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I believe this is also known as Job Security™.
/ravi
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Oh, that's easy.
Just take out anything you'll never use.
If you don't need it, end users obviously won't, either, so you can get rid of thousands of lines of useless code -- and if a load of functions are gone, they won't need UI elements, so you end up with a modern UI.
I'm pretty sure that's how ms does it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Unfortunately if I took out this part the code would barely do anything. It wouldn't be a LALR(1) parser generator.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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This is why I enjoy working on other people's code 
Got a rise once (in a permie role) for reducing an "overnight" daily batch report job's runtime from 26 hours (tricky when it was run daily) to a tad under 20 minutes. (Hint - when doing a sequential scan of an ordered database table finding a series of matching records, there's no need to go back to the beginning of the table after each match). My boss wasn't remotely techie and simply didn't want to know what I'd done; he'd saved his own bacon and that's all he was interested in.
A freelance job to speed up a webpage process resulted in over a 100x improvement; switching from building a complex HTML string from a LOT of string concatenations (inside a loop) to using a StringBuilder object was a very high-earning job in terms of £ / hour! 
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Haha, he wasn't using a stringbuilder? wow.
Once I optimized this guy's code simply by ripping out all the PHP code and replacing it with SQL queries. The guy was literally returning whole tables and then filtering and joining them in PHP!
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I've got this project that I've been working on for almost two years now.
It hasn't seen production yet, mostly because the client gives this zero priority.
I think they don't even know what they're up against, a startup company with their own product.
Their train of thought so far has been as follows: "Let's tell Sander what our product should do (like, in one or two sentences) and he'll build it within the year and then we can make some money!"
That I actually need to know what I should build hasn't crossed their minds, that's up to me to find out.
When I ask them "Should I do x or y?" or "Can you look at this and give me the correct values?" I just get zero response until I ask them again and they tell me they'll look at it and I get zero response again.
It took them over a year after I've put some software in a test environment to actually take a good look at it 
Needless to say I'm not very motivated, but it's been months since I've done anything and they want to see another release (so they can ignore it again).
One of these guys already has two businesses and the other works in IT (went from tester to business analyst), you'd expect they knew what they were doing.
Unfortunately, I've signed a contract and they keep paying the bills, so I can't just quit.
I've tried talking to them, but not much changed
Here's the plan: just give them something that could qualify as "done" by their own vaguely defined standard and never hear from them again 
Lessons learned: Never sign a contract on a basis of "We'll figure it out as we go."
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Sander Rossel wrote: Unfortunately, I've signed a contract and they keep paying the bills,
So ... free money!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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If only, they aren't paying particularly well, but they pay as agreed in the contract
Meanwhile, I have a job that pays a lot better so that makes me want to work for them even less.
But "I've got a better paying customer" is not a legal ground for breaking a contract methinks (unless it's specified in the contract, which it isn't)
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Paying as agreed is worth a lot - it can waste a lot of your time chasing late payers*. Even if the money is lower, you gain in the end. I've done that many times: a lower rate for those I know will pay in 30 days, a higher rate for those I know I'll fight to get in 60 or 90, despite any up-front agreements.
* And cause significant dental bills to repair the teeth grinding
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I've had to do that before. I worked through the .com boom. Don't feel bad about it. You're delivering what they paid for. It's their own fault if they can't come up with tech specs, and given their backgrounds they should realize that. Even if they don't, it's not on you.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Yeah, I don't feel bad about it, it's just that I'd rather spend my Sunday afternoon doing nice things 
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oh good. =) they can get bent.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Never sign a contract on a basis of "We'll figure it out as we go."
Whoa, careful!
You'll have hordes of agile evangelists picketing your house!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Depends on the parts that need figuring out, in my case pretty much everything all up to the part what the whole business would be about
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I once had a customer tell me, "I won't know what I want until I see it."
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Punch in the face, no? Knee to the crotch, also no?
Let's continue until we find what fits you
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The app is the Nuget Package Explorer - Seriously... 358 f*ckin folders/files!?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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kill it with shift delete !!!
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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1. Put on some music.
2. Enjoy the music.
3. ???
4. After about five minutes realize I forgot to turn on my speakers 
Must be a slow Sunday morning...
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Clearly you have a braincast music system, and your speakers are redundant.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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