abubaka101: My own contribution on the topic is, Web designers and developers fail due to lack of an innovative mind! Everybody wants to create a site life facebook, twitter... They are'nt really thinking about something different. Take for instance, Digg is a major hotspot for the latest news, but everytime I post an article/story about/on Africa/Nigeria, I feel like am the only one whose going to actually read what I post. Truth be told, Nairaland is the only hotspot for the latest news in Nigeria, but they don't officially allow users to post this many links/stories...
My conclusion is this, if somebody can come up with a good Digg "photocopy" for African/Nigerian contents, that person would be rewarded greatly for his effort. But if no-one can, it means I'll have to climb up the ladder on my programming tutorial and save the day.
Who agrees?

I really do not know why most people attacked the guy for saying nothing but the truth and the absolute truth. How many Africans have the fundamental technical know hows of how these stuffs work? If we were to be penalized for plagiarism I wonder how many websites from this part of the world would survive. 95% of the websites that are designed in Africa either run on Content Management Systems or were generated by a WYSIWYG application. All of you coming up here trying to act like you know it all...How many languages can you really code in? Even the banks run on Content Management Systems. He said the fact...How many innovative web applications have you seen around here? Jobberman runs on a content management system…Nairaland runs on a modified version of a web application that is designed to run a forum. Only few people can design applications from the scratch and come up with a fully functional application(Less than 5% of those into IT in Africa). Let’s stop deceiving ourselves and face the fact. I challenge anyone here to come up here and show a web application fully designed from scratch and I will tell you the Content Management System it

hotwax:

I have never use a template b4. I know of friends like that too.

They create from the scratch. Content management/templates limit your creativity.

If you want proofs, I have many.

hotwax:

I have never use a template b4. I know of friends like that too.

They create from the scratch. Content management/templates limit your creativity.

If you want proofs, I have many.

lordZOUGA: dude, your site looks like crap. Fix it first before giving others advice. The time it took you in posting this you could have used in fixing a problem. What is it with NL and advice eh?. Nigerians suck at anything synonymous with development: web development, software development, human development, child development. All we do is SUCK-SEED.

hotwax:

Do you expect me to go and create a page for calabash just because I am from Africa?

10 years after Facebook became popular, GooglePlus was created and its becoming more popular than facebook.

Is facebook meant to be only social apps out there? Myspace was there before facebook. Facebook came and over shadow myspace. Are you saying myspace only has license to build social Apps.

I am working on a Social/Cloud OS. Does it mean since there is microsoft cloud, I should not try and contribute my own quota to cloud computing world?

You have not addressed Nigerian developers problem.

1. Poverty/pain of bootstrapping a new business
2. Government attitude/support towards creativity/Government protection of intellectual properties.
3. Poor economy and currency Issue
4. Curroption/yahoo yahoo guys. Nobody trust a Nigerian on the Internet
5. Many more...

cryptic:

And show us a dynamic web application and not some static website. And tell us the languages that run the application. Also, let us know about the backend of the web application and if possible, give us a Backend URL login page.

Sky-walker:


haaa. is that not asking for too much?

cryptic: I really do not know why most people attacked the guy for saying nothing but the truth and the absolute truth. How many Africans have the fundamental technical know hows of how these stuffs work? If we were to be penalized for plagiarism I wonder how many websites from this part of the world would survive. 95% of the websites that are designed in Africa either run on Content Management Systems or were generated by a WYSIWYG application. All of you coming up here trying to act like you know it all...How many languages can you really code in? Even the banks run on Content Management Systems. He said the fact...How many innovative web applications have you seen around here? Jobberman runs on a content management system…Nairaland runs on a modified version of a web application that is designed to run a forum. Only few people can design applications from the scratch and come up with a fully functional application(Less than 5% of those into IT in Africa). Let’s stop deceiving ourselves and face the fact.

you plan on competing with microsoft... Thats very wise..

lordZOUGA:
speak for yourself sir...

cryptic:

Show us what you are made of sir. You can't just debunk my assertion. Give us links to jobs you built from the scratch.

cryptic:

Show us what you are made of sir. You can't just debunk my assertion. Give us links to jobs you built from the scratch.

lordZOUGA:
No, I won't. its okay for mediocre minded people like you to exist. its good for morale and business.

lordZOUGA: a blind man leading a blind man crossing a road is worse than three blind people crossing that same road separately. what the O.P did was wrong, he is not fit to be advising people

spikes C:

Like he said, speak for yourself...that is a very stup!d way to generalise on developers. I want you to make a list of 10 nigerian made websites that are not of the ordinary (i.e no blogs, no forums).... 9 of them are developed from scratch. I hope you're not also taking frameworks as platforms. Well, here is one, www.infinitbin.com... Not even a framework is used, the only outside code is phpmailer. seriously, don't insult nigerian developers ever again, they're worth more that u can imagine(yes, i have proves). Our only problem is lack of oppurtunities, funding and the worst, the bad name our yahoo yahoo brothers has given to us.

spikes C:

Like he said, speak for yourself...that is a very stup!d way to generalise on developers. I want you to make a list of 10 nigerian made websites that are not of the ordinary (i.e no blogs, no forums).... 9 of them are developed from scratch. I hope you're not also taking frameworks as platforms. Well, here is one, www.infinitbin.com... Not even a framework is used, the only outside code is phpmailer. seriously, don't insult nigerian developers ever again, they're worth more that u can imagine(yes, i have proves). Our only problem is lack of oppurtunities, funding and the worst, the bad name our yahoo yahoo brothers has given to us.

aitoehigie: Why are Nigerian programmers so smart? They are so smart that all they ever do is to develop:
1. Banking software (Which our banks will never use. Can you trust a Nigerian with money? take Yahoo Yahoo as a case study. The Nigerian programmer might probably put in a back orfice into the program to enable him siphon money from the bank anytime he wishes). Why would i use a crappy Nigerian software, when there are excellent banking software made in India?
2. Human Resource Managers : this is almost same as the above
3. Hospitality software: same as the above
4. Social networking sites and forums like "dollarland.com"
5. church management system
6. Supermarket/School management system
7. The list is endless

Lets try the be innovative.

P.S: NOW LET THE PERSONAL ATTACKS BEGIN

Javanian: I just dug up this old thread but what the op said was true


source: https://www.nairaland.com/146070/why-nigerian-programmers-smart

Morrelinko: @guru. "Why Web developers fail" (or probably you wanted naming it "why nigerian web developers fail"?

Let me also point out one big problem amongst nigerian developers.

For example, if i should come asking you to join me so we can work together to create a web application that'll change nigeria. What will be the first thing in your mind?

"Hmmmm! Who will take the credit?" or "I don't like partnership. It doesn't end well."

And also, i do not fully support your idea on the fact that we like creating apps that already exists as being a factor that makes nigerian web developers fail.
You may want to justify that fact.

Just look at the 1st reply of this thread. Saying that your site is crap. That is another problem we have. Do i really need to go into this?

cryptic:

I also think it is very imbecilic for you to say I stupidly generalized when I said the fact. The bold statement is also absolutely incorrect. Most websites being built here use CMSs(Most either use wordpress or Joomla). The banks use frameworks. Listen dude, as far as IT is concerned, Africa is in its infant stage of development. I lived in America for quite a while and I have met with quite a number of IT pros. I met with John Resig the Javascript Evangelist( The inventor of Jquery) in 2009 after the 2009 Jquery conference and I was inspired. Don't get me wrong, I am not trash talking our jobs here but the Poster said the fact.

cryptic:

As for the website you asked me to take a look at, I will try to detect if there is either a framework or maybe a CMS. If it is a hand coded job, then I think it is a really great job but the developers of the website have to work on the UI as the UI is really poor.

spikes C:

I never said the opinion of the poster is irrelivant, we have too many problems that are not even listed here. And like i said, most not ordinary websites doesn't use cms, i think you need to read my comment again. Who wants to create another cms for his blog, they go for wordpress. It is a very wise decision to me, performance and speed wise, no need to reinvent the wheel, not to talk of this kind of wheel. Do you think its that easy developing with a platform than from scratch. what you don't know, you don't know it, so you must learn a platform before working on it. Am not talking setting up wordpress, installing themes,plugins and making posts...No, am talking of developing a full feature rich wordpress theme that serves more than blogging. Am talking of hacking wordpress core for performance,high efficiency and reliability. Yes, africa is still in the infant stage, but we're good....we don't have to be john resig because we cannot be compared with him, not because we can't be better but because of the differience in opportunities we have. And sorry to say this but yes, you're trash talking our jobs.

spikes C:

I never said the opinion of the poster is irrelivant, we have too many problems that are not even listed here. And like i said, most not ordinary websites doesn't use cms, i think you need to read my comment again. Who wants to create another cms for his blog, they go for wordpress. It is a very wise decision to me, performance and speed wise, no need to reinvent the wheel, not to talk of this kind of wheel. Do you think its that easy developing with a platform than from scratch. what you don't know, you don't know it, so you must learn a platform before working on it. Am not talking setting up wordpress, installing themes,plugins and making posts...No, am talking of developing a full feature rich wordpress theme that serves more than blogging. Am talking of hacking wordpress core for performance,high efficiency and reliability. Yes, africa is still in the infant stage, but we're good....we don't have to be john resig because we cannot be compared with him, not because we can't be better but because of the differience in opportunities we have. And sorry to say this but yes, you're trash talking our jobs.

doncigalo: @cryptic well said !! there's no need to apologize.

For those that are ranting saying that Nigerian web developers are innovative or creative, they are just on cheap drugs, really cheap ones. The truth is that there are very very few Nigerian developers that are actually worth their salt. The remaining 99% percent are just hacks who believe once they've learnt about programming on W3schools or can use a CMS like Drupal or Joomla or open up notepad and type HELLO WORLD they are automatically gurus. They know nothing about software development methdologies, models, approach, version tracking or even how to carry out UAT(user acceptance test).

They think that because people like Zuckerberg,Gates and Jobs dropped out of school and became succesfull therefore they too can become like them by learning stuff on their own and become innovative or successfull, that is a big lie and a very dangerous path for them to follow. If you examine the universites (Ivy league) and the curriculum that Zuckerberg and co. went through, you would find out that they were exposed to cutting edge development practices, technologies and a variety of fundamental subjects areas from Fuzzy logic & Neural Algorithms to HCI(Human Computer Interaction) to SDLC (Software Development Lifecycles). They absorbed all they were TAUGHT, put it into practice and decided that you know what, I can take it from here on my own.

Take a look at most silicon valley start-ups, why is is that a significant number of founders/ceo's are dropouts from Ivy league universities ? Till these Nigerian developers begin to look at software/web development from a process driven perspective and understand that being innovative is by producing creative solutions to existing problems, that is when they can actually be called innovative or even developers !