When you explain thoroughly and in no uncertain terms that yes you can help your mate out at short notice by building a working prototype of his app, but that it won't even be MVP. It will be bare bones functionality with no design, almost no styling, no images, no color - but it will work in so much that it will do what it needs to do to show that it's possible.

Then he sees it and goes "it doesn't look great, can it not animate or at least have nice images and a color palette. Would it be possible to have filters on the search or I dunno, just make it look a bit more finished?"

Me: nope, but if you want I can delete the whole thing?

Please tell me you're getting paid.

@conor-figgy no I'm not, but I have a good day job so I'm not overly concerned about money.

However I get what you're saying and I've said the same to others on here. The difference with me is, I'm not doing any of the other shit. I've literally said "no, but if you want I can delete the whole thing".

So it was only a couple days work for me which I enjoyed, and I learned something new in the process (which is my payment).

I won't be doing one more minute of work on it.

It’s really no better an outcome than the posts here you call people ‘idiots’ on. The final ‘f you’ does not make it right... a proper initial sit-down discussion and game plan that gives the client/Friend/etc. realistic and reasonable expectations would solve all these over-zealous client issues. There are tools for doing mockups, even pencil/paper is adequate, and just a list of specific criteria that when met constitute and fulfillment of contract. Of course I learned this from years of experience. Leaving the person with ‘f you’ might feel billy bad ass, but it only gets you a bad reputation because obviously the client doesn’t get it. I know you have a job and it isn’t for putting food on the table, but I think this is still the best course of action, even for those fam/friend projects, haha.

Edit: ‘years of experience’ was to imply I have made this mistake many times too, thus my methods evolved, it was not meant to sound superior... FYI :P

@agaskins I feel like you didn’t read any of my comment.

1) I DID have a very (very) clear initial sit down where I agreed with him on what would be done.

2) he wasn’t interested in a mock-up or even a pen and paper design. It was functionality he was after.

@SSDD I get that, but really the project shouldn’t proceed without those things... I know you know this, you’ve told others on here similar things. My point is just that the ‘f you’ at the end doesn’t mean it was handled any better those other guys. we just all (self included) at some point have to learn to preempt the issues that cause these situations that strain relationships (personal or professional). We do the thing because we are more talented than the person we’re doing the thing for, so we have to understand they will not foresee many of the things we take for granted.