Stories of the IT Office 2021-9

Recently discovered a chronic work-from-home bad spot. In the past, I could often contact with customers, meet from time to time, understand Party A's ideas, communicate the progress of the project and matters that are not very clear to both parties.

With more than a year of working from home, there has been less contact. As a result, there was a lot of trouble.

In one project, the first party basically threw away the technical matters and left the dominance of the entire software development in my hands. Sometimes they even ask me if their products have a certain feature. I can only take out their project requirements and deliverables for the past few years and explain to them what they wanted.

In late spring and early summer, they told me that there was a company using their product that was very interested in the whole project. Said to help them for free to advise on the practicality of the graphical user interface and how to upgrade it.

Whether you are really interested in the project, or want to take the opportunity to find a job for yourself. This is a matter for Party A to decide, and I am not involved in it. Just re-emphasized what the front-end, back-end languages and scripts used by the entire system are. Lest they make mistakes when they talk to each other.

After a few weeks, they signed a new contract. The company on the other side contacted me to explain the work of both parties. As soon as the voice conversation started, I felt that the other party was a leather bag company. The boss is local and the developer is in India. Because I am a graduate of the Polytechnic Institute and I am used to listening to various East Asian and South Asian accents, I can communicate with them clearly.

The other party said that they were going to re-build a front end and asked me for all the APIs. I felt wrong when I heard it. What Party A and I said was just asking them to modify the appearance of the software.

Party A is a non-profit organization that has just started, and has no funds to engage in redundancy. Front-end and back-end databases are set up on a virtual server. Suddenly, one more front-end needs to be added, and there is not even a domain name to spare.

Listen to the meaning of the company's developers, it is to make a website on Webflow. Do not do the core part of all products behind accounts and passwords.

Why do I feel that Party A is going to be tricked?

I immediately contacted Party A to find out what was going on in the new contract they signed? As I imagined, it is just a new foreign trade, and there is no need to transfer the entire front-end, exactly a quarter of the front-end pages.

Although it is different from the requirements of the contract, the other party has no objection. It's actually easier for them to do now, just give me a copy of the CSS.

Before the end of the tripartite meeting, I specifically asked what library the existing front-end source code uses.

The other party swears and promises that I only need to change the CSS file.

I know it won't just change the file. My libraries are all SCSS, and they are all variable functions used. After getting the new version, certain modifications must be made.

It may be that my anxiety disorder is committed again; after the meeting, I once again reminded Party A of the things they need to pay attention to. To be honest, I have never seen Party B like me, who actually became the master of Party A...

A few more weeks passed. Party A has notified me that their transaction is complete; commissions have been paid and I will receive new style documents in a few days. Party A was very excited and estimated that they were very satisfied when they tested the effect. They asked me from time to time how long it would take to make the modification to the genuine product, and whether it could be completed in a week.

I said I'm sure it needs to be modified manually. Especially when the entire product is composed of countless single-file components. It will take some time. What's more, I have three other projects to deal with.

Sure enough, within a few days, I received a ZIP file. Although I am not familiar with Webflow, I know that it is a platform similar to Wordpress. It is impossible to fetch code directly with Git.

When I unzip it and open the file, the first thing that catches my eye is jQuery and Bootstrap. I was stunned. I told them the product is written with VueJS plus Bulma. This is simply a donkey's mouth not a horse's mouth. Does this still let me change the CSS file directly? By the way, does anyone still use jQuery?

Looking more closely, I found that there is no uniform element class name. How long does this have to be changed?

Helpless, call again. After hearing the news, Party A was extremely angry.

Actually, I understand their feelings very well. But they didn't understand what Qian Ding Wan Wan told them. They probably just saw bling, bling, and then they forgot about it.

They said they were looking for the other party to revise it.

I said, "Forget it. If they're still using jQuery, they probably won't be using VueJS. I'll change it slowly. It's a week away..."