It Depends

I live in a land of partial questions, where folks are constantly asking me how long it will take to build a web site or a page weeks or months before we've figured out what that site or page should consist of.

So my answer to most questions is some variation of it depends, usually dressed up a little, as in "we typically like to schedule this sort of change 2-6 months ahead of time, depending on the number of integration points, reliability requirements, and impacted processes." Big words like that convey the impression that I'm paying close attention (which in fact is something I try to do), and I've found with experience that if I just say "It depends" folks will think I'm one of those annoying tech types who refuses to give a straight answer.

Or maybe I'm just a windbag with a rationalization? Some of both I suppose.

Of course some of the reasons that things depend have little to do with the difficulties folks have in understanding that for me to build something, they need to know what they want to build.  For example:

http://www.webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

Because web browsers are wacky. Not in a way that I've figured out how to easily explain to folks who fall asleep the minute the gory details come up, and who never had to learn how hideous Netscape 4.7 was, or of the torture of working with  browsers from Redmond. Browsers are strange and twisted little things because they were coded by humans who had to make the best of of a bad set of options while on a ridiculous timeline.

So it goes.