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For the last few years I've been working as a self-employed software developer. Doing various gigs as they came my way. For the most part I've been fairly lucky, as my own personal network has yielded all the work I need to sustain myself and then some. As I said, I've been lucky to get all my contracts, I haven't had to put any real effort into finding work yet.
Although I'm currently employed, I'm unhappy and thinking about moving on.
My question is for the experienced self-employed contractors, how did you find your contracts? Are recruiters/headhunters/agencies helpful? What is the best way to expand your professional network? Can the internet be useful?
Thanks for the tips
Craigslist, network with former co-workers. Stay away from rent-a-slave and elame sites. They will only waste your time and frustrate you (I want a youtube/facebook/amazon clone for under $500).
Local is better. Clients love to have you come onsite and talk with them.
It will take a bit but after a while, you will find enough clients who keep you busy and you won't have time to look for new ones :D.
Start off moonlighting so you can keep the lights on and the internet paid while this ramp up happens.
Good luck!
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I need to write the backend for an event ticket selling system. Some companies would connect to the service in order to check for ticket availability in certain venues, book tickets and so on.
Reading about Erlang I though it could be a good choice since the system will have to support high concurrency, high availability but I don't know If it's a good choice for this problem domain.
Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks!
Erlang could be a good choice, yes, it sounds like something it would do a very good job.
But it's going to be hard for anyone here to be of much value for your decision, as you should also consider the knowledge level of the team, time & budget constraints, etc.
Ultimately, the best people to help you make this decision are the people in your team.
I suggest you take a look at OTP's finite state machines as I think it suits perfectly a ticket booking system.
I believe you can find a lot of examples either in the doc or on the web.
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Ive been trying to find an answer to what I thought would be a basic question.
What software development methodologies are relevant for a single programmer.
The only one I can find is RAD.
When I've looked into others such as agile they require a team of people.
Could someone more clued up point me in the right direction.
I am just looking for any methodologies that a single programmer can do so I don't waste more hours trying to find the answers.
Development methodologies like agile can be applied in almost any context, including going "solo". You just have to take the best out of it and apply it to your needs.
For instance as a single programmer you can have a product backlog with your user stories, you can give them story points, plan your sprints, find your velocity, etc.
In the end you'll be more organized and you'll improve your planning skills for sure.
Hey, i'm not saying that you must have daily standup meetings with yourself! :)
This applies to all development methodologies/processes(RAD, DDD, TDD, ...) don't forget they're just ways of doing things.
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My company has been using FogBugz for a while now and we are generally happy with it as a bug-tracking tool. I've been reading Joel Spolsky's articles about their Evidence Based Scheduling feature. It sounds great in theory, but I haven't seen much discussion about how well it actually works in practice. Before I spend a lot of time and effort trying to convince my co-workers to buy in to using it, I'd like to hear from people who have been using this feature in their development.
Have you been using FogBugz' EBS? If so, are you happy with it? Have its estimates been accurate enough to be helpful? With the benefit of hindsight, do you think it was worth the effort to set it up and input all of the information/estimates it requires? Is there some other mechanism that you found that works better?
(Note: I've deliberately posted this to stackoverflow.com rather than fogbugz.stackexchange.com, since I suspect that the user base at fogbugz.stackexchange.com might be unduly biased in favor of FogBugz -- in particular, ex-Fogbugz users who've moved on to something better are unlikely to read or post there)
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This is something I've been wondering for a bit.
If you were to write a successful site/app, would writing it in rails give you and advantage, say for getting the app noticed, as opposed to writing it in PHP etc?
Do people/companies who write in ruby/rails actively promote that their site/app is written in rails so it gets more publicity/hype?
Appreciate any feedback/POV's.
Not much. People don't look under the covers. The advantage is that you can build it faster and change it faster, which means you get to market faster.
Though some companies mention that the app runs on Rails or built in NYC, regular users, as a rule, do not care what the app they are using is built upon. But if you plan to eventually sell it or draw the investments, the trendy technology will certainly give you some bonus points.
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At work I have a standard desk (4 legs, flat surface, you get the picture). For a while now I've been thinking about converting to a standing desk. What would be the best way to go about this on a limited budget? Are there some good laptop/keyboard stands I could place on my existing desk? Which ones are the best?
I'm trying to avoid requesting a whole new desk, and keeping things as simple as possible.
Talk to an occupational therapist and get their advice because you'll be drastically changing the way you posture yourself for hours at a time.
Agencies that assist people with disabilities and their carers (if you're in Australia, look up the Independent Living Centre in your capital city) would be a good start. You'll be able to test out a variety of models if they have a showroom and get advice from a medical professional not a furniture salesman.
This has been featured in a couple of blogs that are likely near and dear to most SOers:
Lifehacker: Coolest Workspace Contest: DIY Startup Desk
Coding Horror: Computer Workstation Ergonomics
I think there are clearly some benefits to standing for a portion of the day. Even better would be a treadmill desk (watch the "Exercise boosts brain power" film, and pay attention about 3:09 in).