|
| |
Custom development on demand.
Offering technical support to foreign companies or
individuals is hard when there's no infrastructure to accept payments, so paying
for small items like support incidents becomes a problem for the potential
customer. Also, most support requests come with a pressure of a quick answer.
There are companies in this field already; read (B) in this
page for an idea.
Hence, I decided to offer only development services and hope to list here all
the main restrictions:
- Development tool is Delphi v6 Ent or BCB v5 Pro. D6 is used with Intraweb
and TMS-IW to produce Internet-enabled applications if necessary. I can use
any free C++ compiler that's available if you don't need a GUI (where Delphi
excels) but plain routines. The development platform is Windows NT
exclusively, sorry. With some dedicated customers I've entered agreements
where they acquire the tools, but this is certainly not for a casual task.
- My experience is basically writing SW that did a lot of computations and
had minimal GUI to display results or database applications that had a GUI
centered around the data processing requirements or web-based applications
that connected visitors with a corporate db. The engines I've used are MsSql,
InterBase and Firebird (if you have read the main page of this site, you
have an idea). My experience with Oracle is so minimal that's not worth
mentioning it.
- Over time, I've used different Delphi add-ins, like InfoPower, Orpheus,
WPTools, Async-Pro, QR-Pro, IBO and IntraWeb. I don't see a problem loading
and learning other packages, provided that they don't crash my Delphi
installation.
- I'm no graphic artist neither marketing FUD expert. If you want a shining,
award-winning visual design, hire a person that can define the layout for
your application. It's possible to add the logic to the user interface even
with Intraweb applications, so your forms or HTML pages can be programmed
after their GUI design is done. Otherwise, I will generate something that
can be used, but that may not be too attractive for the user.
- In some countries (the US, for example), SW doesn't fall within the
copyright and ownership rules that other types of work fall in. This means
that currently, an external consultant continues retaining rights over the
custom made SW. If you want these rights transferred, it can be done,
however.
- Internet developments, because they are remote and can occur overseas, are
based on mutual confidence. Up to now, my experience has been good. However,
this doesn't mean the net is free from big scams.
- All communication is written, either in English or Spanish, using e-mail.
If more is needed, phone calls could be used for Spanish only.
- Rates: probably I should have started with them. Currently, USD40 per
effective development hour. Think of an effective hour as a filtered hour,
so I work more time than I really bill. You'll have to contact
me if you want another arrangement.
- Paypal is useless for me when it comes to receive payment. I can only send
money (it works), not withdraw to my bank account. This is one of the
reasons I don't handle support incidents, for example. This means any
payment has to be done either directly by Western Union or through a wire
transfer to my national account, using the SWIFT code.
|