Riding across bumpy ground.

It is New Years Eve down under, and no better time to reflect on the past year than now.

It is a hot and muggy day, some might say this is how they feel 2008 has been. Hot under the financial blowtorch and feeling like you have been a little mugged.

Has it torrid for you? I can only sum up my year and by obvious extension the year @ireckon.

For me 2008 has been a big learning year. Yes even after running the good ship ‘ireckon’ for 10 years this year, I still encounter many learning experiences if not daily certainly weekly.

Learning is good right? Of course it is. The opposite is to sit in your cocoon and believe you know it all, or do nothing and hide from the experience that is life. Moreover, while the road is oftentimes bumpy and many times, you are heading up steep hills, when you hit the crest and then sail down the other side, breeze in your hair, it is always worth it!

So what have I learned this year? Here is 14 things which are a snapshot of what I have learned (in no particular order):

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There are no ‘zero cost’ items in web development

This seems to be my ‘theme de mois’ at present. Perhaps it has come from a realisation that it is very easy in web development to include a few extras and people miss the actual value of them.

A challenge while managing and building web applications, and sites, is to ensure everything is in the specification upfront so there are no extra charges, or included freebies (gold plating). So far, in the last 12 years of this, I have found that to be near impossible to be 100% correct, if the project is large and complex.

I am starting to use the above phrase more and more in presentations, and during developments, to make sure that everyone realises, time still equals money even on the web. Also many people don’t realise the physical cost of hosting and bandwidth in Australia (don’t get me start on that one or Sol). There is a feeling that because open source exists, and you can access freeware and many code snippets, that everything on the web can be done for nothing.

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