Compromise with non-programmers

Question

The data for SQL db used in my PHP code is taken from an excel file made by non-programmers. When I cannot explain what I have with the excel file, I usually just try to create code around it. This led to some rather heterogeneous code on my part. Does anyone else have experience? Is it better to try to code others around or is it better to be solid and require a more robust table structure?

Answer 1

If you decide to be solid and require a more robust table structure, you need to provide non-programmers with clear, concise, and unambiguous documentation, as well as good error reporting tools that will allow them to quickly and easily find out when they made a mistake and what it is. There is nothing worse if someone yells at you that “you need to do something this way, or the program will not work” (or even say it is beautiful, but firm), and then after three months you will have to complete the task again and not being able to figure out what the criteria are without returning to ask the programmer.

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You might want to require something more simplified, like a form of CSV.

If you can, you should try and verify the data as best as possible before importing into the database.

Of course, this is not a good idea to get around these problems - and it sounds like a waste of valuable coding time.

By the way, this is like cheating on tips for communicating with non-programmers (although perhaps this is somewhat different).