How to estimate the time spent on hourly work?

Question

Android

It is necessary to make a fairly simple application for android. No special design, completely standard forms. Only one feature - these forms are generated on the fly. I communicate with freelancers. I myself have an idea about the development process and programming in general, but there is very little knowledge for this platform.
As a result, I receive a document from a person in which he estimated the time of the project. And this assessment made me very nervous. Tell me, experienced developers:
- how long does it take to create an application framework? That is just a working core.
- how much time (minutes, hours) does it take to program the registration form on the web service in a known form?
- how much time is needed to implement the usual authorization form (login: password)?
Conditions:
a person is guided by $ 15 per hour of work, that is, not quite a beginner;
in the portfolio of all such specialists there are applications. and more than one, with more complex functionality, that is, they do not work from scratch.

Answer 1

I would not be guided by an assessment of "8 hours per form." She is very close and understated. The program is too difficult to measure with forms, it is necessary to take into account the logic behind them.
Just an example, you need a Facebook client, it will have 4 forms - login / register / wall / view messages. And you think someone will make it in 4 days?
Regarding the evaluation of your program - give it to a few more freelancers and compare the ratings, in Q&A without technical specifications it is difficult to give even approximate numbers (if you don’t get it before September, you can contact me, I will return from vacation and I will be ready to freelance with renewed vigor).
Well, the program that changes the layout programmatically (adding controls on the fly) can hardly be called elementary. I would instead use a ListView as the basis for the form, and a few item types to cover all possible cases, and create them from xml (to avoid creating controls programmatically and setting their formatting parameters, I had to do this, but it's inconvenient)
Regarding the questions:
> >- how long does it take to create the application skeleton? That is just a working core.
from one day to infinity. This needs to be evaluated for a specific TK and to know what is included in the “framework”.
>>— how much time (minutes, hours) does it take to program a registration form on a web service in a known form?
— sketch controls in one of the layouts — half an hour
- validation - up to 2 hours, most likely much less
- sending data to the service and receiving results (the code is largely common with the rest of the forms, possibly taken out to the service and evaluated in the application framework)
- debugging all this - 2-3 hours.
>>— how much time is needed to implement the usual authorization form (login: password)?
if there is no design, just throw 2 textedits + a button - then 10 minutes for the form, then you need a code for sending data to the web service, it all depends on the service and its api. If it’s a soap, it will be difficult, if it’s a json or just an http post/get request, then there are no particular problems, we’ll add 1 hour for this (the code can be taken from old projects to a large extent) + for sending the results in a separate thread + getting the result. But here is another misunderstanding, perhaps this code was evaluated in the “Application Framework” section. But such small estimates are only for the authorization form, they are usually trivial, but you need to put it there in time to receive an account / information from the customer about using the service.
well, the presence of design in psd will increase all these estimates by an invaluable amount, depending on the flight of the designer's imagination

Answer 2

I do not program for Android, but IMHO it is strange to ask the developer about the time and cost of development, and then question the information received from him. A person could assess his current employment, a certain complexity of development, and indeed could take into account any force majeure. You have two ways: either to evaluate his ability to portfolio and agree to the proposed time / money, or look for another Contractor.

Answer 3

under the framework of the application can mean a lot - from one hour to a month.
processing the registration-authorization API in the mobile application + UI for this - maybe two days (8-16). depends on the details of course.

Answer 4

Count 8 hours per screen + 30% for overhead. If you are not ready to pay such a budget, I recommend not to twitch, because. you and the developer will get the negative in the end.
PS Sometimes, while evaluating the next project, I want to say to the customer - here's $ 1000 for you, I'd better go.

Answer 5

You probably won't be able to calculate anything. Because, in any case, your performer will add a couple of hours to all sorts of force majeure. Yes, and $ 15 is not so much by and large IMHO.

Answer 6

how long does it take to create the application skeleton? That is just a working core.

If we are not talking about the functional part of the application, but simply about the work to launch an empty “fish” of the application, then this is about an hour. Start the project in the IDE, set up the launch of the emulator with the required API versions, start a blank screen for testing. That is, in fact, this application is "Hello world", ready for further development.

how much time (minutes, hours) does it take to program a registration form on a web service in a known form?

8 hours, if the form does not involve complex validation and non-standard controls. About the same for the authorization form.
I also didn’t really understand what “forms are generated on the fly” means. Is there a config that describes what fields are needed in the form, and is this config different every time? This doesn't complicate matters much, but there may be problems with the placement of elements on the screen. With manual placement, you always have to move something to make the shape look decent, but here it doesn’t work.