There was a Great Leap Forward, as Mao Zedung used to say back in the day, in my e-commerce site.
My firm of developers – who shall remain nameless for the moment – appear to farm all the coding out to our erstwhile comrades in the former Soviet Union. The execrable, incompetent buffoon Jugoslav has finally been booted off the job and he’s been replaced by the rather more able and sensible Marija. Suddenly, things on the site begin to work as I have pleaded for them to do, yea these many, many days. About eight weeks of them, in fact. One can amble through the site in a logical sequence without once being shunted off into HTML limbo and graphics appear as they are meant to! I can upload stuff! It works!
I profoundly hope that Jugoslav has been exiled to the steppes, where he shivers over a reluctantly smouldering fire of yak dung as he guards the herd with his trusty dog, which has at least a 30-point lead in IQ over him. I fear for the yak herd, though, if Jugoslav is as good at defending them against the wily and rapacious wolf of the steppe as he was at slinging code.
Too early to crow, though, as the shopping basket and checkout softwares still have to be integrated into the site. Will Marija the Muscovite Coding Maiden get it all together by next week or will she follow in Jugo’s footsteps and make a total bollox of it?
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Goodwriterspens's Blog 
But does she write with a Bic?
I don’t care if she writes with a bit of charcoal she plucked from the fire if she carries on the way she’s been doing. After all this time, the fact of someone doing good work on the site goes against one’s expectations. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, when she’ll start messing up the graphics, introducing a few broken links and generally screwing things up. But so far, so good…
Regards,
Deb
Hahahahaaaaaa! Thanks for the laugh. Sorry for your troubles, but it definitely sounds promising.
Things are looking up, CC!
Regards,
Deb
Waiting with baited breath. Ask the chapatii if she has some brothers or sisters that might help her speed things up. Or if she makes it through to the end, offer her a job in the UK or if not we might offer her one in Australia. Our programmers are from the isles of Indochine. They have never seen a computer before, but they say the know how to program.
Hi Rard,
Generally, Russian/Czechoslovakian/Jugoslavian programmers have a good reputation, but I think the company I’m working with is so tight-fisted they’re getting the dregs of the market. I think even I knew more about html than the first developer I had. I’ve never made a website but I used html to write help files back in the Windows 3.11 days. Marija looks as if she might have the basic competence necessary to get the job finished.
I’ll be getting an independent technician to check the site out thoroughly before I sign off on it.
Regards,
Deb