lojik:

I meet an [b]o[/b]ld [b]f[/b]riend and he says he's a programmer now.

Me: Really? And what projects have you worked on? Languages? Technologies?
O.F: I'm more into web development

Me: Good. Whc technology or serverside do u do? Architecture? Frameworks?
O.F: Actually, I'm into Joomla. I develop websites with joomla. Do you know Joomla?

Me: Then you are not a programmer.
O.F: Yes i am, i have built a lot of sites and my works speak for me. Do you even know Joomla? ^{(Guy truns red)}

Me: Ok. No offense taken. Its just that i'm a professional programmer and i don't agree that a Joomla installer is a programmer.
------------------
There are too many people who have never written a functional class or used a two/three dimensional array and yet call themselves programmers. There are junk certificate holder every where wasting my time by applying when there is vacancy.
After searching for competent support programmers for months, i gave up and decided to start training the programmers i will use tomorrow today. I now train my own programmers from scratch since all the good ones are overpriced (DHTML, Sly, Dual e.t.c).

somehow u are right

Lai la - who is overpriced? abeg - kini meaning over-priced? I am just a small-boy developer jare.

@lojik, it is a good thing jare to train up young and serious web developers. . .keep it up

But seriously, i agree with webdezzi sha

Hi @All,

I have asked myself this question; 'Who's at fault'? Who should be responsible for a "job-well-done" . Believe me, it's extend beyond clients willingness to increase payment standards. We have seen overpriced projects in the past with quack return. Let me move-out from web/application environment. "What is your National identification Number", Do you realise how much of tax-payers money was invested? what was the result? , Wait, have just timed out.

@DHTML, @Dual-core long time - Please c-out it to SEUN

- nitation

Hmmmmm

geez man that seriously has to be the ugliest site ever, please don't tell me that was designed by a Nigerian developer,

we should stop talking beauty and start looking at content as far as am concern the most ugliest website is youtube and is the third most visited website. while the rest of the world is feeding the net with quality content we are talking about design and beauty

nitation:

Hi @All,

I have asked myself this question; 'Who's at fault'? Who should be responsible for a "job-well-done" . Believe me, it's extend beyond clients willingness to increase payment standards. We have seen overpriced projects in the past with quack return. Let me move-out from web/application environment. "What is your National identification Number", Do you realise how much of tax-payers money was invested? what was the result? , Wait, have just timed out.

@DHTML, @Dual-core long time - Please c-out it to SEUN

- nitation

Where on earth have you been?

I have been disappointed quite a number of times while outsourcing to Naija programmers. Aside from knowing how to write one statement at a time(whc is all some ppl do), we need to have a standard too. Most people don''t use a pen and paper b4 they start coding. Some programmers dont even have a database schema before they start a web application project talk less of a plan. 99% of programmers i have interviewed are just bugs waiting to manifest. Most don't even know what SQL injection is.

The funny thing is that if your work speaks very well of you, your clients will raise your price. But here, we want to raise our prices without stepping up our game.
Its all about self development joor.

@lojik you see the reason is Most web developers after learning Programming,think they know it all,then they stop reading and just working with the limited knowledge,i always read everyday on programming principles,Design Patterns,Coding practices, Why? because i believe programming is a gradual thing you an't learn programming in some number of years,its something you're gonna keep reading and growing up on. that being said also most nigerian devs are lazy,i remember when i wanted to learn html/php i came for help on nairaland that was 2009 i was in enugu,i chatted with DHTML on messenger,i told him i knew HTML,and when he asked me some question which i couldn't answer he told me to re-read from scratch and practice everyday. but asides from that they are talented programmers,when u hear a programmer talk,u'll know what he's capable of.

My take is that, an average programmer should be very passionate about coding. at least from the start. but one reason nigerian programmers are supposedly lazy (which i dont fully agree with), is that you can not put so much resources in a career/ project and be happy to come out with nothing much to show 4it.
point is, how much does an average web project cost these days? How long does it take you to secure another client? Looking at the reality at hand, anybody (Nigerian or otherwise) might see it as quite discouraging.
So the guy asks himself, why go learn the all these languages with varying learning curves, putting enormous time and resources when the return on investment is quite low?
Point is, if the industry is much more lucrative, an average Nigeria programmer would be head high above his peers. He ll do everything to be the best, trust me on that.
My conclusion still evolves around passion and i recall an adage that goes thus "if u say education is xpensive, then try ignorance !" So let's keep the march on, we'll surely get there.

Gracias @pc guru, estos es a very interesting thread. . . .

***passing by***

-SAFE

Well, i wont call myself a webmaster(dont know what it truely means sef), but a web developer who only writes codes hosted on the greatest server in the world - my local machine. Therefore, i cannot talk about client - web developer relationships. But i think majority of Nigerian 'webmaster' are plain lazy, they lack ideas, they feel like they know all and dont even care to checkout other sites for the inspiration to do something new. Since this majority price themselves low, well you get a less lucrative industry.

It looks like 15 - 20k is the most popular price range for a site in Naija. If not, how come a woman who had been given directives by her bank to find a developer who would build a site for them wants to pay me below 20k? So you see, lazy/cheap 'scrapsite' makers have made the industry unattractive.

I think i'll just stick to my application development jare because i want to deal with the oga of this site one day lol .

No big deal. . . .you need to ginger your swagga

@instinctg & worldbest
I dont agree that the average web app development contract is cheap or that jobs are scarce. It depends on the programmer. I started from nairaland looking out for every opportunity to get a contract here, that was when jobs were scarce and clients didn't pay much. I looked up to dhtml, yawa and dual (yes, they started php way b4 me) to answer my questions here when i get stuck.
But for every single job i get, i created a standard, a reason for clients to come back.

I once called dhtml to handle a shopping cart for my client and he gave a non negotiable price of N500k^{My heart skipped}. Even though the client agreed to pay him, dhtml no get time and he didn't even do the job(Reason y i don't call him 4 jobs again).
*Edit: DHTML No collect money from the guy anyway but me loose my share.

That single incident with dhtml made me change my coding and pricing. Right now, the minimum price that can make me touch my mouse is 100k(for websites) and i have commercial web applications(EDBMS) that have been sold  and is still being sold in seven digits. I am a programmer, and i can tell you there's no easier way to make your first 1 million naira than in programming ^{(if you rank among the best)}.

Caramba! Errrr es possible dhtml was not erm satisfied with the client. But i think i also remembered that d-h-t-m-l did not collect any money at all.
If he collected the money and did not do the work is a different story entirely - so something must have been amiss. . .

But no hay problema, let the thread spin on. . . it is getting much more interesting and taking expected twists and turns tambien

To quote the said dhtml:

But @lojik, i have handled jobs for nairalanders even as low as 15k - but i dont want to start mentioning names sha

lojik:

@instinctg & worldbest
I dont agree that the average web app development contract is cheap or that jobs are scarce. It depends on the programmer. I started from nairaland looking out for every opportunity to get a contract here, that was when jobs were scarce and clients didn't pay much. I looked up to dhtml, yawa and dual (yes, they started php way b4 me) to answer my questions here when i get stuck.
But for every single job i get, i created a standard, a reason for clients to come back.

I once called dhtml to handle a shopping cart for my client and he gave a non negotiable price of N500k^{My heart skipped}. Even though the client agreed to pay him, dhtml no get time and he didn't even do the job(Reason y i don't call him 4 jobs again).
*Edit: DHTML No collect money from the guy anyway but me loose my share.

That single incident with dhtml made me change my coding and pricing. Right now, the minimum price that can make me touch my mouse is 100k(for websites) and i have commercial web applications(EDBMS) that have been sold  and is still being sold in seven digits. I am a programmer, and i can tell you there's no easier way to make your first 1 million naira than in programming ^{(if you rank among the best)}.

@ lojik, you made a good point, but not totally valid. I still insist that so many clients out there feel there is no reason to have a website or software application.
When they seem to agree to have one, they price cheaply cos they see it as luxury and they also perceive the industry is saturated with "programmers" so they seem to settle for less.
But i totally agree that with some one having an impressive portfolio like yours should really have no issues per se.

I am sorry you lost your shares in that project @lojik. For me, sometimes i tend to reject clients if i forsee things not going as expected.

I am never in a rush to collect money from people, i weight the costs and benefits first - unlike many developers - that will use the money
to chop peppersoup first before weighing the project properly.

That project thinggy you mentioned was more complicated than you said - but that is a story for another day. But i must say that the
circumstances were not favorable for me at all.

There is one thing i failed to mention - i lost about 50k to the guy that was meant to do the first interface before i brought in another
developer - the Dayo guy you met. But that was due to my own foolishness sha - or rather miscalculation on my part - i was maga (ed).

One thing is certain - you cant win them all - everyone of us have our strengths and failures - their are times when things just dont go
as planned - but in life, we learn and we move on.

@dhtml:
I knew something must have gone wrong but u didn't communicate. U were too skilled to just ignore d project and i had spoken so much of you to the programmer i was mentoring there b4 u came. I just wished i could defend u afterwards but u didn't communicate with me so i looked like a rookie. Anyway, its gone now. Sorry i brought it up.

It was a good thing we brought it up sha. The thing was - i was feeling very silly about the whole thinggy that happened.
That guy was the most skilled interface developer i knew at that time. It was a very shocking thing for me.

This all happened because the client wants a professionally developed interface first - which i was not sure i was able to do
in such a very short time. My style is usually to do the functionality first, and develop the theme later - MVC all - and works fine,
but your client did not give me space to handle it that way - so i quickly outsourced it - and them take my money chop peppersoup.

The other guy - did a very little stuff - insisted that upfront payment must be made before he can do it properly - it was around this
part that the whole thing started coming apart and scattered. I felt rather too ashamed and silly - to admit directly to you the
whole thing that happened.

So, in the end i just had to pull out as quietly as possible - luckily it was my money that was used to chop peppersoup and not
your client's money - so no biggie. But i think i have learnt from the several sets of mistakes i made in handling that project.

No problemo amigo, i thought i planned everything properly - but alas - things fell apart. I was actually almost bringing out
my dhtmlframework at that time - i planned to use it for that project as my second main project i will feature it in.

The whole shame and embarrasment was so much for me that i just suspended the framework. Well, after quadrillo speaking some
sense into my head - i have resumed the development of the framework, it should soon be out for testing
on http://www.dhtmlframework.com - latest by 20th July, 2011. I will make a new thread immediately the first testing version is
available. I will need your professional opinions - yours included too.