This is a reader guest post by Jason Gibb. Jason is a Systems Architect and Development Manager at Sundog, where he helps his team and clients implement agile methodologies for online software projects.

Comic book fans may recall a Marvel character named Multiple Man, who has the ability to create exact duplicates of himself at will. Or if you’re a DC fan, perhaps you’ve heard of Triplicate Girl? Most software developers have probably heard their manager say to them, “If only we could clone you…“ (If you haven’t heard this at least once in your career, you might want to step it up a little 😉

Software development used to be largely a solo activity — one cowboy coder working in isolation creating the next cool thing. A decade or more ago, all a cowboy needed was a text editor, a compiler, a debugger, knowledge of a single programming language and a few code libraries. Toss in some l33t design sk1lz and you had a complete, one-man software shop.

Now, in the face of modern software development methodologies, the concept of solo developers seems antiquated, almost laughable. Let’s see what our cowboy would have to know to build software these days:

• Mastery of an IDE
• DBMS installation and administration
• Various flavors of SQL
• Multiple compiled and scripting languages
• XML configuration files
• MVC frameworks
• O/R mapping tools
• Unit testing harnesses
• Source code repositories
• Bug tracking tools
• Continuous integration servers
• Software packaging and deployment
• Development methodologies
• Countless open source and commercial libraries, plug-ins, and extensions

Oh, you want to do Web development too? Well then don’t about forget these:

• Application server installation and configuration
• HTTP and SSL
• DNS
• X/HTML (with multiple DTDs)
• CSS 1 and 2 (and eventually 3)
• DOM
• JavaScript
• Ajax
• Script.aculo.us, Gears, Dojo, YUI, etc.
• Flash, Flex, AIR (maybe Silverlight too?)
• SOAP and REST
• RSS and Atom
• Web Analytics
• SEO and SEM
• Security
• Usability and User Experience

With all this, it’s no wonder managers want to clone their developers. No one person could ever possibly hope to master all of these systems, technologies, and skills. The result? The era of the cowboy is ancient history.

Such a proliferation of development technologies has fostered an amazing degree of specialization in the industry today, and there is no end in sight. For today’s modern software, it takes a well-coordinated team of highly skilled, highly specialized engineers, designers, architects, database administrators, build managers, and Web professionals to create the next cool thing.

Until someone builds that cloning machine (or we see more comic book superheroes on Monster.com), there will only be one effective approach to software development: a team approach.

What a month, Austin for ALT.NET, KC for a family reunion, Chicago for training, and finally Minneapolis for the NDSU-Minnesota game [Go Bison!]. Here are some links found while on the road:

• Self-Marketing for Software Developers – Good tips on how to make yourself a more marketable developer.
• Unit Test vs. Debug.Assert() – A much needed reminder to use Debug.Assert and how to hack TD.NET to leverage them in unit tests.
• ALT.NET Conference: The Geek Paparazzi Uncover Real Controversy – The Caffeinated Coder takes his sarcasm to the ALT.NET conference.
• Why Fixed Price, Scope Bids Are Incompatible With Software Development – Fixed Price + Fixed Scope = Dead Project
• You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know – A classic software development speech given by Jim McCarthy.

This is a reader guest post by James Ehly. James is the author of DEVTRENCH:Web Development from the Front Lines, a web development blog.

Has a client of yours ever said or done something that made the warning bells go off in your head? After you pay your dues for while in this business you can become quite sharp at discerning who is going to be God’s gift to your clientèle, and who’s going to make you wonder why you interact with other people.

Below is a list of red flags that I’ve come across in the last 10 years of doing web development. All of them are true.

1. When you meet with a client to discuss your project they love it, when you get back to your desk at the office you have an email with a 43 item list about how much they hate it.
2. The client stares into space or at the wall when they talk to you.
3. When you show your client the design of your project for the first time they freak out right in front of you.
4. Your client sends you spam that they get and asks you to look into it to see if the offer is legitimate.
5. Client types in all lowercase, and uses very little punctuation because they don’t know what the shift key is for.
6. Two weeks ago you were working with Rob who quit, last week you were working with Rich who was fired, and now you’re working with Rod who doesn’t know what the hell is going on.
7. You get a phone call, and a client says they are ready for you to start on their website…the website you wrote a proposal for a year and a half ago.
8. Every time you try to ask your client for some information, they have to check with someone else.
9. The client treats anyone under them in their company like crap.
10. The client is gone half of the year. Not physically, just mentally.
11. Client calls you (super pissed off) and wants to know why their website is down. After calming them down you ask if they can get to any other websites, to which they answer, “Uh, I guess not. So is this a problem with our site then?”
12. You have to coach the ‘tech guy’ at the company on how to set up email.
13. The client says, “Wouldn’t it be great if…”, or every other sentence starts with, “Is it possible to…”
14. After looking at the client’s code you realize it’s been written in PHERLJASP with an ORACCESSQL database.
15. The client wants impossible results in an impossible timeframe, like if their 18,000+ static page website can be redesigned and launched in 3 weeks.
16. Every time you ask your client for a password they give you the wrong one, the same wrong one as last time.
17. Your client has over 50 credit cards, and has had over 300 in the last 5 years.
18. Client says, “I don’t have a lot of resources right now, but I’d be willing to pay you double later…”
19. You just gave your client the 9th website mockup, and they still just don’t know.
20. You invoice the client and they let you know that they won’t be getting funding for 3-4 months.
21. Client insists on using the company name for their passwords because its ‘easier that way’.
22. Your client just had to have a proof that day. Two weeks later they still haven’t been able to get to it.
23. The client still uses AOL
24. The client’s response to your email about needing critical passwords, and other project stopping information is, “So what’s the hold up?”
25. Client tries to make you feel guilty by saying things like, “It took a long time to save the money pulled out from tithing to be able to start this project”.