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StandardDocument

Johanna: Why do people think they can use a "standard" document for anything ?

I can speculate, based on recent personal experience.

I'm a business owner - a one-person business, for a relatively short time. Among other services, I sell training. In France, training is a regulated profession; there are specific obligations that apply to someone who sells training. In particular, there are certain clauses which must be included in the contract you send to your clients - failure to comply with some of these requirements can see you before the courts, facing a fine and possibly a jail sentence.

The first time I wrote such a contract, I therefore experienced some nervousness. I invested a lot of time and effort in making sure I got things right.

The second time around, things are easier. I can take the first contract, change the names, dates and amounts, and have everything wrapped up much faster.

The first time around, one thing that was a big help was looking at a contract I'd found on the Web as a "standard" contract. My preferences are such that I rewrote it from scratch, rather than reuse it as-is.

I tend to do the same when I need to write code that does a certain thing, and I've been lucky enough to find "sample code" that seems like it will do the trick. Even if there's a chance that the code will work as-is, I prefer to rewrite it just to make sure that I understood how the original worked. However, I can think of a number of developers I knew who would have used the "sample code" unmodified in their app. Probably the same forces apply when people shop around for "template" or "standard" documents.

It seems to me that I could well be tempted to use a "standard" document if I trusted the source it came from, and I thought I could dispense with a thorough analysis. For instance, if it came from my accountant rather than from a web search.

LaurentBossavit 2005.02.24