metal&gin | (a weblog by craig t mackenzie)

Remember that big project I was talking about? The flash/HTML rails powered hybrid? The one I was excited about? Well the powers that be at work have decided that I’m not going to be given the opportunity to do it.

Their decision was that the site needs to stand the test of time, and in theory could still need to be updated / worked on 5 years from now, meaning that if I wasn’t working for them in 5 years they wouldn’t have any in house ruby people to work on it, or they would find it difficult to find an external company capable of picking up the work.

So instead our external programming people are going to be picking up the job, they program in asp.net, and unfortunately working with them often presents numerous problems. It’s a real shame because from them we only ever get the same ‘base code’ with chunks added on, all of the sites I have done with them have been frustrating and demoralizing.

I’m upset because my version of the site was to be a bespoke CMS based around the needs of the client, nothing more, nothing less, it’s been planned so that the CMS is 100% tailored to their exact needs. With these other guys doing it, well I’m sure it’ll be far from my vision, and very far from the clients expectations.

I guess I’m annoyed because i’ve made my feelings towards my position in the company crystal clear, I want to migrate more into programming (so we can program in-house) and away from design. This seemed like an ideal opportunity for us to launch our first rails site, and I’m positive it would’ve been far better for the client than anything the other guys can come up with.

At least in a few weeks time when it’s all done, full of bugs, off spec, design all over the place and the clients can’t understand / don’t want to learn how to use it, at least then i’ll be able to turn around and say “i told you so”