I’ve been working as a consultant for a few years now, and while I think I’ve enjoyed a fair bit of success, one thing that is missing for me is the ownership of the projects I’m working on. In the last two years I’ve worked on five or six different web sites and web applications: one was put on indefinite hiatus and I’m unsure of its current state, one was completed by another developer, and at least three were canceled just short of completion because of lack of funds. It’s the canceled projects that are the most discouraging because excellent progress was made and hard work was put into them, but now they are in limbo and out of my hands!
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I just completed another project contract on Friday. After decompressing over the weekend I wanted to write a few thoughts out about some of the successes and failures I’ve learned during this project.
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At my current contract I am saddled working with an intern. He’s a bright kid, and he’s gone through three years of school, but I’m kind of staggered by how much he doesn’t actually know! Development is extremely difficult because he doesn’t know much about JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, CSS styling and positioning, Web Services, C#, UpdatePanels, LINQ, Ruby on Rails, MVC, DLL Libraries, ReSharper, and the list goes on and on! It’s hard to believe what eight years of experience teaches you, and I’m finding it difficult, and sometimes limiting because I have to move at a slower speed bringing him up to speed.
I was using some cool features of jQuery to do AJAX instead of using UpdatePanels, but when The Intern wanted to do some AJAX he got totally lost. In the end I taught him to use both jQuery and (despite how dangerous it is), Ihow to use UpdatePanels. In the end I encouraged him to use the UpdatePanel with his pages, read on to find out why.
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Today marks the end of a six month contract with Redengine. It’s sad to leave, but I wish them the best with their future endeavors!
I’ll be spending the summer looking for work, working on stuff around the house and on personal programming projects under Hoffsoft Consulting Services Corporation.