| Resources By Subject |
| Technical |
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Here's all of Cliff's Daily Tips for Web Developers:
Q. "What's a multimedia then?" said the taxman.
A. "Anything you want it to be says I."
Q. Is the Web more than just a PC and a modem?
A. You betcha. Look at Disney.
Q. That sounds like fun - how can I get a job doing Web?
A. All the good jobs pay zero wages.
Q. Why can I get a job only if I know Java and Photoshop?
A. Er... Actually you don’t need to know how these work.
Q. Can you do it on your own?
A. Yes if you can get by on just 3 hours of sleep each night.
Q. Can you be a Web developer from home?
A. Yes. As long as your significant other is very understanding.
Q. Do you need to be a big company?
A. They don’t come much smaller than mine.
Q. What skills do you need?
A. As many as you can get and as diverse as possible.
Q. Qualifications vs. commitment, passion and enthusiasm?
A. Are you really HUNGRY to succeed at this?
Q. Freelance or permanent staff?
A. These days, there’s not much difference in the risk factor.
Q. What equipment do you need?
A. Tons. And none of it is cheap either.
Q. How much disk space is enough?
A. You can never have enough.
Q. What are the best tools to use?
A. There is no such thing as a Swiss Army knife in Web development terms.
Q. What is the best presentation tool to use?
A. Anything you pick now will be superseded within 12 months.
Q. Where has that bl**dy picture gone?
A. This is all about losing your assets.
Q. Distributed - client server systems or stand-alone machines?
A. Distributed and networked systems offer some real advantages.
Q. What workgroup services are required to support shared assets?
A. This is about how not to lose the bits of art.
Q. Is there any asset database management software available?
A. How much money do you have to spare?
Q. How much does the client really know about what they want?
A. Sometimes quite a bit, sometimes nothing at all but beware the ones that think they are the former when they are really the latter.
Q. Gosh that sounds expensive, can you do it for less than that?
A. No! Not any more.
Q. Why don't people understand how much this work really costs?
A. Because if they did, it would be because they are doing it already.
Q. How much planning should I do?
A. As much as you can, until you cannot resist the urge to start coding any longer.
Q. How many platforms will it need to run on?
A. Aim to support everything but only ship on the ones that work.
Q. How quickly can you knock up something as a prototype?
A. Is five minutes too long?
Q. How do you motivate your staff to give it everything they have?
A. Reward the hard work - with hard cash.
Q. What is the right production metaphor?
A. Almost anything works but choose the right model for the project.
Q. Is it better to work in teams or on your own?
A. This depends on the skill sets of your staff - do they only have single skills or multiple skills?
Q. Will you deliver it on time?
A. Yes, as long it wasn’t a ‘Mission Impossible’ from the outset.
Q. Who’s running your project anyway?
A. The accounting department? No way!
Q. What standards?
A. There are none. Everything is proprietary to someone.
Q. What comes first, the assets or the programming?
A. Make the components - then the program to use them.
Q. Copyrights or copywrongs?
A. Do you want to get caught with someone else’s assets?
Q. How good is good enough?
A. Only the best. Nothing else will do.
Q. How much testing shall we do?
A. Test, test, test some more.
Then do some more testing.
Finally test it again.
Q. How shall we set about our quality control programme?
A. Arrange a proper testing programme.
Q. Yes but what sort of testing?
A. Test it some more on different systems
Q. How much testing should you do and who should do it
A. Test your software until your nosebleeds, your head aches and your eyes pop out on stalks.
Q. How should you test your software
A. Testing is important.
Got it?
Q. How much time have we got for this job?
A. Never enough - This is about time and the lack of it.
Q. What are the implications for technical support when you ship?
A. How much time do you want to spend on the phone?
Q. Can you design code to pre-empt difficulties that the user might have?
A. There is absolutely no reason to not do this apart from laziness or lack of time.
Q. Why does it take so long to get a Macintosh version out?
A. I promised the guys at Apple I would raise this point.
Q. What important new technologies should we be thinking about right now?
A. Check out EVERYTHING that Apple is doing. It is guaranteed to be on your platform of choice next (after the Macintosh that is).
Q. What is the target platform - say three years down the road?
A. See the above - but here’s a few more details.
Q. Finally, can I have it delivered cheap, soon and perfect?
A. Arrange these words into a well known saying or phrase...
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