
Ask HN: How often would you pay someone on a per-snippet basis? - methochris
I have an idea for a project that is something like a mix between StackOverflow and a job board. Like you post a request for a chunk of code in whatever language&#x2F;framework to do some particular thing and say how much you are willing to pay for it. They first person to produce an answer you are happy with gets your money.<p>Should I make this?
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afarrell
I don't think I would ever do this. The hard part is decomposing a business
goal into the code-to-be-written and then taking that and planning the overall
structure.

If I didn't have colleagues I could email, I could maybe see myself paying a
retainer to be able to unblock myself with a weird quirk of a domain/toolset?

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austinjp
I don't think it would be hugely useful, since each piece of code exists in a
unique ecosystem. Think about libraries, dependencies, OS versions, etc.
Therefore no guarantees would be possible, therefore there would be arguments
over paying-up.

However... If you extended it to defined "micro-projects", perhaps that might
work better. This would require some basic specs from those requesting the
work. What version of X, what OS exactly, etc etc. Plus a reasonable
description of what success looks like (and what failure looks like).

Not sure you could achieve that.

Classic tension: too lightweight and it won't work; but adding
features/requirements until it _does_ work will make the process too
heavyweight to be appealing.

Solve that tension and you have a product. Not sure you'd make any money from
it though :)

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muzani
I have paid people to do it for me. Things like a camera, marker for Google
Maps, YouTube integration into an app. Sometimes I just want someone to Google
and test solutions for me, especially where it's poorly documented.

But this was great when I had less experience. As someone more senior, I can
code faster than I can outsource, and reading code is harder than writing. The
tech and docs have improved a lot since then. And I've had a lot of bad
experiences recently which made me stop.

I would also strongly oppose "first to produce an answer". Good answers take
time and rewarding speed will encourage sloppy, buggy answers, some of which
ignore the requirements. It also discourages detail oriented people from
starting in the first place.

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kasey_junk
Never. Code snippets have _negative_ value. I want to remove them usually.

The job of software devs is not to create code, its to translate business
solutions into software. Integrating a bunch of dissimilar code snippets is
likely to make that harder.

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AznHisoka
exactly. even code integrated into a codebase has negative value if you have a
hard reviewing it, testing it and understanding what it does.

