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I need a see a fairly likely "other explanation".
I also suspect that you are asking all the wrong
question.
Only an extremely poor programmer would write
a big project completely from scratch, coding every
line of html and PHP or Perl. Anyone who knew what
he/she was doing would use probably 80%-90% library
code and 10%-20-% new code, at least if they've been doing
it for while and have their own libraries built up.
The custom logic would be written fresh, but he or she
would have already written scripts before that send
out thank you emails and would reuse that code,
which is already well tested and hopefully perfected.
A couple years ago I had three big "custom" projects -
an AVS, a content selling site, and later a content management
script for a plugin gallery provider. From my perspective,
most of the AVS functions were variations on one of
two things - taking information from a web page and
putting it in the database, or taking info from the database
and putting it on a web page. When a webmaster signed
up that was a database insert. When the created a
new site it was another database insert from a web form.
When they made a sale that was just yet another form
putting info into the database. The AVS system was
running the same chunk of code most of the time -
my library routine to take info from a form and
put it into the database. It also often ran the complementary
routine, takinfg info from the databbase and displaying
it on a page for the links list, the stats, etc.
When I started on the content site I saw that it did
the same two things, so again I used my library to
put info from a web form into the database and
display database info on the page. Many of the forms
were similar - a webmaster/affiliate signup form,
a search form. One searched content sets, the other
searched sites, but from a programming perspective
the both searched the same thing - the database.
To an AVS a webmaster is an affiliate, so I converted
the webmaster signup code of the AVS to become the
affiliate signup code of the content site. The two sites
shared probably 90% of their code, but accomplish two
different tasks that to the user seem unrelated.
Later a plugin provider wanted a content management
script where users could search through the content
sets and choose to view sets of blondes, or brunettes,
solo or group action, etc. That is exactly the same thing
that the content selling site does - provide web based
access to a database of content. There were very few
changes needed for it to provide exactly what the
customer wanted in his content management script.
I'd guess that roughly 97% of the content management
script code was already on the content sales site, with
the content sales site just having additional code to
allow one to purchase and download the set after
viewing it.
In all three cases the client webmasters specified just
what they wanted and got exactly what they wanted.
(Well, the content management script was just completed
and still needs to be reviewed by the client webmaster,
but he will get what he wants.) I think the questions to
ask are these:
Did you clearly and completely specify what you needed the scripts to do?
Did the scripts that he/she delivered in fact meet those specifications?
If the programmer delivered what was promised than frankly
I don't see how it matters to you, or is in fact any of your business,
whether they accomplished that by freshly coding each line,
my waving a magic wand that generates code, by pulling pieces
from various other scripts that they had previously written,
or even by making the needed chnages to one similar script
that they had done before. As long as whatever they did was
legal and you haven't been sold stolen code written by someone
else it seems to me that your concern is whether or not you got
the functionallity you agreed upon at the price you agreed upon.
If your new script does what is was supposed to do be happy,
as you are lucky. All too often some newbie programmer wannabe
takes advantage of a webmaster looking for a bargain, who ends
up with a piece of junk script that totally fails to fulfill the requirements.
One last comment regarding those questions - on any custom project
there will be areas of misunderstanding and plain old bugs where the
script doesn't yet do quite what was needed or specified.
If what was delivered seems to roughly match up to what was
ordered, though, get in touch with the programmer and point out
precisely what you has asked for and precisely how that differs
from the scripts current behavior. A good programmer will make
those things right, often suprisignly quickly.
PS - I've been programming porn for 7 years, doing mostly custom work,
so I am definitely familair with these issues.
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