Firegarden

Hey Zack, Can we talk a little further about this offline? You can reach me via email at Firegarden.

- Rob

If you're going to call it serverless architecture then you better be running it on webrtc data streams over P2P clients

Listen to I just have to say this for everybody else out there there is no serverless design it's not like the fucking things running in JavaScript on the clients there are servers the whole name is stupid come up with a better name for service man it's not serverless God help us

I am certain we could easily create this using websockets and p2p browser data streams... whos coming with me? Crowd fund me and i will release a prototype

From my experience in the last year-and-a-half I would say that the Consulting model is changing to one where the developer team is an outsourced arm from the business yet it's an invaluable part of the business. For example there's a company called clear measure who I believe are looking at driving the bottom line and creating a long-term relationship where growth in the client results in higher profits for the Consulting company through either raising their rates or some other agreement. I know personally as an independent contractor my Approach is to look at how I can affect driving business growth and not so much understanding what the client is asking for as a programming task

Well I wonder who the PE team is because perhaps they see value that exists intrinsically in quality programmers that know how to design software both quickly and at a high quality level and engineer it in a way that it can be built-in iterations and refined into a maintainable system.

For example someone like Joel Spolsky could probably find a way to drive profits from the TW team and so maybe its a programmer that knows business behind the PE money.

You know as a programmer myself for the last 15 years I can see how the market has changed and everything is becoming part of the global economy which means the rates are a lot lower which means Ukraine and India are playing a bigger and bigger role I could see private Equity trying to lower costs by outsourcing.

I think there's a fundamental flaw in the idea that you can just pay for cheaper labor- as Steve Jobs has said before the difference in a good programmer and an outstanding programmer can be 50 to 1 or 100 to 1 you can't capture that by trying to cut your cost from $100 an hour to $20 an hour.

Software inherently is one of the most scalable business models in the world the cost of manufacturing is almost zero all of the cost is in the design they should be able to make money. The mindset of being a consulting firm has to be changed.

This is stupid its funny how long I keep it going. It's a little stressful when your trying to get your characters quota typed out and you have to keep selecting other modal windows but all in all it feels like "I am on track" with my fake work life.

How about we all band together and make one big side projecg. Pile on as many of us as we can and just keep evoloving it

Your guess is as good as mine. What would you do to someone that used their money to take away home land that has been in your family for generations because you didn't have the right paper work to prove your ownership in a court of law.

Living out here you realize that the bodies are not buried in dirt.

I live on Kauai. I moved here 5 years ago from Canada. I can tell you most people don't understand Hawaii has a much different culture, history and people than "mainland" America.

Mark is making a huge mistake. The people on this island in particular are much more community and heart based. The fundamental mistake Mark is making is that he is entering into a lose-lose situation. This will NEVER be forgotten and he will NEVER be welcome here. He will always have to watch his back while he is here.

In my opinion his best course of action is to stop all law suits and make amends. People will forgive him for making a mistake but only if he can admit it first. This is not California. The island will "spit him out".

Kauai is known for being the last island of Aloha. Good luck Mark.

Fuck Sugar!

You know what sucks? Missing out on being a .net developer. We are kings in a world of peasants. Yes I said it Kings!

.NET is killer just killer.

Dood is right you have to follow your heart or actually start by connecting with your heart which is something I think we all could do more.

I am 36 and been contracting full time since I was 22. Really I was only an employee at my first programming job. The concern that you have is of technology stack. The concern you are alluding to is how to stay relevant when being an older person. The first concern is easy. Stick with some fundamentals. JavaScript for example is a perfect choice. By now we should all know JavaScript and another example is the Dom API’s. Those are solid gold. CSS of course and after that your good to go learn some cool framework like ReactJS. Given that you know C then C# is likey to be your best friend. I have stuck with .NET since its release in Feb 2002 and always have been a productive developer. I have used every version of Visual Studio. So after drawing a few boxes around things the world gets smaller. .NET was just ported to linux and renamed Dot Net Core 1.0 with it’s first release expected soon. So I would say .NET is as safe a bet as any. Of course there is the small challenge that .NET isn’t cool in the start-up world. That is mostly due to haters having to hate and not based on merit. So the technology choices get easier and easier if you start to zero in. Dot Net has an MVC framework which is at version 6 but I think maybe renamed to Core 1.0 as well. Your tech stack isn’t a problem. Stick with those and you will find something. As for your hourly rate I can tell you from experience the global market is making it very competitive so suck that up. As for getting too old to program that is not actually the question. The question to ask yourself is can you find and follow your excitement. We are in the golden age. There are a few leading edge sources which deal with this. I love Bashar and Abraham-Hicks. To quote Bashar “When you understand what excitement is, you'll understand why you don't have to look at every little detail to know what to do.

Your excitement is telling you that's the next thing you need to do. Following your excitement is actually the shortest path to what you want. Act on your joy to the best of your ability. If you look at all your options and realize that taking a walk or driving your car or calling a friend is the most exciting, then THAT is the thing to do. When you can take no more further action on that thing, then look around for the next exciting thing you have the greatest ability to take action on and do it.

Excitement is its own self contained kit and its own driving engine.”

I am going out on a limb and say for all things backend use C#. Mainly because in general the language, IDE, community support is by far the best. Yeah said it - and it's true so if you think Java or PHP or anything else is overall better your way wrong so fuck you. Oh and it's now open source and runs on Linux.

Unfortunately its not a as cool as ROR, LAMP etc. It's simply better, more mature more stable, quicker etc.

There is a major subtle war going on where asp.net mvc and c# are just not included in the start up tech stack discussions which is ridiculous. asp mvc has the best Web API infrastructure supporting RESTful / hypermedia API's. It has amazing WebSockets support. I could go on but who is even reading this far? Perhaps just me.

Learn C#. It is a beautiful well formed language. The concepts are seen in a lot of other languages. Also it is now open source and about to blow up 100x because it runs on Linux.

Don't learn JavaScript until you have understood C#.

Freelancing for 15 years as well. 1999 was a great year! Sending invoices is my favorite activity. "America is not a country, it's just a business. Now fuckin pay me."

Right. I have so many names and I never put them to good use :S

Can you please confirm that the free versions are not 'good enough'? http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/

I have a domain name you could use localipy.com. Just tell me your nameservers.

My take on what is exciting yields the following questions:

How much time have you spent with design patterns?

How much time have you spent with WebSockets?

How much time have you spent with Asynchronous coding?

How much time have you spent with Taligent MVP concepts?

How much time have you spent with Reactive Extensions?

How much time have you spent with ReactJS?

How much time have you spent with drinking and playing CS:Go?

Have you ever considered the concepts that are being taught as the 'leading edge of thought'? AKA Abraham Hicks. There is a whole new world that talks about an evolution of the human species simply by realizing that you have a 'higher mind' which exists in spirit world and that you can connect with that pure positive energy and when you do your life becomes an explosion of Synchronicity (see bashar.org).

Publish your code on a github repository and become a platform as a service. People need to adopt your platform as a foundation for anything. At the same time offer messaging as a paid add on service with a revenue model tied directly to use. Eg. * > 100,000 messages per month is 1.00 per month. Sell your support and integration services.

xamarin is what you are looking for. I can't believe this answer hasn't been posted. xamarin is supported by microsoft and targets both ios, andriod and windows.

Senior Engineer usually means someone with a number of years experience. An easy number is 10 however this isn't the only thing. Generally you have worked on enough coding projects that you are wise in how you put forward your effort. Also I would assume a SR Engineer has a good understanding of software design patterns. When I started out I thought that OO concepts were enough to master C# but everything changed once I started to grasp design patterns. I think SR generally means you have a certain amount of experience paired with a strong ability to code.

Do you really want to know or are you just asking because you don't believe me?

As a full time contractor for the last 15 years

- You should expect to be on call and service the client heavily - making sure you bill for everything with detailed time sheets and descriptions. your timesheets are you first line of defense and your time MUST be defensible.

- Basically you want to give the client the impression that you are always on and it's up to you to try and manage your work life. Eg. sign into skype from your phone when your out and if your like in a movie then msg them back IMMEDIATELY and say be back to my OFFICE in 90 mins or what ever. - What is an external client phone meeting?

Basically as a contractor your main goal is to service the client to the max while taking your time and enjoying your work, taking advantage of the time the best you can.

Some people I know sit at there computer all day and service many clients at once giving them all the impression they are the only client. Your best bet is to show as much continuous service as possible while padding in other work like getting more clients, updating your skills etc.

Your not an employee congratulations - don't be confused that you have to defend your time. The best contractors give the client everything they want and bill for all of it while taking advantage of being at home and padding in other work.

Short answer. No. Long answer. Java is very similar to C# and so time would be better spent learning C# as the language is more evolved and so you will get to learn more by default in learning C#. Also I believe your next best bet would be Python as the language concepts are similar.

I just got laid off as the top developer / architect after 3.5 years of coding on a fairly successful Saas application. I think basically the board forced them to cut me because of my top salary 160K+ pitted against the ever emerging global software workforce. So far it's been 4 months and I haven't even looked for a job. We are in a strange place with overseas developers seeming as the preferred choice. Currently I am focused on joining a consulting company that structures remote teams India with US based lead developers. I am a huge believer in law of attraction and so I believe my future is directly in my own hands. I am starting to need a job to pay the rent so I will do something soon. At this point I am so happy to have had the time off well spent with my 2 kids.

Have you considered hiring a software developer? Some one extremely technical most likely can deliver on any business model you conceive of.