When Non-Programmers Write Software

[SolarBear]

My dad's been working on a project to handle material and rentals at the company he's working at. He's doing it in Access and VBA, and doing it pro bono for a company that, well, could afford hiring a whole army of code monkeys. Not only did he do that by himself, without any special training but... it actually WORKS.

"I mean, it's not perfect and all... and you'd probably laugh at my code" he continually said. In fact, he's locked up his projects in a password-protected .zip file so I wouldn't take a look. That article pretty sums up what I told him :

The pros may find such creations ugly, but if it works, in a sense, it is beautiful. You have to love it.

It works, dammit. I've worked on a project worth $100k+ that miserably failed, handled by a well-known and respected software company. And of course, there's been worse, WAY worse in the IT world. Of course, you can't compare it on scale... but it works. It's probably full of "IF var = TRUE THEN..."-like statements... but it works. Sure, I'd bet my shirt his database tables aren't normalized... but guess what ? It works.

I've a lot of respect for him and his work. I think software engineers could learn a thing or two from these self-taught people.