I had an idea for a software application and hired a programmer from one of the freelance programming websites. Towards the end he bailed. I even gave him extra money because the project ran over the time he said it would take. I ended up with useless software. He had excellent reviews, and was established on the freelance website
I know what I want the software to do but it seems I almost need to know programming to convey it or a wireframe or something. I had written down what I wanted it to do. But even the basic function ended up broken
Along the way as problems presented themselves i had to brainstorm solutions for the problems. As an example there could be two things named the same thing, this caused the software to crash. I would have thought the programmer would have already thought of this being a potential problem based on how I explained it would function. He then fixed it but in my mind this should have been a non issue from the get go.
So in essence my question is how do I explain what I want and should a programmer be asking me any questions ? Or do I have to have everything spelled out even if I am not a programmer because its seemed like I need to know programming to explain how I want the software to function. And where / how do I find a good one ?
You absolutely shouldn’t have to brainstorm how to fix your programmer’s bugs.
It sounds like you two weren’t a good fit. Maybe he was unethical, or maybe there were other issues. You wrote that you were eventually telling him “how” to do things; that’s not a level of interaction you should have to take or that most programmers I know would be comfortable with. A non-technical boss should just be telling developers the requirements and ideally the “why”, not the “how”.
You might want a technical cofounder, or an engineer who’d be willing to walk you through best practices in working with them. This will help you learn and set expectations for leading programming teams in the future.