I maybe wrong, but I think what you would really like is to go back to your C# project and I guess that's a bit short as an explanation for your manager.

In such a situation, I would present my manager with an action plan, tell her that you don't know how much time it is going to take to fix this, that you need time to analyse the problem. You convey to her that only after you study you will be able to present her with the approach you are going to apply, repair, or re-engineer, coming up with an alternate solution.

Once your manager is confronted with that, she will have to consider her own cost/benefit situation. With a little luck, she might just return the project to the client. She might also re-negotiate or even extend the contract including other functionalities, who knows, rewrite the whole thing in c#. :)

My 2 Eurocents.

%arc




>Hi everybody,
>
>About 4 business days ago I got a complex footprint assigned to me. There are two forms and one class involved with complex convoluted logic written several years ago by a person who has long since left the company. The class uses gridhittest method.
>
>I've been looking at the code and making numerious changes trying to fix few bugs. Unfortunately, each attempt to fix the problems resolve in something new and ugly surfacing. I am basically ready to give up and ask my manager to assign another developer to this problem. I will release what I currently have, I think.
>
>The problem here is:
>
>1. We need to fix the problem in 2 versions of software. The code base is different, so we would need to apply similar fixes in two versions
>
>2. I've been working with the latest version and, as I said, made a numerous changes. At this point I am not even sure that all of my changes are correct or if they solve the problem or introduce the new one.
>
>I am wondering how to handle such situation and admit that I am beaten here?
>
>Also, I've been working on C# code for a while, but because I got that assignment, I had to put that project aside for the time being.
>
>Any ideas?
>
>My manager is a very nice person and I guess I can call her and tell that I need a break from this assignment. Just need to get up the courage to call. I am also not certain how will it work.
>
>Thanks in advance.