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That's the best part!
I've always considered the client and the costs, even when I was just a code monkey.
"I can make this, but with just a little change/concession I can do it a lot cheaper."
Or "We should REALLY do that even if the client doesn't want it because it's going to save us both a lot of pain later on!"
If I knew what was coming I could even tell my manager we should put some effort here, charge the client less, and then get it back on later work which would take less, but we could charge more.
I've even called clients to sell them my ideas or help them with theirs.
Of course there's a huge difference between helping existing customers and trying to reel in a new one.
The code, while sometimes fun, is often the most boring part 
I did recently turn down a job offer by the way.
It was some bug fixing in a WordPress application.
I don't know WordPress all that well, so nothing good can come from that
Sometimes it's really not worth the investment.
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Sander Rossel wrote: That's the best part!
I've always considered the client and the costs, even when I was just a code monkey.
"I can make this, but with just a little change/concession I can do it a lot cheaper."
Then you management-material, or an entrepeneur. I couldn't care about budget, it takes what it takes. I cannot make up a price because I often don't know what it exactly takes. You can ask the car-mechanic for a price up front, where the mechanic guesses and makes assumptions about the costs. You cannot promise what you don't know (in my world), but that voodoo is what makes a good salesmen.
Sander Rossel wrote: I've even called clients to sell them my ideas or help them with theirs.
Not shooting at my bosses' pigeons, I will give my ideas to my manager; if the company makes more, then it profits every employee in the end (or more profit for the owner).
Sander Rossel wrote: I did recently turn down a job offer by the way.
It was some bug fixing in a WordPress application.
I don't know WordPress all that well, so nothing good can come from that
Sometimes it's really not worth the investment.
I read WordPress as "VB4". Did I mention I'm for hire? 
A manager that can code, doesn't get mad when you get code filled with goto's and resume nexts, who understands finances, politics and social aspects, is something rare. One that also does sales succesfully, is too much to ask. If you can delegate, I'm interested.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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When I was teaching at a tech college, the class was split into four project groups for a four-stage project, all working from the same specifications and requirements. This was the last project in their bachelor study.
I wanted them to get accustomed to what they must expect when they enter working life: Take over someone else's code. So for each of the four phases, the results produced by each group was rotated to another group, as a starting point for the next work phase.
This was met by so much disgust and hatred that I was happy that these students would be out of college within a few months. I never tried to repeat anything like that. Still, I think Computer Science students should have been "forced to" work with the code of other programmers - that is, average middle class programmers, not the near-ideal source code of highly recognized open source systems, which does everything right, follows standards conistently etc.
The code handed over to you from an overworked colleague who never had time to clean it up, it never had a clean design but has grown uncontrollably like an amoebae, with lots of loose ends and age-old TODOs... That is far from the idealized, academic open-source code. And then think of all the non-idealized code of the zillions of open source offerings made by less than perfect programmers, but thrown out to the world in the hope that someone will volunteer to clean it up...
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A brilliant idea, although the reaction was unsurprising. Having to suffer through this three times was cruel, but applying it to a two-stage project would be fair. If told up front that it would rankle them, it would probably temper the reaction.
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I agree - brilliant. I can tell you this - there may have been much disgust during the class, but a few years into working, and they are going to have their "aha!" moment.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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it's VB? 
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Sander Rossel wrote: I REALLY don't know what to make of this
Why don't you remove the lines and push the app. That way when something crashes or misbehaves in the wild you'd know the first place to look. 
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that code block was a common trick from VB6 days -- there's code under a button somewhere and that has to run for some time, but async code is hard, so we just "block" logical progression by waiting for completion (in this case, 5 seconds), but we have to `Application.DoEvents()` now and then or the app becomes unresponsive.
It's not an ideal situation -- `Thread.Sleep()` could rather be replaced by something like `Test if mail sent`, but that's why it's there.
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Ummm, Thread.Sleep() holds the UI & Application.DoEvents releases the UI ? (I have used it to update the Form while waiting for some stuff to happen) most of the time unless you are very luck if DoEvents gets through a code review!..
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Sander Rossel wrote: I just spent over an hour fixing some custom DateTime TextBox that only worked if the system clock was in a specific Dutch format (both CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture had to match)
Yet another reason why we UI developers get the big money  .Sander Rossel wrote: I prefer having my OS in English because it's more Googleable
My employer insists on providing our UI's in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, and occasionally Polish and Russian. Despite that, we find most of our customers running the UI in English. I think you've helped me figure out why.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I would rather use a curare-paralyzed program manager's rib for my snicker-snee [^], but, let's not be afraid to go with our gut instincts: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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Another far-fetched story about the inuit. Why use warm sh*t if there's ice and rocks?
The story does not show "that inuit don't fear cold but take advantage of it", but shows that humans are creative in coming up with stories.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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The depth and breadth of your scholarly interests never ceases to amaze me!
Will Rogers never met me.
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I'm still waiting for the Japs to perfect robots.
I'd love a robot me - no not to do my work, rather to deal with the wife so I can get my work done.
@OriginalGriff - may want to borrow your 3D printer to make the face for my robot.
Message Signature
(Click to edit ->)
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(Stolen shamelessly from Mad magazine - Star Wars - The Musical)
Slightly used robots with brains electronic
Self-operating with bodies bionic
Full of ambition and now unemployed
That's what you get with a second-hand 'droid
Here's a hum-dinger from Alpha Centaurus
Give him a kick and he'll sing the next chorus
Name's RK4 but he answers to "Floyd"
That's what you get with a second-hand 'droid
When your life is full of trouble
And you hate your wife
Just flip on the switch of your second-hand 'droid
And you'll have a friend for life
(Sing to the tune of "My favourite things")
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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lopatir wrote: deal with the wife
oxymoron
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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lopatir wrote: to deal with the wife
You don't have to have a full robot. They have these...devices...your wife probably already has one and just doesn't want you to know about it.
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I have a 2nd hand Samsung Galaxy S8 in order to test everything. It has the added benefit of having an ANT+ radio in it, meaning it will connect to my bike and health sensors during training.
I needed to plug the bad boy in to charge, and so I absent-mindedly plugged it into the USB-C hub I use for my Macbook.
And voila. I have a full desktop OS experience on my 27" screen through this dodgy little second hand phone. And it's awesome.
If only my iPhone could do that...
cheers
Chris Maunder
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That's not (just) a Samsung functionality.
It also works with my LG and the Huawei and Oneplus phones we have at work.
The common part between them all is USB-C.
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Probably about 7 years ago I was talking with our IT guy about how far phones have come and how cool it will be when we can use our phones as our main computer. I even discussed it on the lounge and had some say it was the dumbest idea ever and would never fly. Glad to see the rest of the world didn't feel that way.
I'm a bit ashamed that I lost track of what was going on with the desktop mode of Android phones. I notice that you can run Microsoft Office on Samsung's in DeX mode so we're pretty much there.
Now if only Visual Studio Code would run on Android. (StackBlitz is almost there...)
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I wouldn't go as far as calling it desktop mode, it's rather just screen mirroring.
Which is still quite useful though, especially when you add in the mouse and keyboard.
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Mouse, keyboard, tabbed browser and a taskbar. It felt more like a desktop than a phone.
It was more of the "oh, wow. I didn't know it did that" factor than anything else. A hint of where things are finally going.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Oh well. Then I have another one for you. It works just as fine wirelessly. Miracast has been around since 2012, And most TVs above a certain level have it nowadays
I'm using it for showing photos.
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Chris Maunder wrote: I was talking with our IT guy
 You need an IT guy? I'm soooo disillusioned... 
I've had the S8+ for a while now, and I'm still learning all it can do. I suspect I've only touched the surface, since I'm scared to open most of the garbage that came pre-installed from Verizon. I even used it elk hunting last year with an app called onX Hunt, and it tracked my every movement perfectly, providing topo information, and ownership of the land I was walking through. I can't verify it, but I think its accuracy is probably every bit as good as my Garmin eTrex GPS thingy. A very impressive device!
Will Rogers never met me.
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