I had a meeting with a SW developer who publishes an industry specific
application that sells for between $10,000 and $25,000. We discussed
several shortcomings in their current documentation. (Two loose-leaf
books with 500 pages in each. I correctly surmised that the document was
produced by the engineers and not a professional writer.) For example it
goes into great detail about the functionality of each table in the
database, but fails to tell the user how to use the product. To make
matters worse, the index was totally wrong. At dinner that night, they
proudly told me that they *solved* the index problem. They decided to
ship without the index. At first I thought they were joking, but they
weren't. At that point I developed serious doubts that they and I could
work together. (Ah! the advantages of being an independent contractor.)
--
Peter
Mailto:peternew -at- optonline -dot- net
Adapting old programs to fit new machines
usually means adapting new machines to
behave like old ones.
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