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Yeah I will help others for free it is good and makes you feel good however, sometimes they ask for something either challenging or impossible to do.
I don't know how they think maybe they imagine me with a long stick and white hair riding a Pegasus and doing magical stuff using my PC????
I mean one off my relitaves asked me to do an application to drive his car for him while he is sleeping at home using his mobile phone and the true problem is that he is "SERIES" about this application!!!
Really, it is intersting and yet challenging to do some application but you feel good when he thanks you for doing something for him and therefore you feel good.
My Favorite Qoute
"Faliure is the beginning of Success"
Aamer A. Alduais (^_^Me^_^)
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You can really learn things! After I took a quick course in Java I wrote a web site for a friend. It let him upload and data base videos and sell them. It does far more then he has ever used it for but I learned far more doing this project then I did in months of taking the course. About every 6 months I spend a day adding some bells and whistles to keep my hand in Java since I work in .Net. Plus it looked good on my resume (except that I couldn't to describe it too well or give them a link to a fetish site)
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there are too many programmers and the number is increasing and there is no work for us to be done 
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The programs I have done have been short and no programmer would have been hired to do the job, they would just do without.
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I prefer to do this sort of thing as "lunchtime programming". If I can do the entire job, start to finish, in one lunchbreak, then no problem. There's been plenty of times when I've been able to fix a spreadsheet or write a trivial bit of Javascript in that sort of time, and it's been hugely helpful to the recipient.
Major development work, though: no. I don't have the time, and I certainly don't promise to have the time to do support in the future.
I do agree with the commenters who say that non-coders don't understand how long it takes, though. I remember a few years back (actually, possibly more than a few years), I was helping out some friends with some development work for a fantasy role-playing system. We were trying to work out how the astronomy of the fantasy universe worked: if certain bodies of of this size, this distance from the ground, and have these features, what do they look like when viewed from points on the ground? I was playing with VRML at the time, and produced a configurable 3D model they could walk around in, where the variables were being put in via a spreadsheet they could edit. It was fun, it was pushing the edge of what I could do at the time, and it helped them a lot.
A few weeks later, the same team wanted me to do some actual writing for them: English words-wot-get-published, rather than code. They took it for granted that for this, I would require payment, and offered me a rate per thousand words. I looked, laughed hysterically, and sent them a estimate of how many hours of free programming time they'd already had, and what it was worth (it would have bought them several trilogies of fiction at those rates). I'd enjoyed it, it hadn't occured to me to ask for payment, but nor had it occured to me how thoroughly they were misunderstanding the cost of my time.
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It's all part of the problem solving process. Some people can, some try, the rest sell.
And, yes I've written software for friends and family.
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About twelve years ago a friend set up a telephone business (he's a salesman at heart). I was working in Hong Kong as an IT project manager at the time. On my return to the UK he told me how well it was going: he had about twenty customers signed up and using the service.
Problem was, being a typical sales-type he'd got the service and sold it but had no way to rate and bill the data he got from his suppliers. One friend had been trying to rate and bill the call records using Excel (and not using VBA either!).
I offered to write (for free) a simple Access database, with about five tables and some forms and reports so he could record the customers, their lines and rate the calls. This is despite the fact I wasn't really a developer. That was 1997.
To cut a long story short, his business grew and he asked me to work with him full time in 1999. In 2004 we sold the business for £20m (about US$40m at the time). He had given me a small shareholding as thanks for the original system, so as you can guess I was quite happy with the arrangement.
So before you say 'no' just think about it!!
'Howard
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thats what we do here .. help friends 
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
Never mind - my own stupidity is the source of every "problem" - Mixture
cheers,
Alok Gupta
VC Forum Q&A :- I/ IV
Support CRY- Child Relief and You
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when i read that topic i was hoping for some very dirty story 
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I've been coding for most of my life. I was in this business before this business was cool( ). Whether you define what we do as a profession or a trade, depending on your personal prejudices, we are relative new comers and not many people still understand what it is we do. If you have a brother who is a plummer and you spring a leak in you basement, you call him for help. Assuming of course, he isn't the village idiot.  Is there that big a difference between a plumber and us, other than they make a lot more money?  All of the so called professions have found ways to establish value for what they do. As a result, they are less likely to be taken advantage of. We are starting to do that in this business, but we aren't there yet. We certainly are not on a par with dr's or lawyers yet. Many of us are certainly on a par with professional engineers (electrical, mechanical, etc), but they don't carry the stature the first 2 I mentioned either. I have a brother in law who is an MD. He is always being asked for free medical advice from family and friends. Family he generally accommodates, friends he always asks them to call his office. At that point he's out of the money loop, since his office handles the billing. If and when we ever get to the point where we enjoy that level of professional detachment we can get away with the same thing. Until then we have to decide how much and to whom we will give away. Personally, I try to help family whenever i can, and an occasional very special friend, the rest I ask to call me monday for an appointment.
Larry Miller
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Larry, let me introduce you to the return key, it's the big one on the right of the keyboard, like to be used, we like it to be used, use it sometime.
A plumber, MD can usually give advice or fix a problem within a limited time frame. I rarely write an app in a couple of hours and they do not need to support the app ad infinitum. I am happy to give advice (see the forums) there is almost no personal cost.
I have often helped friends with apps, some have been written over a period of months, all have been a PITA supporting them. Yet I still do it.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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If a friend wants a big app writing so they can go off an sell it and make themselves a stack of cash then they can either pay me a full fair rate, or they can bog off.
If on the other hand they have a business idea and need someone to help develop it and share in business, then bring it on, as long as I think the business plan is valid.
Or perhaps they just want something written to solve a problem they have. Well, then perhaps I'll reduce the rate (possible right down to £0) if I can have ownership of the finished app and it's something I think is worthwhile doing.
Basically, what I'm saying is if I see that app as something worthwhile, I'll accept a share of ownership as a percentage of the payment.
(If it's something really small, then maybe I'll just knock it up for free anyway.)
Simon
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This really works! Here's the best reaction:
-->"Where do I click on this thing to open it?"
And while my answer felt satisfactory to me, with hindsight, it might have been to heavy-handed:
-->"It's an image of the guts of one of those things you're always trying to click-on in order to open"
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It's a mixed bag. I wouldn't do any huge project for free, but little programs are okay. (I would do a big project for myself, if I had the time, though.)
I just make sure they watch me program, sometimes. They don't often realize that it takes hours of work to make something. They think, like all things computerized, it's just a click here, and a click there. So, what I do is fire up the text editor, and let them stare at the white screen as I type and test.
They'll leave, and return 3-4 hours later, and my ass is in the same chair, as if I haven't moved (because, chances are, I haven't moved). Then, they usually understand, and won't ask for more favors.
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All they ask are various problems with hardware devices, which I have no clue. For software problems, they all know (better than me) how to download free programs from the internet. One person asked me why his laptop became slow and unusable, I told him not to download those free programs. He replied (not exact words) "You are a professional, that's the best advice you can give?"
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That happens a lot to me too. People will tell me that their USB port isn't working and ask how to fix it. I have no clue about hardware. I can install RAM and hard drives, but that's about it.
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I have done something like that for a relative close to me, and the relative (I am not revealing the gender here!) thinks they're good at computers when in fact they're terrible! Am always plagued by their pleas because they screw up settings etc...anyway, the relative started spouting out things (really, bluffing their way through the points about the work I did for them) that I should have done and shouldn't have done (has no right to do that as have no knowledge of subject matter at hand) with the work that I did for them, things got heated (twisted up all my words and threw it back in my face) and a row escalated! To this day, the relative never acknowledged my professional work, time put in and thus was discarded like a piece of rag.
So guys and gals here at CP, DO NOT DO ANY WORK FOR THEM....obviously personal and business do not mix here especially if you happen to know that relative very well! Have been there, and never again, steer clear of this kind of thing when it comes to people you know personally!
#define STOOPID
#if STOOPID
Console.WriteLine("I'm stoopid!");
#endif
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Just because this happened to you doesn't mean it would happen to everyone else, so how can you tell people
Tomas Brennan wrote: DO NOT DO ANY WORK FOR THEM
I've done stuff for my brother and for friends, and I've never had any problems. I have turned certain people down if I knew that they were the sort of people who would not appreciate the time and effort involved and would likely become a pain in the backside. If you know the person who is asking, you should be able to assess whether or not it would be worth getting into, or best avoiding.
Words fade as the meanings change, but somehow, it don't bother me.
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Thanks Boro_Bob for your reply and I have taken your comments on board. Yes, I do accept everyone's experience is different, after all we are all different! For me personally, it was a case of once bitten, twice shy and was voicing my experience and opinion. I knew what kind of person that was and wanted to give that person a chance. Have tried, didn't work for me.
Thanks again and kind regards,
Tom.
#define STOOPID
#if STOOPID
Console.WriteLine("I'm stoopid!");
#endif
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I've done stuff for freinds and had the favour returned, that is work on my house.
That's just about paletable and any thing else leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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Too dangerous. "for family/friends" + "for free" = "you are responsible for a lifetime"
Ok, not always but most of the time yes. Especially if they aren't developers themselves.
Oh, and of course your program should handle all future changes to operating systems, file formats and weather changes 
--
"My software never has bugs. It just develops random features."
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Yes. Very much.
They would start expecting you to serve as a bonded labor for lifetime.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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weather changes heh
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it's root searching i think bisection or newton raphson - the guy didn't really know how to program anything, I wrote him a app which does this + an User Interface. The instructor found out he failed the assignment!
dev
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