A solid foundation is key to success.
Every time I go to a new client it's a surprise what kind of person it will be.
They are all different.
Today I had a good one. A guy with his own business and an email problem that needed solving.
He also served good coffee. I always consider this a huge plus.
The client of today was revert to me by a colleague.
He had a problem with his email on his new laptop. Something IMAP/POP related my colleague told me.
I expected to solve it in about 10 minutes. I have seen this many times before. But of course, I was wrong.
E-mails arrived and disappeared randomly when I did my tests. It was a mess.
Turns out that the guy who installed everything 6 years ago made all kinds of weird rules on the email server.
Of course, the guy who installed it back then is long gone and the problem only popped up 6 years later when a new computer entered the scene.
This is a common problem that I face a lot. Quick workarounds, easy fixes, lazy jobs, weird installations that work but at some point they will get back at you. Well...at me...in this case...
I have been doing this work for a while and I think I'm good at it. I have a knack for where to search for a problem and slowly pinpoint it. It's fun and people appreciate it.
I slowly figured it out and made the necessary changes. But truth be told, it's not my favorite job. If you make a mistake now, it's your ass. Even though none of it is really your fault. But it's hard to explain this to someone that doesn't understand.
But everything went fine and this person was happy his problem was solved and had no problem paying the bill.
(I remembered while writing this story that I once wrote a story about changing my rates here. This was 9 months ago. Great decision btw. I lost some clients but I also gained a lot of new ones that have no problem paying the new rate.)
To end this story:
My dad is a programmer and has built and sold the same software suite for over 20 years. He often has to face his own workarounds that can be 10 years old or more!
But he's a smart guy. He doesn't lie to himself so in his code, there are sometimes comments that say "dirty programming 5-8-2005" or something along these lines.
He ends up having to rewrite code that's 12 years old because he was 'lazy' back then.
Luckily with programming, it's possible to do so.
It's a bit different when it's the foundation of your house.
I don't know how this works with blockchains. But I'm expecting that with pretty much everything it's important.
That's also one of the reasons I don't mind waiting for development here on Steemit.
I do like to believe that a solid foundation is key to success.
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Great post. I liked what you said about valuing yourself. I am an online language teacher, and I had to set my own rate when I decided to work for myself. A part of you naturally wonders whether people would pay you for that, and the other part tells you that you are worth it. I read somewhere years ago something like, 'If you don't raise your worth, the rest of the world will not.'
I love this! Thanks for that quote.
You are welcome!
Couldn't agree more man, without a solid foundation, it's impossible to build something that will last.
What you do I think is very interesting. I talk shop a bit with my IT guy at the office from time to time when there's an issue or a have a specific question. It's really cool that your dad has been involved in computers for so long and you grew up around them. I've looked into learning how to right code a few times, but after some research was unsure of where to start. C plus plus and python seemed to be the most popular choices to learn to make an app. I wanted to learn just for the knowledge and wanted to make a simple, fun gaming app for my kids. In your opinion, which would be the best language to learn to write an app?
Glad things worked out well today at work brother and you and Bianca have a great night!!
I would suggest Python to start with, because unlike C and the likes, it reads a lot like common language. Writing games is a whole different matter though, so depending on what type of game you want to make, there might be better choices than Python.
If it's pure games you care about, you could check out Unity. It has great documentation and all the tools needed to build games. Last time I checked (a few years ago) the coding language was only C#, which is harder to grasp than Python, but also a more appropriate language for games. Could be they changed this though, so do check it out if you're interested.
Thank you very much for the response and advice. I'll start with Python and go from there. Appreciate it!
From what I know (I'm not a programmer) Python is pretty good. @bennierex (my programming friend) can maybe answer this better.
Thanks a lot brother for helping me out here.
Shortcuts in life tend to lead to more work later. Cheat with some bad code today and later you might spend 20x the amount of time to fix the issue that code creates. Don't take care of your accounting each day while running a business it will take longer later to try and do it after the fact. Get something on your clothes, either take a minute now and wipe it off and pretreat or 10 minutes later scrubbing.
Everything in life can either be done right today or fixed at some point in the future. Depending on how far down the road you wait to fix it many times will depend on how big of a headache it will be. My Father always told me "Either do it right or don't bother doing it" and think those are good words to live by.
You father sounds like a smart man.
Without question. It's great to have people like him in my life and so happy my Kids get to know him and spend a lot of time with him. He had a serious heart attack from a blood clot that almost got him, he was lucky he was right by a nurse when it happened and the ambulance was fast. My youngest wouldn't have known him at all and my oldest might of had some photos to look back on...but instead they see him weekly. Someone was looking over him that day.
wow this one had it all. The little issue turning into a relevant problem as an intro. The commitment to fulfill the duty - but not at any price, it had an emotional touch, a turning point with enough self-irony to put yourself on the side of the common man and finally the message with a good moral to the end.
Really nice blog stuff...
It is posts like these that show what differences there are out there, you do deserve your 50$+ per posts and if I had any voting power, I'd give you the 100% for this one. All I can do is to resteem it. Done.
That was not good work, it was excellent.
Thank you.
Your work with steemit works hand in hand.
No wonder why your posts are so fluid.
Keep on steemit.
It's true a solid foundation helps achieve success in every job or task you do. if something is wrong and you wanna fix it it's easier if the foundation is solid, otherwise, you have to rebuild it from scratch.
Very true about the foundation. I believe the foundation of Steem i.e. the model is quite strong. The association of quality content writing with a cryptocurrency? Social media cum crypto? Could it GET any better? (Chandler style)
Nice post @exyle, it's great you are regularly sharing your experience regarding dealing with clients here with us, if i also have some problems regarding system malfunctioning i defiantly contact you, it's great to hear that your dad is a programmer and also have huge programming experience in this field, i hope you also learn some programming from your dad as it is also a great skill to have, enjoy your time my friend and have a very cheerful week ahead, thanks for sharing
I wished you live in our part of the world. I so could use someone who knows their way around computers. If you are not well versed in a subject, it is often hard to find someone you trust to work on things. So many people say they know - but they really don't.
Glad you got it all figured out!
I realized only later in life how true this is.
"I do like to believe that a solid foundation is key to success".
You are right, that's absolutely so. I remember your father saying: building software is one thing, but then the work begins, you have to test and test and test till you are certain, or as good as certain that it is good.
The same with the work I did last week. If you want to paint something, first sand, and sand, until the foundation is good, then you can paint.