7 ms·

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-initiate

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. Finally you must provide documentation. Ready? Go! Keep track of your hours... I installed the app. It works fine. Responsive, fast, no problems. I have two minor quibbles with the design, but they are minor. Does what it says on the box. Not an exciting piece of software, but... Has even one person commenting on this thread installed it except me? No? Didn't think so. "It's a piece of crap" says a highly self-interested blogger, and Hacker News jumps on that like starving dogs on Alpo.

rweba 15y ago
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 stuff involved that I don't know about. And lets not forget some overhead to pay for the office and some profit. It probably ends up being a few hundred man hours once you account for everything. So yeah - it could most likely be cheaper or better, but the pitchfork attitude is probably going too far.
- balsam 15y ago
  Looks to me like there's room for someone to come in and make a buck off "AIs" that can handle the regulations, reports and meetings efficiently.
  - civilian 15y ago
    Do you really want to be managed by an AI?
    - freehunter 15y ago
      Artificial intelligence would be better than no intelligence. At least you know it'd be following a logical set of rules.
      - balsam 15y ago
        I was thinking more of AI-as-a-Service for software companies that wish to contract with Governments. Traditionally, this could be known as a "lawyer". Does Palantir consider this too silly, for instance.
- re_todd 15y ago
  Good perspective, at first I was outraged, but then knowing the way government works, this could have easily been $10 million.
adestefan 15y ago
Don't forget you need to be Section 508 compliant,abide by a long listing of other requirements and make sure you fill out all the documentation saying you did those things.
shareme 15y ago
that is why HN is so entertaining to read as I did not realize there were this many clueless idiots :)
- nobody314159265 15y ago
  > I did not realize there were this many clueless idiots You didn't? Why do you think we need to make the switch to IPV6?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
tomlin 15y ago
> and Hacker News jumps on that like starving dogs on Alpo. I couldn't help but note that the title contains Useless Android Application, although the article indicates that the total cost of $200,000 was spent on Android, iPhone and BB (not completed) versions. I won't go as far as calling it linkbait, but if I ever wrote an article about an app I didn't like and it was available on Android, I now know a way to get more traffic if I were to submit to HN.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Yeah, that was a pretty cheap shot. The whole thing comes off as a manufactured controversy; It's worth something to OSHA just to know whether they are reaching the general public via this method or whether they're better off sticking with the existing approach of requiring employers to display posters. I'm having a hard time feeling outraged over the extra 0.06 cents this is going to cost me and every other American. It's all 'fail early, fail often' here on HN until the government does so, then failure and experimentation are considered intolerable inefficiencies. This particular project seems like a bit of a miss, but even simple statistics can be enormously useful for some people: http://explore.data.gov/catalog/apps/ http://explore.data.gov/catalog/apps/
  - freehunter 15y ago
    >It's all 'fail early, fail often' here on HN until the government does so, then failure and experimentation are considered intolerable inefficiencies. I don't _want_ my government to fail early and fail often. I don't _want_ them to experiment. I want stability, I want them to be on this side of the bleeding edge, I want them to be a generation behind. When a startup takes this approach, the risk v reward is shared between the few people who sat down and decided that risk is worth taking. When the government does it, that risk is shared amongst the entire country, many of whom never wanted and could never benefit from the reward. Are government smartphone apps a useful idea? Why sure they are. I'd be willing to put my tax money towards the development of technologies that can improve my life. But I'd like them to be worth the money. Not sometimes, but _every_ time, or at least damn close to every time. What I'd really rather see is the government investing in an open API for their tools and information and letting the private developers wrap around them, presenting the information in a way that is useful to a wider variety of people. The developers stand to make money from the $0.99 sale of the app, and the government gets to have the information available to the people who need to see it.
feralchimp 15y ago
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. Nevertheless, it's crap. The quality of the constructed software is irrelevant because the feature set is a no-op. It's a graphical front end for a NOAA web service that returns temperature and humidity. If the public isn't living and breathing the content of that NOAA web service, maybe it's because there's no graphical tool to access it, but maybe it's because they have 50,000 other ways to determine temperature and humidity at their current location. Like, say, existing in a conscious state at their current location.
- betterth 15y ago
  >but maybe it's because they have 50,000 other ways to determine temperature and humidity at their current location. Like, say, existing in a conscious state at their current location. Most of us can say "it's cold" or "it's humid" -- but we rely on more mature data services so we can know exactly how cold or how humid it might be... You've essentially just argued that NOAA stat tracking is pointless because "you can stick your head out of a window".
  - feralchimp 15y ago
    >You've essentially just argued that NOAA stat tracking is pointless because "you can stick your head out of a window". I've argued that the translation and re-display of these particular NOAA stats on a smartphone, for the viewer's location, is pointless because I can stick my head out of a window. When operating an aircraft, I love NOAA stat tracking. I think NOAA and the National Weather Service are probably two of the best deals the American public can ever expect to get for their money.
- electromagnetic 15y ago
  > 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.
Jacquass12321 15y ago
Did you look at the source code? At all? it took two minutes to find a bug in the application just messing around with it. The application is supposed to display warnings if your temperature or relative humidity is outside of acceptable ranges. However if you use the get current or get max buttons, it skips these warnings and calculates the Heat Index anyways, displaying a value it shouldn't be providing with no warning.
alphamale3000 15y ago
On HN, you don't RTFA, you RTFC.
TheRevoltingX 15y ago
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 product these foreigners know nothing about. A little while ago I had a little financial situation and was forced to take some cheap freelance projects. I was quickly picked up by a foreign recruiter and I took a couple of jobs really cheap. At the rate the Indian developers would charge. I had to work on an app that was commissioned by CAT. The app was a paving calculator that was to be used by their employees. This was seriously some of the worse source code I have ever seen. I took my own personal time to rewrite the project. I also redid all the calculations and found various mistakes everywhere. I asked them to send me all the docs and had to redo everything from the ground up because these people were plain incompetent. For about a couple weeks work I charged $300 dollars. I didn't care about the money, I just didn't want any of our road workers using a shitty and potentially dangerous application. Correct results are absolutely critical in any non-trivial application. Acceptance of incorrect results just shows how low the quality grade is. FYI, I'm looking at the source, and it's pretty basic. Nothing a high school student couldn't write. It looks like the company that made this was: http://pixelbitcreative.com/ http://pixelbitcreative.com/ also: http://erg.com/ http://erg.com/ Lol, they don't even have a real site yet they specialize in Web Development. What a joke.
- j-kidd 15y ago
  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 everywhere.
  - TheRevoltingX 15y ago
    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 other developer did the best he could, and the recruiter too. The process was broken from the beginning. They wrote really bad documentation, and incorrect formulas. The source was bad, but it took much longer to get all the formulas properly documented and figured out.
rseymour 15y ago
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/ 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.
ragmondo 15y ago
Agreed - but it wasn't 2 hours for android app coding, it was 100k for : conceptualization, requirements analysis, content development, clearance, translation, programming and software design (including coordination ....) testing, accessability requirements, documentation and (FINALLY) implementation. Even if you were to divvy that up evenly, it would make the implementation 10% of the cost.. about 10k.. which is pretty cheap on a "work for hire" basis of a software house for a software developer. Now I look at this, it's actually quite cheap !!

rweba 15y ago

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 stuff involved that I don't know about. And lets not forget some overhead to pay for the office and some profit. It probably ends up being a few hundred man hours once you account for everything. So yeah - it could most likely be cheaper or better, but the pitchfork attitude is probably going too far.

balsam 15y ago
Looks to me like there's room for someone to come in and make a buck off "AIs" that can handle the regulations, reports and meetings efficiently.
- civilian 15y ago
  Do you really want to be managed by an AI?
  - freehunter 15y ago
    Artificial intelligence would be better than no intelligence. At least you know it'd be following a logical set of rules.
    - balsam 15y ago
      I was thinking more of AI-as-a-Service for software companies that wish to contract with Governments. Traditionally, this could be known as a "lawyer". Does Palantir consider this too silly, for instance.
re_todd 15y ago
Good perspective, at first I was outraged, but then knowing the way government works, this could have easily been $10 million.

adestefan 15y ago

Don't forget you need to be Section 508 compliant,abide by a long listing of other requirements and make sure you fill out all the documentation saying you did those things.

shareme 15y ago

that is why HN is so entertaining to read as I did not realize there were this many clueless idiots :)

nobody314159265 15y ago
> I did not realize there were this many clueless idiots You didn't? Why do you think we need to make the switch to IPV6?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

tomlin 15y ago

> and Hacker News jumps on that like starving dogs on Alpo. I couldn't help but note that the title contains Useless Android Application, although the article indicates that the total cost of $200,000 was spent on Android, iPhone and BB (not completed) versions. I won't go as far as calling it linkbait, but if I ever wrote an article about an app I didn't like and it was available on Android, I now know a way to get more traffic if I were to submit to HN.

anigbrowl 15y ago
Yeah, that was a pretty cheap shot. The whole thing comes off as a manufactured controversy; It's worth something to OSHA just to know whether they are reaching the general public via this method or whether they're better off sticking with the existing approach of requiring employers to display posters. I'm having a hard time feeling outraged over the extra 0.06 cents this is going to cost me and every other American. It's all 'fail early, fail often' here on HN until the government does so, then failure and experimentation are considered intolerable inefficiencies. This particular project seems like a bit of a miss, but even simple statistics can be enormously useful for some people: http://explore.data.gov/catalog/apps/ http://explore.data.gov/catalog/apps/
- freehunter 15y ago
  >It's all 'fail early, fail often' here on HN until the government does so, then failure and experimentation are considered intolerable inefficiencies. I don't _want_ my government to fail early and fail often. I don't _want_ them to experiment. I want stability, I want them to be on this side of the bleeding edge, I want them to be a generation behind. When a startup takes this approach, the risk v reward is shared between the few people who sat down and decided that risk is worth taking. When the government does it, that risk is shared amongst the entire country, many of whom never wanted and could never benefit from the reward. Are government smartphone apps a useful idea? Why sure they are. I'd be willing to put my tax money towards the development of technologies that can improve my life. But I'd like them to be worth the money. Not sometimes, but _every_ time, or at least damn close to every time. What I'd really rather see is the government investing in an open API for their tools and information and letting the private developers wrap around them, presenting the information in a way that is useful to a wider variety of people. The developers stand to make money from the $0.99 sale of the app, and the government gets to have the information available to the people who need to see it.

feralchimp 15y ago

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. Nevertheless, it's crap. The quality of the constructed software is irrelevant because the feature set is a no-op. It's a graphical front end for a NOAA web service that returns temperature and humidity. If the public isn't living and breathing the content of that NOAA web service, maybe it's because there's no graphical tool to access it, but maybe it's because they have 50,000 other ways to determine temperature and humidity at their current location. Like, say, existing in a conscious state at their current location.

betterth 15y ago
>but maybe it's because they have 50,000 other ways to determine temperature and humidity at their current location. Like, say, existing in a conscious state at their current location. Most of us can say "it's cold" or "it's humid" -- but we rely on more mature data services so we can know exactly how cold or how humid it might be... You've essentially just argued that NOAA stat tracking is pointless because "you can stick your head out of a window".
- feralchimp 15y ago
  >You've essentially just argued that NOAA stat tracking is pointless because "you can stick your head out of a window". I've argued that the translation and re-display of these particular NOAA stats on a smartphone, for the viewer's location, is pointless because I can stick my head out of a window. When operating an aircraft, I love NOAA stat tracking. I think NOAA and the National Weather Service are probably two of the best deals the American public can ever expect to get for their money.
electromagnetic 15y ago
> 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.

Jacquass12321 15y ago

Did you look at the source code? At all? it took two minutes to find a bug in the application just messing around with it. The application is supposed to display warnings if your temperature or relative humidity is outside of acceptable ranges. However if you use the get current or get max buttons, it skips these warnings and calculates the Heat Index anyways, displaying a value it shouldn't be providing with no warning.

alphamale3000 15y ago

On HN, you don't RTFA, you RTFC.

TheRevoltingX 15y ago

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 product these foreigners know nothing about. A little while ago I had a little financial situation and was forced to take some cheap freelance projects. I was quickly picked up by a foreign recruiter and I took a couple of jobs really cheap. At the rate the Indian developers would charge. I had to work on an app that was commissioned by CAT. The app was a paving calculator that was to be used by their employees. This was seriously some of the worse source code I have ever seen. I took my own personal time to rewrite the project. I also redid all the calculations and found various mistakes everywhere. I asked them to send me all the docs and had to redo everything from the ground up because these people were plain incompetent. For about a couple weeks work I charged $300 dollars. I didn't care about the money, I just didn't want any of our road workers using a shitty and potentially dangerous application. Correct results are absolutely critical in any non-trivial application. Acceptance of incorrect results just shows how low the quality grade is. FYI, I'm looking at the source, and it's pretty basic. Nothing a high school student couldn't write. It looks like the company that made this was: http://pixelbitcreative.com/ http://pixelbitcreative.com/ also: http://erg.com/ http://erg.com/ Lol, they don't even have a real site yet they specialize in Web Development. What a joke.

j-kidd 15y ago
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 everywhere.
- TheRevoltingX 15y ago
  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 other developer did the best he could, and the recruiter too. The process was broken from the beginning. They wrote really bad documentation, and incorrect formulas. The source was bad, but it took much longer to get all the formulas properly documented and figured out.

rseymour 15y ago

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/ 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.

ragmondo 15y ago

Agreed - but it wasn't 2 hours for android app coding, it was 100k for : conceptualization, requirements analysis, content development, clearance, translation, programming and software design (including coordination ....) testing, accessability requirements, documentation and (FINALLY) implementation. Even if you were to divvy that up evenly, it would make the implementation 10% of the cost.. about 10k.. which is pretty cheap on a "work for hire" basis of a software house for a software developer. Now I look at this, it's actually quite cheap !!