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Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question

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Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote in
news:jb685f$5an$3@localhost.localdomain: 

> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:00:28 +0000, Novice wrote:
> 
>> An earlier example of paid code was a Java applet that I did as a
>> subcontract for a friend a while back. He had written a Lotus Notes
>> application and wanted an applet to do graphing of performance
>> characteristics of the customer's products. That Lotus Notes page was
>> gone the last time I went to the website several years ago so the
>> applet is also presumably long gone, replaced by something else. I
>> didn't sign an NDA as far as I recall but the friend who gave me the
>> contract may have. I can find out easily enough but the applet would
>> be pretty crude by any modern standards even if the NDA wasn't an
>> issue. I hadn't been coding Java long and Swing wasn't even out yet
>> so it is in AWT. (I later made a Swing version but it's never been
>> run outside of my IDE.) 
>>
> That sounds like a reasonable starting point. Being willing and able
> to explain why you were dissatisfied enough with the AWT version to
> create the Swing version and why it is an improvement sounds like a
> good plot to me.
> 

Thanks for taking the time to make comments, Martin!

I've gone into the code since writing my post and found that I confused 
two different applets. The one that I modified to use Swing was not a 
paid applet; it was a little demonstration applet that I wrote for 
someone to illustrate something we were talking about socially. It 
eventually led to me getting a contract with him so it was well worth the 
brief time that I spent on it but it's almost too trivial to show anyone. 

That applet that did the graphing was considerably more sophisticated and 
never got changed to Swing because I basically just drew on Graphics 
context with drawLine(); there were no other GUI classes used beyond a 
Redraw button and a checkbox that gave the user an option with regards to 
displaying the data. (There was a lot of calculating going on within that 
applet, especially with regards to scaling the graphs suitably, so it 
wasn't a trivial applet by any means. It just doesn't do anything 
terribly interesting in the GUI aside from drawing curves.)

> However, I'd strongly suggest that you don't mention the crash because
> IMO losing anything in a disk crash shows a certain carelessness. 

I had the same concern. But that IS why I lost a bunch of my code. How do 
I explain that lost code in the best possible way WITHOUT admitting to 
the crash? 

> Here
> I'm assuming that you now have an adequate backup scheme that is used 
> regularly and rigorously and that, preferably, you also are familiar
> with and use a source version control system for any code you care
> about. Can you explain your backup and version control strategy if
> asked? 
>
In all honesty, I am still just limping along in the hope that the drive 
won't crash again. I have a considerably newer computer so my odds are 
better than they were with the aging computer that crashed but that's 
clearly no guarantee that I won't have another crash. 

I still don't have an adequate backup strategy and I know of version 
control but don't use it. I simply haven't had the spare cash to do 
something about that. I hope to do something about that as I make more 
money on contracts but it might be a while as I have some debts that need 
to be paid off.... 
 
> 
>> If unpaid work can constitute a reasonable example - and I personally
>> think it should - I did one decent Java application and a servlet for
>> a friend for an NGO he was involved in for free, strictly out of
>> interest in doing it. However, he left the organization shortly after
>> that and they abandoned the work I'd done when he left. I didn't sign
>> an NDA for that work but I'm not sure if I should feel free to show
>> the code to someone else. That's assuming I didn't lose that code in
>> the crash. 
>>
> Same comments as above.
>  
> 





-- 
Novice

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Thread

Two More Very General Consulting Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-30 21:00 +0000
  Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-11-30 21:45 +0000
    Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-30 23:00 +0000
      Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-12-01 03:06 +0000
        Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-12-06 15:24 +0000
          Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-12-06 20:59 +0000
      Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-12-07 05:45 -0800
        Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> - 2011-12-07 18:58 +0000
          Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-12-07 18:57 -0500
            Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-12-07 20:33 -0400
              Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> - 2011-12-08 16:04 +0000
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-12-09 06:53 -0400
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-12-09 12:51 +0000
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Lars Enderin <lars.enderin@telia.com> - 2011-12-09 17:26 +0100
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-12-09 23:12 +0000
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-12-10 12:00 +0000
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> - 2011-12-10 19:53 +0000
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-12-11 00:04 +0000
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> - 2011-12-10 20:12 +0000
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com> - 2011-12-12 03:05 -0700
                Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-12-12 06:39 -0400
            Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2011-12-07 20:55 -0600
              Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-12-09 10:42 +0000
        Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-12-07 18:48 -0500
    Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-12-07 05:43 -0800
  Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-12-02 20:15 -0500
  Re: Two More Very General Consulting Question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-12-06 16:45 -0800

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