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The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

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Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#131

Post by simc »

niels_olson wrote: post #100

I would like to point out that SAIC more or less stole VisTA source code from the VA under FOIA and then sold the same code to the Department of Defense for billions. We still can't get the source code they've modified. Why is it that if a government employee writes the software, it's FOIA'ble, but if the government pays someone else for it, it's not? The government is just stuck with some crappy binaries?

SAIC also screwed up the FBI's Virtual Case File, NSA's Trailblazer, New York's CityTime (with a extra helping of fraud thrown in). It would be interesting to hear of any software project they did do which was not a multi hundred million dollar software engineering disaster.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#132

Post by j-kidd »

TheRevoltingX wrote: post #130
j-kidd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off your high horse. Being American doesn't automatically make your code better. As a "foreigner", I recently had to deal indirectly with American developers (to integrate our product with theirs at the request of the client). They charge 100K USD for something that only needs 2 man days, didn't code to the specifications (set by themselves), and took forever to fix any problem on their end. Bad developers exist…

Erm, what I mean is that foreigner as in not from the country the project is originating from. To you, the American were foreigners which further enforces my point that working with foreigners in an issue. I'm not saying that because I'm American my code is better. I'm saying that because I'm local and I care more I produce better quality. BTW, in my story some of the most incompetent people were indeed American. The…

Sorry, I missed the point about "caring more as a local". I concur with that.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#133

Post by rseymour »

jellicle wrote: post #62

Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. F…

I work as a gov't contractor. I just installed it on my iPhone, it works fine. Good job.

Also... the contracting process is similar to what he describes anyway, in fact it is better. For example [SBIR](http://www.sbir.gov/) (I hope hn uses markdown) are small business requests for R&D on everything from software to engineering. A small amount of $$ is given up front, and then more if the project becomes field testable, more if it becomes usable.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#134

Post by freehunter »

potatolicious wrote: post #128
freehunter wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly how I had pictured it, but I can see how my wording could be interpreted the way you saw it. I'm not proposing the APIs be the ONLY way to get the information. Government websites can be useful when done right. What I'm suggesting is that instead of getting into the smartphone app business at this point in the market, have the website be accessible to anyone (maybe with a mobile hook around the sit…

The problem is that there is no reasonable way to draw the line. If the government should remain in the business of providing frontends to their data, where do you draw the line as to where they should and shouldn't go? It's not as if publishing a smartphone app is exactly "bleeding edge" these days. Third party smartphone apps have existed for almost four years now. My point is - I fail to see how this is an issue w…

A valid point. My idea was that if you publish a website, it works on pretty much every browser. Developing a website is not something new. Making a mobile app only works on one platform, and is in a period of heavy transition. You say "4 years" like that's a long time compared to the web.

It's not the job of the government to innovate, it's the job of the government to function. I don't install Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha on my production servers, I install 10.10 LTS.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#135

Post by re_todd »

rweba wrote: post #77
jellicle wrote: post #62

Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. F…

It seems this guy doesn't account for "bureaucratic overhead" that is involved in dealing with any large client: You already mentioned the need for lots and lots of meetings and doing the translations, there is also writing up a proposal and some reports, drawing up contracts and sub-contracts, doing usability testing and ensuring compliance with applicable federal regulations. And there is probably a lot of other st…

Good perspective, at first I was outraged, but then knowing the way government works, this could have easily been $10 million.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#136

Post by electromagnetic »

feralchimp wrote: post #84
jellicle wrote: post #62

Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. F…

I was actually just going to mention this. With all of the in-bundle resource differences required for two iPhone resolutions, different .xibs for iPad, etc, we're talking about much more than 6 hours worth of work here. The source code (for iOS, at least) is also pretty clean and decently commented for what it is. $96k is still outrageous, but for work-for-hire it's off by a factor of 2-5 rather than a factor of 10.…

> but for work-for-hire it's off by a factor of 2-5 rather than a factor of 10.

I know with my work, when we're doing construction contracts with the municipal governments we charge at least double and we're the most expensive in the area to begin with (we have guys who've been employed for 20+ years, rather than guys who've been employed for the last 9 months). So I'd say it's probably on-target for a government contract.

> Like, say, existing in a conscious state at their current location.

Or perhaps the free app that comes as standard on an iPhone is why people aren't using the NOAA web service.

Although I know I prefer the Weather Office info here in Canada as it's more accurate and local than The Weather Network, which is paid for. It just doesn't have as many gimmicks, but then they don't whore you for adverts by being inaccurate enough to keep you checking back.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#137

Post by rhplus »

TheRevoltingX wrote: post #117
jellicle wrote: post #62

Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. F…

Heh, I feel bad for any products you spearhead. Your definition of good quality is poor. I am a professional Android developer. Something like this wouldn't take more than a day. It's a piece of cake. What I suspect happened here is that the project was outsourced. These silly people tried to save money by hiring a foreigner to talk to another foreigner developer and get the app developed. To work on and a deliver a…

I think your rant against foreign developers is completely out of place here.

There's no evidence to suggest that this application was off-shored, unless you've found something to the contrary. Quite clearly, the two companies you cite are located in Massachusetts and Virginia and both companies are staffed by developers in the US.

http://www.erg.com/careers/index.asp http://mkeefe.com/

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#138

Post by rukkyg »

feralchimp wrote: post #84
jellicle wrote: post #62

Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. F…

I was actually just going to mention this. With all of the in-bundle resource differences required for two iPhone resolutions, different .xibs for iPad, etc, we're talking about much more than 6 hours worth of work here. The source code (for iOS, at least) is also pretty clean and decently commented for what it is. $96k is still outrageous, but for work-for-hire it's off by a factor of 2-5 rather than a factor of 10.…

Source is pretty clean? I don't even have to open the files to see that the class names aren't even capitalized. That's like Java style 101.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#139

Post by bigiain »

electromagnetic wrote: post #136
feralchimp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually just going to mention this. With all of the in-bundle resource differences required for two iPhone resolutions, different .xibs for iPad, etc, we're talking about much more than 6 hours worth of work here. The source code (for iOS, at least) is also pretty clean and decently commented for what it is. $96k is still outrageous, but for work-for-hire it's off by a factor of 2-5 rather than a factor of 10.…

> but for work-for-hire it's off by a factor of 2-5 rather than a factor of 10. I know with my work, when we're doing construction contracts with the municipal governments we charge at least double and we're the most expensive in the area to begin with (we have guys who've been employed for 20+ years, rather than guys who've been employed for the last 9 months). So I'd say it's probably on-target for a government con…

I'll add here too - there's a _lot_ of other work besides the actual coding that goes into getting a piece of software sold to a customer like a government department or big corporation. Even if the "6 hour" estimate for development time is within half an order of magnitude of being correct, there's a great deal of work needed to be done both before and after that to make the sale work.

How do you know what code to write in those 6 hours? How did you even know there was an opportunity? What are the requirements? Is there a spec? How is the customer assured you are capable of delivering what they need? Does the customer even know what they need? Is what they _think_ they need even possible? How will you prove you've delivered what they asked for? Is there a need to user acceptance testing, and if so who's going to write the tests and who's going to do the testing? Are there any safety/copyright/legal implications about what the software displays? Who's ultimately responsible for those? Who need indemnifying or insurance to cover that? Is there any backend service required in addition to the mobile app? Who's building/maintaining/paying for that? Who's responsible for "fixing" the app if a 3rd party backend the app relies on changes or goes away? Does the customer require copyright ownership of the app source code? Are there 3rd party licenced libraries you're going to use that you don't have enough rights over to be able to give/sell the copyright to the customer? Who's going to spend the time figuring out and explaining to the customer exactly which bits of the source code they do and don't own? Are there any patent issues relating to the problem being solved? Are you _sure?_ Who's "on the hook" for patent infringement if something comes to light later? Who's doing the UI/UX/graphic design? How many iterations through the customers approval process will need to be done? What are the customers turnaround times on those approvals and who at the customer has the authority to ultimately sign off on things? What documentation is required? Who's writing that? What training is required? Who's doing that? What ongoing support is required? Who's doing that?

I think sometime developers fail to understand just how much _business_ stuff needs to happen before and after they write their code. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that in the _best_ case, a project like this with "6 hours of development" also required 4 or 5 times as many hours to get the deal done. I could also very easily see the team stalled for a week or two waiting on approval/signoff, and if your 6 hours of development turns into two weeks where you (or a colleague) couldn't do other work 'cause you're chasing answers, decisions, or approval from the client - a factor of 10 between the "actual coding time" cost and the project cost starts to seem positively reasonable.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#140

Post by TheRevoltingX »

rhplus wrote: post #137
TheRevoltingX wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I feel bad for any products you spearhead. Your definition of good quality is poor. I am a professional Android developer. Something like this wouldn't take more than a day. It's a piece of cake. What I suspect happened here is that the project was outsourced. These silly people tried to save money by hiring a foreigner to talk to another foreigner developer and get the app developed. To work on and a deliver a…

I think your rant against foreign developers is completely out of place here. There's no evidence to suggest that this application was off-shored, unless you've found something to the contrary. Quite clearly, the two companies you cite are located in Massachusetts and Virginia and both companies are staffed by developers in the US. http://www.erg.com/careers/index.asp http://mkeefe.com/

My original point is that the process of bidding and having people who don't care about a project spear head it.

I suspected it was offshored because I smelled the rot, but looks like I was wrong. It was just the victim of the broken process.

That's what my rant is really about, not necessarily against foreigners. It's just that the process produces broken/poor software.

I'm not saying that it's true for every company, but it was true for CAT.

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