Someone without a technical degree won't know where to start but I bet if given the pseudo code he will be able to come up with the code.

Again, if you give him the pseudocode, why hire the person? Perhaps we are not on the same footing as to what pseudocode is.

I have a technical degree but I wouldn't know where to start with respect to your requirement above. This is where a Business Analyst (BA) comes in. As a developer, to begin with, I am not to get such a vague requirement. A BA helps here in that he/she goes back to the customer, gets clarification, formuala(e), etc so as to ensure that I develop the solution that they need. I have helped develop software that has to do with areas I haven't the slightest clue about and such customers, at the time the product was deployed, didn't have any problems.

I say all of that to say this; you don’t need a degree to write software.

No you don't. As a matter of fact, I will go a step further with respect to why any degree is needed - it probably doesn't show what you are capable of as you could have coasted your way through school but it moreso shows that you have the ability to think. That is why, at least from my experience, I have seen pple with History degrees crank out code better than pple with computer science degrees. The latter gives you an advantage but doesn't necessarily mean you know it all. Also, your degree, from my experience, only gets you that first job. From that point on, it is all about your professional experience.

I would like to contribute my 2 cents, if I may:

I have been following this post from day one and so first and foremost, kudos to you all for taking this task upon yourselves. In some ways, you all remind me of the founding fathers of the USA who got together to form the possible out of what some people thought was impossible. Unleashing your product onto the Nigerian market will definitely encourage (and maybe even shame) others to come up with something better and/or something different. Once again, I salute your efforts. Having said that:

This post has been going on for 4 pages. Granted, I don't know how far along you guys have gone, I think it is high time some physical contact is made as in, perhaps those based in the US fly down to Nigeria and meet face-to-face with those "on ground". Sure, the work can be done from anywhere in the world, but to avoid incessant posts and to lend seriousness to this, again, I think face time is required at this point. It doesn't have to be formal, fancy or last a week. Even a 1 or 2 hour meeting at some joint would be enough. My point: it would be nice for you guys to actually know each other, exchange numbers, ideas and form a network that will probably go beyond this project.

I have also noticed that there are more volunteers coming on board. Someone has also just apologized for not showing up, so to speak. Again, we are on page 4 of this post and I would expect that number of people at the very least would be finalized by now.

Finally, I don't know how far you have gone, but I would expect some kind of progress/milestone report to be communicated to us on the forum. That may make others see that this is indeed a very serious thing. What are you using for source control? How do you deal with the time differences? Who is the Project Manager? Developer(s)? Quality Assurance Analyst? Business Analyst? How many team members? What will be finished when? When does the product launch? How will it be launched? Who will it be presented to? Is there a website for this so you don't have to post here? It would be nice to associate faces with names, or is this some type of top-secret project? I know, it might seem bureaucratic but I think this would also help lend credence to the project. Sorry if most of these things have been decided though as you can see, briefing us would probably eliminate such a line of questioning.

I am not a .NET guy but if you still need help in terms of requirements, testing, or other non-.NET stuff, I don't mind contributing my fair share.

Again, I salute your efforts. I pray it goes well.

As always, my 2 cents.

bensoft,

sorry o. Na now you sabi? I have been saying so for the past 18 months or so. The funny thing is, if you look at the site of the company responsible for it, you will notice that the CEO has 27 years of experience in software development. So it is quite possible that the site was built back when there was only maybe 10 pple using the internet in Nigeria

Seriously though, it sucks. You would think that JAMB would go for a redesign by now. I would imagine many pple have complained about the site by now that they would have done something. Or is it a matter of, "leave them jare. dem no get choice. na only we dey provide dis service. besides, the longer they stay, the better the possibility that we can earn more money from them"? Who knows?

wow! I didn't know I could earn money. Why not tell me where and how (without trying to sell me something in the process )?

Well, your site is the typical sales website - overcrowded with information and google ads. The image with the white guy at top left and vibrating text is very distracting to me. I personally hate scrolling to far into a page so I would suggest you either split your products into separate pages or put a "back to top" after so many paragraphs.

"My2cents, stop complaining". Okay, I hear you. The one thing I like - "proudly Nigerian" logo.

I hope these help.

The site isn't too wide. I use 1024x768 and the site sits perfectly in the middle. As for the header images, again, maybe I am a bit slow in learning cos even today, again, I had to look for "home" even though it registered in my brain that it was on the right. Perhaps you should make it a bit bigger?

By the way, you haven't made a single change since you asked for it and received plenty. What's the point of asking if you won't implement?

lol kazey, good one.

padonet:
When you let something/someone else do something for you, how do you learn? Besides, you lose the control that you would get if you built it yourself.

Concluding directly from the title of this post, I think the first thing that needs to be done is ascertain ayoappeals IQ. After that, the next step would be to see if there are any girls who match that IQ. In other words, ayo is inferring that he only wants girls who match, as opposed to exceed, his IQ.

If a majority of the girls are above his IQ, then no wonder

u guys might probably benefit from the "juicy" conversation going on here: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-115269.0.html

Just to murky the water some more, I have a degree in electrical engineering (took a bunch of SW courses) and I do write software (C, C++, MATLAB) at the system level and I’m neither a programmer nor a SW engineer.

My point exactly!

You don't have to go to school, technically and earn a software engineering degree to be a software engineer. Please note, I say, "technically". In today's world, pple in our discipline are required to stay up-to-date in the latest technologies and to read a wide array of subjects. For example, I am not a DBA, but I read a lot of books on DB design. Does that make me a DBA, even though I don't have a degree/certificate in the field? I think so. I have worked with pple who have no degrees but yet know more than a graduate.

Wallie, I am afraid I don't know what you're saying. You give a programmer pseudo code? If you do that, aren't you in essence solving the problem you are paying the person to come up with? Why bother doing it twice. If the person can't think that far, why hire him in the first place? Are you implying that a programmer doesn't think or a programmer doesn't think enough?

Perhaps, and not to justify, within the Nigerian context, the 2 fields are considered different but where I am, it's just a matter of job title. The work is pretty much the same. As a matter of fact, most pple actually specify the position they are looking for, as opposed to saying "programmer" or "software engineer" as those names are pretty vague ("program what?", "software engineer what?"

my friend,

I can't misconstrue the meaning of deadly. When I see a word, I take the literal meaning, unless the author inlcudes quotation marks around it. So next time, rather than use big grammar, just say what you want. Simple. If you lack the (layman's) words to use, go through prior requests for review, copy what the author wrote and paste it

jshittu,

considering most serious (web) coders develop with mozilla, you probably shouldn't complain

geez tju,

either you were an english graduate in your former life, you should have been an english graduate, as opposed to a software engineer or you have sworn at some shrine that has said if you don't defend your statement, you will surely die. Give it a break already. It's in Seun's hands now (or yours, if you decide to come up with a forum of your own)

By the way, you made yet another blanket statement (y i am surprised, I have no idea) with respect to me and Bossman - I no sabi am o! I have been reading a few of his posts but that's about it. In fact, I have never even been to Chicago, not to mention the fact that I don't know anyone in Chicago.

Next time, at least ask or say, "generally speaking". Anything less, and you will have to back it up with facts

Basically, all you need to **build** a website is the following:

1) text editor. You can anything from notepad to dreamweaver to homesite to textpad to whatever.

2) Knowledge of HTML for starters. After you master that, you move to XHTML, CSS and JAVAScript, in that order

3) Once you are done with 3, you can then move on the building dynamic sites for which you will need to know ASP, JSP, PHP, etc

Anyone have anything else? Please add.

Thanks,

How can criticism be both constructive and deadly? Can you handle deadly? won't you end up saying afterwards a self-defensive statement like, "well, I have seen your work and it isn't any good either"?

Again, can you handle deadly?

Academia informs Industry and not vice versa

Not always.

I expect anyone with a degree in Computer Science to know this.

You definitely have big expectations, especially among those who barely made the GPA required for graduation

No offense, but you come across as someone who shoots from the hip, then when made to realize the error in your ways, you immediately apologize. I take this from your latest, being that b/w you and Bossman. Just because someone doesn't say so doesn't mean you are to draw conclusions. As they say, never judge a book by its cover, although I must say, based on my experience, I could tell Bossman is pretty advanced based on his, "rhetoric"

his_grace:

refer to points 5 and 8 of my original post above

For the page titles (welcome being on the left and others on the right) i have a reason for arrainging them like that.

I agree with everything you have said except for the above. Humans read from left to right. Every time I wanted to go back to the home page, you would think I would know to look to the right but I didn't. I kept looking for the link first to my left before wondering where it was, then remembering it was to the right. It got a little annoying after a while, I must confess.

In the end, it's your site. Having said that, there are standards that are to be followed in the interest of users. Having those headers to the left is one of them. Remember, you develop a site to suit a majority of its visitors and I bet a majority would appreciate those headers to the left.

As always, my 2 cents.

Nice Job. Out of curiousity, why does the client want those Y! et al links? For social bookmarking? That's what I (and perhaps others) am thinking when I see them. For them to go to the landing pages of those sites doesn't make sense to me. Even if the client insists, you are not a code monkey. You should ask and advise clients as well, if you haven't done so already. The customer may always be right but it doesn't mean that they are indeed "right", not to mention, regardless of what a client wants, the sites you develop today will determine the sites you develop tomorrow.

As you have noted, the site is still under construction. Having said that, always try and develop a site right the first time as, at least for me, I hate to go back and do something twice. Please note the following:

1) For those google et al links, you are linking to those sites incorrectly. Here is what I get for Y!, for example: http://www.arnionglobalconsulting.com/www.yahoo.com. This will obviously result in a broken link

2) On home page, I would probably make the white content area rounded as as to blend well with the dark background

3) I would make all pages consistent with respect to the content area having a white background

4) I want to blv that eventually the "contact us" page will have a form

5) the image on "about us" is too large - 242px. Consider optimizing

6) On home page, "welcome" image is on left but on other pages, header image is on right. i would make this consistent throughout, preferably on the left as research shows web users view a site from top left to bottom right.

7) On some pages, you have the contact info at bottom and on others you have it on top right and on others you have it at bottom right. Make it consistent everywhere.

8 ) Image of kid on home page: If the company is into consulting then I would make at least the image on the home page something to do with consulting with respect to the services mentioned on the site. When I see the kid, I (and perhaps others) am thinking something else, not consulting. That image is over 400K too. Why?

9) I see a lot of non-breaking space (&nbsp tags in your code. You do know that different browsers interprete this differently. Besides, this isn't semantic. Why not assign the table cells CSS classes and define those classes with the appropriate padding? Makes better sense to me. I bet, especially considering the sizes of your images, you could shave off a few KBs in non-breaking spaces alone.

10) On home page, it would probably be nice at the "enter email address", if as I insert my cursor, the text disappears then on onblur, the text re-appears.

This might sound like a lot but most are just a few tweaks here and there.

I hope these help.

For a forum like NL, probably not. NL is pretty big and the moderator has his hands full moderating by himself as it is.

For a forum that is more specific to the programming community, I can see that happening. Then again, I am not the moderator of NL

Don't give up bro just because, "it seems opinions, not facts rule these boards". At the end of the day, it's not who wins on this topic that matters to me but who learns from who. For all we know, you could be right, but you haven't convinced me. I may not have convinced you either, but hey, such is life. We would be zombies if we all thought alike. I just don't accept what anyone says without solid proof. In this case, I don't see proof. Sorry.

I have been in the field since 1999. Based on both personal and professional experience, you haven't shed any light on the issue to help me see clearer. Again, sorry.

Bottomline IMHO, there is no need to create a separate board for the 2. If you have anything to share, just do what others have been doing since the inception of Nairaland - share. No need creating 7 layers of separation. As a software engineer, I am sure you would agree that in and of itself is not best practice

My point is this: Software Engineering is the big picture. Programming is a (vital) piece of the puzzle.

Why does this warrant a separate board? And by the way, tell the person hiring a software engineer vs a programmer that he needs to check up on his/her hiring skills - even a programmer works based on requirements. If not, the program won't work. A Business Analyst (BA)comes up with the business/functional requirements and the programmer works off of those. If you did requirements gathering, that's the job of a BA not a software engineer.

Again, let's zoom in on your wikified definition:

"Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software. It encompasses techniques and procedures, often regulated by a software development process, with the purpose of improving the reliability and maintainability of software systems."

Where in the above does it mention requirements gathering? As a software engineer, your role is to apply best practices to the job at hand. Again, remember what I said a few posts above. I will use an example:

for(i=0; i<50;i++) {
array = new array("a", "b", "c";
array2 = new array("A", "B", "C";
if(array.equals(array2))
(code goes on)
}

**Generally speaking**, someone with no formal training might come up with something like that but a software engineer would know that there it is inefficient to keep on declaring array and array2 inside the for loop. Best practice dictates that you declare the arrays outside the loop as they are static. In the end, both approaches work but one is more efficient than the other.

Bossman,

Exactly! It's the "I am a banker" mentality carried over courtesy of the British colonizing us. There are too many programmers. what do we do? oh my god!! Let's find another name to stand apart. Next thing you know, some people will start having "software engineer" or "webmaster" as a prefix in their names.

It's just like some pple on here say that if you build a website, you are a web designer yet if you build a web app, you are a web developer. It's ridiculous and it's crap.

Programmer is a role, Web Developer is a role.

Software Engineering is the encompassing discipline.

So what would you call a software engineer (Mind you, I said software engineer, not software engineering)? A role? There are job positions called "software engineer".

If his skills are no longer needed (e.g. Java or VB), he ceases to be useful.

Same applies to a software engineer. You can't just make a broad statement about programmers knowing only one language. Maybe based on your experience and who you come in contact with. What is programming anyways? It's logic. If you can reason logically, you can program in any language.

Again, software engineering is about concepts in programming. Even your definition above basically says so. That by the way doesn't imply they can code in any language. When I was in school, I interacted with a professor who last line of code was in cobol in the 70s. At the time, he knew nothing about java and yet was a professor of software engineering who was to teach a class in java. He relied on teaching assistants to get the job done. Having said that, he knew enough about the principles behind programming in general such that he wasn't a total mumu. Does that take away from him being a software engineer? I don't think so.

I don't see how that compares to circuit building vs electronic engineering. Be that as it may:

Don't get into the "I am a banker (when in reality, a 'banker' is basically someone who counts someone else's money and wears a shirt and tie and not someone who owns a bank)" mentality. I graduated as a software engineer but if you ask me what I do, I say I am a web developer. Consequently, when I am in Nigeria and friends introduce me as a software engineer ("engineer" for short), I personally frown upon it. I am not into glorified names. I am basically a programmer at the end of the day.

There are software engineers who don't know certain concepts. That doesnt and shdnt take away from what they are. Likewise, there are programmers (as in have received no formal training) who know more than most software engineers.

Software engineering isn't about coding but how to make coding more efficient. So for example, a programmer might know how to code a function using 1000 lines of code. A software engineer on the other hand would know about Big O notation and try to come up with something much shorter.

I cannot say what I am saying until, like me, you provide the differences in definitions. I would like to take a crack at it if I may though:

Circuit building is a subset of electronic engineering. Programming was the term used when the profession first came out. Software engineering basically applies (or attempts to anyways) best practices to the art and science of programming.

So in essence, if I can program, I can be a software engineer. I don't have to go to school to become one. However, just because I can build a circuit board doesn't necessarily mean I am good in other areas of electronic engineering. Even if there were a difference, it doesn't warrant, in my opinion a separate board. If you have any best practices to share, just post them here.

tju,

and how does this differ from programming (dictionary definition aside)?

In my opinion, the difference b/w the 2 is like the difference b/w a secretary and an administrative assistant. In other words, it's the same difference. One is just a glorified name of the other.

kazey,

I think it's the way Afam has it typed out above. The correct URL is http://www.utalbuilding.com/

I just tried it out and it's up and running.

1) How would you define, "software engineering"?

2) How does it differ from programming?

3) Why should it merit a separate section from programming (in other words, you need to explain better than you have above)?

Layout is good. A few pointers:

1) I noticed the site says the company offers syrups but the photos are those of tablets. Perhaps a flash/dhtml fade movie would work here, where you fade in the company's products on each page?

2) Contact form: i am a big fan of telling pple which fields are required upfront and doing a front-end validation as opposed to waiting for the server to load and then being told, one field at a time, that i didn't fill out the form properly.

3) On products page: the tablets header has a background that is not blending well with the white background. Perhaps you should use your favorite graphics program to erase the greyish background?

4) If "Precision in manufacturing." is their motto, you might want to make it a bit bigger and bring it closer to the logo.

5) For semantic reasons, you might want to use h1 instead of span class="header1", among others. Besides, it's less keystrokes

I hope these help.

that is tollu, until now