From the article Confessions of a Necromancer: if you have the trust of your client, and s/he has real power, you have done half the work already. don't make

From the article Confessions of a Necromancer: if you have the trust of your client, and s/he has real power, you have done half the work already. don't make stuff and then try to sell it unless you are growing an existing client base. breaking into markets you don't know is probably impossible. Build up trust with the client and sometimes they will reward you for it. When you've paid for all the mistakes, you should know how to do it right the next time. A good specification lets diverse people work together without confusion or conflict. If you can test each piece alone, and you have reliable ways of putting them together, the whole should work. Don't be afraid to charge the real cost. be aware of your expenditure and manage your losses. You can survive a long time with less income if you are in tight control of what you spend. What's good software? Good software is used by people to solve real problems. Good software saves people money, or makes them a profit. It can be buggy, incomplete, undocumented, slow. Yet it can also be good. You can always make good software better yet it's only worth doing when it's already good.