Duh, You are right; if someone wants to hire lots of cheap Indian labour for $10 an hour, you will get bad programmers. I think, at that rate you will get bad programmers anywhere in the world.
I am building (http://solaro.com) and we just launched our application out of beta. Development happens from India and surely there are kinks and warts, but at the end of day it works.
I think there are lot of things people get wrong when doing outsourcing:
1. Going cheap. Good programmers are costly. In India you will have to fight with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe and likes for the talent, you can't pay cheap and expect good programmers.So, please do not come to India, if goal is to stay cheap.
2. Not involving the team. You will have to bring down your walls and involve everyone intellectually. This is real, if people aren't involved with the product, you are going to get crappy result. I am saying nothing new, but what already Jim McCarthy said in Dynamics of software development. But this is more true for projects, where your team is spread across different geographical locations.
3. Iterate. Short iterations, deliver, continuous integration and continuous deployment. Do not sleep on the project.
4. Small teams, do not build a large team just because it is cheap. I know I am saying the obvious here, but I have seen people getting it wrong too often.
5. If the client (or product owner) is located in different geographical location, he/she has to work harder than everyone else.
I am building (http://solaro.com) and we just launched our application out of beta. Development happens from India and surely there are kinks and warts, but at the end of day it works.
I think there are lot of things people get wrong when doing outsourcing:
1. Going cheap. Good programmers are costly. In India you will have to fight with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe and likes for the talent, you can't pay cheap and expect good programmers.So, please do not come to India, if goal is to stay cheap.
2. Not involving the team. You will have to bring down your walls and involve everyone intellectually. This is real, if people aren't involved with the product, you are going to get crappy result. I am saying nothing new, but what already Jim McCarthy said in Dynamics of software development. But this is more true for projects, where your team is spread across different geographical locations.
3. Iterate. Short iterations, deliver, continuous integration and continuous deployment. Do not sleep on the project.
4. Small teams, do not build a large team just because it is cheap. I know I am saying the obvious here, but I have seen people getting it wrong too often.
5. If the client (or product owner) is located in different geographical location, he/she has to work harder than everyone else.