Even though I’m fairly confident as a web developer, there is still one big part of the development process which makes me incredibly nervous still - the hand off.
It’s a different kind of stage fright - you work on a site for weeks or months, and you know deep down that the quality of your work is solid. You’ve gone through the site with a fine-toothed comb, testing the ins-and-outs, and you finally feel ready you hand it off to your peers. You hold your breath, because your application is now, for the first time ever, completely in someone else’s hands. There are no more walk-throughs; This is the real deal.
Will they find bugs? Will they do some combination of events that you never thought of that just happen to be devastating to the program - something you overlooked - something completely obvious that will make you feel (if not look) like a brainless fool? Are you sure you uploaded every file you needed to?
These are the things that run through my head every time I near the completion of a web project. It’s the time when you hold your breath and hope that your peers and clients are blown away with your product (or at least satisfied).
That’s my type of stage fright.
This blog belongs to Jade Rauenzahn, a 23 year-old web developer living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC.
It’s a general creative persons nightmare. Whether it’s a web site or artwork or a manuscript, film or screenplay, no matter how much mentoring you have or how long you worked on it from all angles, you only have one or both of two goals to sweat - Does the guy who pays for it like it ( will it sell ) and do you like it, as you want it, without compromises?
This is followed by the month/year/decade-later syndrome when you realise how you could have made it better. It comes with talent. That’s why we have revivals with updates, director’s cuts and DVD’s with deleted stuff on the second disk.
Tennessee William’s once told me at one of out semi-monthly lunches that he wanted to make lots of changes to several of his plays and the producer’s ( their money ) mixed them.
I still do re-writes of the high school ‘Sing’ shows I did 40 years ago for practice. Relax - you’re on the way to the top. Don’t get an ulcer on the way.