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Dutchie987

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Rejoice! For you have learned a valuable lesson!

Next time, first look how well the competition is doing before coding up the same thing.

As for why vertical tabs are not popular: for me it's because it is annoyingly similar, and right next to, the navigation pane of the website I'm looking at. This leads to clicks on the wrong "navigation pane".

I don't use it. Somehow I'm constantly checking how much time remains. Can't get into the flow. And if I do get into any kind of flow state, the last thing I want is to get interrupted by a timer.

I think it might work great for physical work. Remembering to stretch or take a break. But, for me, not for any type of brainy work.

This mandatory harvesting of personal information is atrocious. Inevitably these personal email addresses get stolen, leaked or just sold to everyone that wants it. The user get a deluge of spam and/or targeted scams. Just let the user enter a one-time email if they wish. There is a reason they don't want to give out their 'real' address.

You're part of the problem of the modern internet.

For work I use a calendar (Outlook) as a todo list. A task gets added to a date and time in the future so I know I can't forget it. When the day comes, I either do the thing, or I postpone it to a later date. For clarity: I don't use the taskplanner, but add tasks as appointments in the calendar.

This solves, for me, the problem of picking the 'right' thing to do from my list. I just do the things for that day. Be flexible, when you have extra time you can pull things closer, when it's balls to the wall, just shift some tasks to a later date.

I've been doing this for about 25 years, it works for me, might work for others too.

edit: I don't do notes, as such. Never felt the need to write something down that I won't ever look at again anyway.

To ensure employment either be a specialist (so you can do something others can't), or choose an older technology that used to be popular but isn't now. Most developers will have moved on, and now you can do the thing others don't want to learn anymore.

Is it glamorous? Does it pay top dollar? No and no, but it is a very secure income.

I'm not suggesting you start doing COBOL. Think more along the line of Java, which has an enormous installed base and nobody wants to have anything to do with it if they can help it. That's an opportunity for you to step in.

Same thing for Perl, there's a lot of existing code that needs maintenance. I'm sure you can think of a few other languages and technologies that fit this category.

Best of luck!

I recognize the feeling somewhat. First time I experienced it was when considering traveling out in the solar system, but perpendicular to the ecliptic. I liken it to thalassophobia or some deep fear of being completely isolated.

Not me, but a good friend. He was a well-paid developer but got fed up with the inevitable management shenanigans.

He now sells hamburgers and hotdogs at festivals. He only works in the summer months (when the festivals are held) and enjoys life the other half of the year.

I envy him greatly.

Think about who your competitors are.

YouTube has (non-live, granted) courses on everything. And then there are the specialized course-ware sites. Many of them have a subscription model of "all you can eat" for a fixed price.

Your unique feature is that your courses are live. That is great for interaction with your audience, but can be a risk if you have a one or a few people that like to hear themselves talk, you know what I mean.

Live has also a drawback of necessarily being a scheduled event. How many potential clients do you leave out because their schedule doesn't fit with your lecture times?

All in all, I think it's a good idea, and can be very lucrative, if you find the right subjects and audience. Find that niche and you're golden.

One of the problems is that creating (or just working on) a new framework is a lot more fun and creative than fixing issues in client code. Another problem is that software development is made hard by external factors (read: bad management) but there is this pervasive idea that once we have the right framework (or the right methodology, or ...) then it will finally be easy.

There is enough software to last us forever, but developers have to do something, anything. Creating new frameworks is 'make work', or is used to fleece clients. Or it was in the nineties, at least.