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Dumb question — you bill for this “non-programming value-added” work, right? Even jumping into a truck for a few hours? I fully understand the value in “doing

• mgkimsal 9y ago
  This gets back to "hourly" vs other type of billing. In some cases, that sort of "learning" work (riding in a truck, visiting a site) may be part of a sales process, and not directly billed for. In some cases, it might be part of a paid review/analysis prior to any formal work being done. > occasionally have to fight the feeling that I need to be coding as much as possible. Fight that as much as possible. The more you learn about the entire project/deliverables/system/needs, the more you'll find there's less code to write, or the initial code can be built for more optimal reuse, etc. That doesn't necessarily contradict writing initial code up front, but very much prototype stuff early on. I always wish I'd done more prototyping - faked UI screens with some action buttons, etc. - just to get something in peoples' hands. Almost everyone reacts better to stuff they can touch and use (even with fake data) vs abstract data and/or stuff that's far removed from the end product.