8 ms·

Most of these seem to be very on the side of "I'm a company", so as a sole developer what I like to do for clients is implementing sockets into their apps. Add

by Zyst 10y ago

Most of these seem to be very on the side of "I'm a company", so as a sole developer what I like to do for clients is implementing sockets into their apps. Adding sockets for, say, the 3 newest logs they get in real time. Or if they have anything that maps to a graph/app-overview just make sure that will always update in real time. It's not a huge time investment for me. Customers usually never request it specifically. But I've found they are blown away when they see how everything is updated in real time. It just makes the whole thing feel 'alive'. Another thing which I don't personally love, but I do because I understand industries have differences is just exporting whatever can be exported into .csv files or .xls files where applicable. All in all, I work in consulting. The code I write is meant to make the life of people easier, I want to make sure they get that when possible. A big part of why I'm able to do this is that I have a lot of creative freedom to do whatever I want so long as I'm getting stuff shipped. So huzzah for comprehensive management as well!

majewsky 10y ago
> Another thing which I don't personally love, but I do because I understand industries have differences is just exporting whatever can be exported into .csv files or .xls files where applicable. Working on an in-house application, this has been one of the most common types of requests. "Can we add this field here to the CSV export?" It's a three-minute task for me, but a huge time-saver for the manager of the team using the application and thus highly appreciated.
- ape4 10y ago
  But then exporting the CSV into Excel and doing something becomes part of the workflow. That could possibly be better done in the application.
  - jenkstom 10y ago
    Often it already is. Export from here, import to there. SaaS is more and more common, so the glue needs to get better.
  - Cerium 10y ago
    You can't stop it. If you don't have export then you will hear about your clients copying and pasting to Excel. Much better to add a csv export and high-res download button for all charts and graphs. By the way, I've had lots of success with chart downloading by simply copying the svg element into a request to an svg to png converter.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Not unless your application aims to encompass the entirety of running a business. Otherwise it's just plain user-hostile greed. Personally, I do love whenever applications allow to export data and lack of such feature is IMO strong negative.
    - ape4 10y ago
      You are right I don't want to be user-hostile greedy. Its a fine line.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - majewsky 10y ago
      It's also much more efficient for me as a developer to offer an export interface instead of having to implement all the reporting functionality myself.
muse900 10y ago
quite nice yes, you always have to think people that will monitor statistics etc and how long it will take them to do so. If you can make their life a lot easier thats a + and of course they'll appreciate it.
mathw 10y ago
Oh gosh yes. Companies love their CSV exports! I think the reason is that it lets them make glue - they can take data from something, play with it, analyse it, produce graphs, using tools they understand (almost invariably Excel), and sometimes then import into another system. Yes, my employer's customers like their CSV imports too. If you're looking at a big data entry feature and they ask you how the interface works and you say "you give it a CSV file with these columns", they're happy.
- vog 10y ago
  You're lucky. We always try to explain that CSV is a mostly-clean format while XLS and XLSX are a mess. Yet, most of the time customers insist on XLS export, and we are happy if they at least acccept XLSX instead.
  - jerf 10y ago
    But CSV isn't a mostly clean format. It's a collection of dozens of formats, some of them clean, some of them not, and with no way of labeling which one of the dozens you have in the file itself. Whereas XLS and XLSX, for all their binary cruft, are at least capable of unambiguously (AFAIK) representing, say, a string with a quote and a newline in it. (If there are encoding issues, well, same with CSV.) I suspect you're thinking of something like "CSV as outputted by Excel with the default settings", which may be clean and unambiguous, but is far from the only CSV in the world. For that reason (and I'm just saying this generally, not targeted at the comment I'm replying to), always use the most mature CSV output library you can find for your stack. Never write your own CSV export code by bashing strings together unless you have no other choice because you're working in some stack that doesn't have or can't use existing CSV libraries. (You can ignore the RFC for CSV too; it's not "wrong", it's just one particular flavor that was declared long after the horses had left the barn, learned to form a horse civilization, discovered the atom bomb and bombed themselves back to being plain horses again. It barely rises to the level of being "advisory" in practice.)
    - manyxcxi 10y ago
      XLS and XLSX are neither clear nor unambiguous and I would take 12 CSV formats over either any day. I actually haven't ever met anyone who seriously had to extract data from XLS/X frequently that didn't revile it for its ambiguities. Not to mention the ways that the application munges the user input prior to saving it, leaving the biggest ambiguity of all, what the heck is ACTUALLY in that cell. EDIT: I will add that EXPORTING to XLS/X is usually quite straightforward and makes users happier than getting a CSV often times. Until they start wanting to get crazy with template design and then you get into Excel styling application and you're back to hating it all over again.
raverbashing 10y ago
How would you export it to xls? ActiveX Excel controller ("in my time this was called COM", etc)? Open source library?
- inopinatus 10y ago
  For anyone using Ruby I'd recommend the (open-source) axlsx gem, I've had great results being able to treat Excel generation like I'm rendering a view.
  - rubyfan 10y ago
    I've had luck with that one too for the times I actually need a real Excel file.
- michaelmior 10y ago
  tablib[0] is one option for Python. There are quite a few libraries that handle export. Excel files (and other Office) file formats are just zip files containing XML. For a while now, this has been an open standard[1]. [0] https://github.com/kennethreitz/tablib https://github.com/kennethreitz/tablib [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rgacote 10y ago
    I've found the Python pyexcel library to be the most flexible option to read/write Excel files. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyexcel/0.0.9 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyexcel/0.0.9
    - michaelmior 10y ago
      Curious if you've tried tablib. I haven't used either, but knowing kenneth_reitz tablib is quality :)
pknerd 10y ago
+1 for CSV export.
swalsh 10y ago
I'm thinking about starting a consulting company next year. I've been in an engineering role for over 10 years, but I really want to move into a role where I'm not selling my time in exchange for code, but rather selling the value my code creates. I'm curious how you got your first few "gigs". What should the sales process actually look like? Did you cold call, or did you have enough established relationships first? How do you typically agree on a contract, has the customer come to you with needs, or did you ask them for problems first and propose some solutions, and they agreed to them?
- thirdreplicator 10y ago
  If you really want to reap the value your code creates start an internet-like business with the code that you write. All the value is yours! :)
- Fortative 10y ago
  The first gig came to me. The second was a result of the first. And it goes on from there. If you network then someone will approach you to help them with some code. Do a great job and the second will start. After you do a few, then worry about sales and marketing.
rch 10y ago
For large datasets I've switched to using HDF5 files. They are easy to use from Matlab and a few other applications engineers typically have already.
roadnottaken 10y ago
Can you say a little-more about the "sockets"? How do you implement this? I'm not even sure exactly what you mean, do you have an example? It sounds like a fun feature to implement so I'd love to hear more. Thanks
- bestows 10y ago
  Have a look into websockets. They are used to create an always open connection between the client and server. Meaning your application will not need to continually poll the server for updates.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    For notification type stuff (i.e. predominantly one way, server > client) Server Sent Events/EventSource is IMO a simpler, more appropriate solution: It works over regular HTTP and has a built in method to tell the server the last seen message (i.e. to allow replaying old messages), and exposes the event type (i.e. the event: field in the event block sent from the server) for use with addEventListener in the browser. It's supported by all non-MS browsers, and because it works over regular HTTP, it can be polyfilled in IE/Edge using long polling XHR.
ffjffsfr 10y ago
> implementing sockets into their apps. are you talking about websockets for web apps? It's not always easy to implement and it requires some extra libraries and deployment setups. Is it really that easy to add for you as giving client extra candy in post order?

by Zyst 10y ago

majewsky 10y ago

> Another thing which I don't personally love, but I do because I understand industries have differences is just exporting whatever can be exported into .csv files or .xls files where applicable. Working on an in-house application, this has been one of the most common types of requests. "Can we add this field here to the CSV export?" It's a three-minute task for me, but a huge time-saver for the manager of the team using the application and thus highly appreciated.

ape4 10y ago
But then exporting the CSV into Excel and doing something becomes part of the workflow. That could possibly be better done in the application.
- jenkstom 10y ago
  Often it already is. Export from here, import to there. SaaS is more and more common, so the glue needs to get better.
- Cerium 10y ago
  You can't stop it. If you don't have export then you will hear about your clients copying and pasting to Excel. Much better to add a csv export and high-res download button for all charts and graphs. By the way, I've had lots of success with chart downloading by simply copying the svg element into a request to an svg to png converter.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Not unless your application aims to encompass the entirety of running a business. Otherwise it's just plain user-hostile greed. Personally, I do love whenever applications allow to export data and lack of such feature is IMO strong negative.
  - ape4 10y ago
    You are right I don't want to be user-hostile greedy. Its a fine line.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - majewsky 10y ago
    It's also much more efficient for me as a developer to offer an export interface instead of having to implement all the reporting functionality myself.

muse900 10y ago

quite nice yes, you always have to think people that will monitor statistics etc and how long it will take them to do so. If you can make their life a lot easier thats a + and of course they'll appreciate it.

mathw 10y ago

Oh gosh yes. Companies love their CSV exports! I think the reason is that it lets them make glue - they can take data from something, play with it, analyse it, produce graphs, using tools they understand (almost invariably Excel), and sometimes then import into another system. Yes, my employer's customers like their CSV imports too. If you're looking at a big data entry feature and they ask you how the interface works and you say "you give it a CSV file with these columns", they're happy.

vog 10y ago
You're lucky. We always try to explain that CSV is a mostly-clean format while XLS and XLSX are a mess. Yet, most of the time customers insist on XLS export, and we are happy if they at least acccept XLSX instead.
- jerf 10y ago
  But CSV isn't a mostly clean format. It's a collection of dozens of formats, some of them clean, some of them not, and with no way of labeling which one of the dozens you have in the file itself. Whereas XLS and XLSX, for all their binary cruft, are at least capable of unambiguously (AFAIK) representing, say, a string with a quote and a newline in it. (If there are encoding issues, well, same with CSV.) I suspect you're thinking of something like "CSV as outputted by Excel with the default settings", which may be clean and unambiguous, but is far from the only CSV in the world. For that reason (and I'm just saying this generally, not targeted at the comment I'm replying to), always use the most mature CSV output library you can find for your stack. Never write your own CSV export code by bashing strings together unless you have no other choice because you're working in some stack that doesn't have or can't use existing CSV libraries. (You can ignore the RFC for CSV too; it's not "wrong", it's just one particular flavor that was declared long after the horses had left the barn, learned to form a horse civilization, discovered the atom bomb and bombed themselves back to being plain horses again. It barely rises to the level of being "advisory" in practice.)
  - manyxcxi 10y ago
    XLS and XLSX are neither clear nor unambiguous and I would take 12 CSV formats over either any day. I actually haven't ever met anyone who seriously had to extract data from XLS/X frequently that didn't revile it for its ambiguities. Not to mention the ways that the application munges the user input prior to saving it, leaving the biggest ambiguity of all, what the heck is ACTUALLY in that cell. EDIT: I will add that EXPORTING to XLS/X is usually quite straightforward and makes users happier than getting a CSV often times. Until they start wanting to get crazy with template design and then you get into Excel styling application and you're back to hating it all over again.

raverbashing 10y ago

How would you export it to xls? ActiveX Excel controller ("in my time this was called COM", etc)? Open source library?

inopinatus 10y ago
For anyone using Ruby I'd recommend the (open-source) axlsx gem, I've had great results being able to treat Excel generation like I'm rendering a view.
- rubyfan 10y ago
  I've had luck with that one too for the times I actually need a real Excel file.
michaelmior 10y ago
tablib[0] is one option for Python. There are quite a few libraries that handle export. Excel files (and other Office) file formats are just zip files containing XML. For a while now, this has been an open standard[1]. [0] https://github.com/kennethreitz/tablib https://github.com/kennethreitz/tablib [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rgacote 10y ago
  I've found the Python pyexcel library to be the most flexible option to read/write Excel files. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyexcel/0.0.9 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyexcel/0.0.9
  - michaelmior 10y ago
    Curious if you've tried tablib. I haven't used either, but knowing kenneth_reitz tablib is quality :)

pknerd 10y ago

+1 for CSV export.

swalsh 10y ago

I'm thinking about starting a consulting company next year. I've been in an engineering role for over 10 years, but I really want to move into a role where I'm not selling my time in exchange for code, but rather selling the value my code creates. I'm curious how you got your first few "gigs". What should the sales process actually look like? Did you cold call, or did you have enough established relationships first? How do you typically agree on a contract, has the customer come to you with needs, or did you ask them for problems first and propose some solutions, and they agreed to them?

thirdreplicator 10y ago
If you really want to reap the value your code creates start an internet-like business with the code that you write. All the value is yours! :)
Fortative 10y ago
The first gig came to me. The second was a result of the first. And it goes on from there. If you network then someone will approach you to help them with some code. Do a great job and the second will start. After you do a few, then worry about sales and marketing.

rch 10y ago

For large datasets I've switched to using HDF5 files. They are easy to use from Matlab and a few other applications engineers typically have already.

roadnottaken 10y ago

Can you say a little-more about the "sockets"? How do you implement this? I'm not even sure exactly what you mean, do you have an example? It sounds like a fun feature to implement so I'd love to hear more. Thanks

bestows 10y ago
Have a look into websockets. They are used to create an always open connection between the client and server. Meaning your application will not need to continually poll the server for updates.
- stephenr 10y ago
  For notification type stuff (i.e. predominantly one way, server > client) Server Sent Events/EventSource is IMO a simpler, more appropriate solution: It works over regular HTTP and has a built in method to tell the server the last seen message (i.e. to allow replaying old messages), and exposes the event type (i.e. the event: field in the event block sent from the server) for use with addEventListener in the browser. It's supported by all non-MS browsers, and because it works over regular HTTP, it can be polyfilled in IE/Edge using long polling XHR.

ffjffsfr 10y ago

> implementing sockets into their apps. are you talking about websockets for web apps? It's not always easy to implement and it requires some extra libraries and deployment setups. Is it really that easy to add for you as giving client extra candy in post order?