My programmer has been really slow lately and am afraid he might leave the project unfinished soon. The site is build on PHP, how tough is it to have another programmer to continue the project? would I be better off just starting from scratch again?
depend how good he was , if his code was clean and he left comments ... that should be easy for another programmer to continue . if he dident do such thing and made dirty codes that something else ..
Should be easy either way. Starting from scratch would surly cost more. Unless the coding is not efficient/secure, then you are better off recoding the entire thing again. Peace,
learn php. You own your business and should understand each part of it atleast a little. IF you don't, you run the risk of being in a crippling situation, like it sounds like you are. Learn it. S1ick
it also depends on how large the project is, if its fairly small and simple then starting from scratch would be better but other than that, it depends largely on how the previous programmer write his code, if its spaghetti like and does not have any comments at all that will certainly suck for the next programmer
I think serialCoder is right, the entire thing depends on the complexity of the project... If it's a large project, sometimes it's easier for a programmer to start from scratch with his own psuedo-code in mind, then reading and learning another person's coding style...
If he was any good at all, his code would be readable and editable by any other good programmer. Was there a contract involved?
No there is no contract, I don't know any PHP at all so I have no idea if the code is good or not. I need to start learning PHP though, should have done that a long time ago.
from experience, when a programmer starts getting slow and less enthusiast about a project it is generally a precursor to the programmer being a) overwhelmed with the scale b) not interested in the job Either (or both) of these reasons can impact on their code and make things 'messy' when they leave. But be nice to the coder, because we / they can do nasty things like running the whole project through ionCube. And that can REALLY put you behind. Ask if they need help, and keep asking (nicely) and offer your assistance with anything they may need. I know that is bending over backwards, but i find a little ego rubbing goes a long way with performance. =)
If you think he/she's leaving then ask the programmer to leave comments in the code now, uncommented code is a lot more difficult to debug.
There is no way to really answer the question. I've certainly taken on my share of other peoples programming it depends 1) Quality of the new progammer 2) Quality of the code and documentation of the previous programmer 3) Complexity of the project 4) Whether you are using tools that the new programmer is familiar with. IE if you are building a drupal website a programmer who is familiar with drupal will do better than a mambo programmer Their are a lot more issues.
Simple post the project at a freelance programmer websites. Ask the programmer whether he is able to understand the PHP code, if yes sign off NDA and award him the project.