no... he's not being a douche ... I happen to be a good coder, and I wouldn't consider building anything of any significance for even $500 ... Getting code done right is not an easy task... You have to start by answering all of the background questions, create a preliminary design, carefully considering what could go wrong and how the code could fail, then you have to write it, debug it, test it, ask people about it, etc.  Now, a crappy little makeshift, no guarantees piece of code is different. .. but even that would probably cost more than $500. .. It depends on just what he has in mind, but it can take hours of time just to communicate with him regarding exactly what he wants, cause to begin with, we'll probably find out that reality is going to put a cramp on what he/she wants and force some adjustments. .. Good coders make a lot of money doing stuff for people with money.  (usually.... not always)