Making money out of software.

Some of us started writing code recently, most of us started a while ago, and some of us started before that.

I started writing code seriously - for money - about 6 years ago; I'd been doing a bit before that, but not much.  Back then I could impress people by connecting to MS Access, building a shopping cart with a checkout wizard and throw in a bit of javascript.  Heck, back then I even dabbled with Photoshop (courtesy of some cool tutorials on the Webmonkey site [ http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/ ])

These days (of course) it's a different story.  Suddenly, I'm expected to make money out of this doing this stuff; man apparently I have to do enough to justify billing a client for 30 odd hours worth per week!!!

I don't remember when it changed exactly... one minute I was *close* to perfecting a TimeMachine built solely using javascript, the next minute I can't write a line of code without a:

• Functional Specification
• Technical Specification
• Customer sign-off on the Planning stage
• Customer sign-off on the Envisioning stage
• A fully working D.A.L.
• ...

I cannot remember exactly when my carefree existance changed.  I think that it was shortly after I opened Code Complete and read those famous words.... "Welcome to Software Construction"

Cya...

 "There was beer and it
  was good.
  We drank the beer"

 - Ernest Hemmingway