ErikE

212 reputation

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	location	California
	age	41
visits	member for	2 years, 7 months
	seen	Jan 19 at 3:43
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email is "stackoverflow dit com atthedomain esquared dit mooo dit com", replace dit with . and atthedomain with @

	212 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	2 years, 7 months
19 badges		location	California		seen	Jan 19 at 3:43

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Jun 20	comment	Why is prefixing column names considered bad practice? Underscores (compared to PascalCase) are one extra keystroke on a key far from the home row with the weakest finger. That's why I hate them. As for prefixes, how about the database I worked with where every foreign key had to be prefixed with `frnkey`?
Jun 20	comment	Why is prefixing column names considered bad practice? Definitely the first one... :)
May 30	comment	What is the best retort to “premature optimization is the root of all evil” @Peter I wondered about `a root` myself, which communicates the thought less ambiguously, though in my mind using `the` has nearly identical meaning in the same sentence.
May 29	comment	What is the best retort to “premature optimization is the root of all evil” @Peter I bet it's 'panta' which can be translated in different ways. Since your suggested translation is awkward and wooden, I doubt it is the best one. P.S. Second tagged names don't work.
May 28	comment	What is the best retort to “premature optimization is the root of all evil” @barrycarter I believe the most scholarly translation is "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
May 5	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? Thanks for the extra detail. This kind of longer engagement isn't quite what I had in mind, where one is hiring someone full time, but rather focused hiring to do a specific (and fairly small) job.
May 5	comment	Crucial programming-for-hire contract points? I can see how that would be important.
May 5	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? And yes, it IS a learning experience. :)
May 5	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? Well, due to our inexperience in hiring contractors, we weren't sure whether we got value for our money. A lot of ignorant people think $125/hr is exorbitant, but we know better. Except, we had some areas we weren't sure in. Anyway, an additional problem is that it's very hard to find people with the needed expertise. Several of us at the company actually do the same work but can only allocate a small amount of time to it due to our other responsibilities, and for certain I can say that this specialized knowledge is scarce.
May 4	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? Do you put that you bill to the nearest half hour in your contracts? Does this mean rounding up always or ever rounding down? What if you really only spent 10 minutes on something, what would you bill?
May 4	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? Even though you answered from the contractor perspective, your answer was helpful because our answer to the question "does it feel like this contractor wants a long term relationship with us or are they just trying to get as much money as they can?" is the latter. Which of course means it's time to cut things short.
May 4	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? ... and is responsible with his use of the time. It sounds like you've hit on a way to be more efficient and that is a good thing. However, I'm asking about industry standard practices based on actual experience with more than one contractor (yourself being one).
May 4	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? Third, he has other clients and has made it clear he doesn't have full time to work on our project. So if he turns in one hour on each of three separate days, it was HIS decision to have "context switching" rather than just working for three hours on one day. I cannot accept that people padding their bill in this way is "just a fact of doing business." You might similarly argue that travel time from home to the office is part of "context switching" so we should pay for that too! Only charging in 4-hour increments is the privilege of any contractor, as long as he says so up front...
May 4	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? Bogus. First of all, we are paying very close to standard contractor rates, which implies that we are hiring an expert. Second, context switching is NOT the client's problem, because the contractor is the one who is deciding when to do the work. He's already getting the huge amount of profit between his billable rate and what he's paying the junior. He doesn't get to pad the bill for coming up to speed to help out the junior, when if he'd done it himself he would have done it faster and had no context switching. That is an internal division-of-work issue that is HIS problem.
May 4	comment	Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming? We're the client here, and we are surprised, and we don't like it. We're not completely pleased with how the contractor has handled things, the billing, the communication, and the scope of work done. We don't like having two separate people's hours on a day rounded up to the next hour, when we didn't hire two contractors, we hired a company.
May 4	comment	Contract Billing - How would you handle 'learning time'? This was a really helpful question. Thanks for asking it.
Oct 14	comment	Stuff every programmer needs while working In a pinch, the headphones alone will work in lieu of silence.
Oct 14	comment	Stuff every programmer needs while working I couldn't agree more on this one. Without headphones I just cannot get in the groove the same way. Plus it cuts distractions. Many times I've realized after a few hours with my headphones on that I didn't turn on the music! Just the noise-killing was enough. And perhaps the "thinking cap" autosuggestion of wearing them helping me get into working mode...
Oct 14	comment	Stuff every programmer needs while working A few years back I had to leave a company for lack of pay and my family's needs. I dreamed afterward about the two sharp guys I worked with there for over a YEAR, because of how I missed my interactions with them. I still dreadfully miss having really smart and motivated colleagues. :(
Sep 30	comment	When deciding on whether or not to work for a new company, what are your dealbreakers? @int I once worked at a company where they had cameras in the suites, unbeknownst to any of us until a certain event. In the final analysis, I shouldn't have been surprised. I don't like such monitoring, but I understand it.