dclara

I think backend freelancing is harder than front end which needs some graphics design skills and HTML/css/javascript implementation. Most of the in-house systems are outsourced to contract/consultant companies instead of using freelancing due to the amount of work and time constraint.

With two years of experience, I guess it's too early unless you have intensive experience with many backend systems. Different companies may require different tool set and server stack. So it's hard to cover everything.

I've got a list of questions asked in my Kickstarter project: "How to build a website like an engineer", which may partially qualify you as a competent engineer in the job market. If you think you are over qualified to cover all the topics I provided, maybe it's a good to go. http://kck.st/SY4CXv

GoDaddy gives you one email box with your domain name so that when you reply the email, it is sent from the real email account.

Good. You are very capable, so don't worry about the next job.

One thing I'd like to mention is: as a software engineer, we are looking for more than programming. Online courses may teach you a lot of knowledge with examples, but they cannot provide real industrial experience. The same for internships, you may be part of the team and partially exposed to the software product or system.

So keep looking for good opportunities, you will be more competent.

Sure. There is a video demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1y_J-_Wrb4

If you have programming skills, you can look for another job since you are pretty new on the job market.

Otherwise, you may learn a lot from the code you are copying and pasting from other people. You need to have more experience before you can land a more decent job.

Check out our free summer camp: "How to build a website like an engineer", hosted online in the Kickstarter project: http://kck.st/SY4CXv. Let me know if I can help.

Currently, I'm running a free summer camp online to help college students to learn the professional skills as a software engineer according to the industrial standard.

There are various options you can pick and choose to be hands-on. The "main dishes" is to help you run through a process from installation, configuration and deploy a real world web application with the full server stack.

Check it out if you have time. It is described in a Kickstarter project: "How to build a website like an engineer" http://kck.st/SY4CXv.

What? DDG does not own Stack Overflow but it can run Stack Overflow's algorithm locally? Do you mean that Stack Overflow has it's search algorithm open sourced? I'm sorry, I don't quite get it.

Usually, the router search engine queries data from the second tier websites to get high quality results without having other websites' algorithms. Also there is another problem: how do you know which websites to go for given an arbitrary keywords? For example, when user searches for "cookie" on your search engine, where do you send the query to? How do you know if they are looking for food cookie or browser cookie?

Good idea. I think it's better than infinite scroll, but cache one page before and one page after to improve the page loading more smoothly using AJAX, just don't push me to the next page until I hit the "next" button.

I'm also concerned about the footer menu, may it be sticky or keep it on the bottom not shown. Looks like most of the sites have the latter. Maybe the footer is not that important, just to embed more links.

They do have a page list on the bottom and show which page you are on.

You're so funny. I guess they will make a fix number of items in the memory for the DOM.

The memory issue is solved, but the browser and CPU are so busy because when you want to get back to page 3 from page 10, page 3 has to be reloaded.

I guess not, although the page number is shown for you to see which page you are on, but you may forget where you were after you visit a particular link. It's improved to resolve the memory issue, I think. So when you browsed to page 10 and want to get back to page 3, it will reload for you seamlessly, rather than let the browser to keep all the pages in memory.

I agree the parent post, I'd like to keep where I was when I open each link in a new tab. Then the infinite scroll just helps to eliminate the click of the next page.

Yes, I agree with you on using a 2-tier search which will increase the relevancy to optimize the quality of search. And Google's search quality is not unbeatable.

I also agree with you by using distributed sites to optimize the results locally. Actually what I proposed is to make the distributed search from both geographic location and vertical market point of view, as opposed of dedicated sites from you. But they are complementary. The dedicated sites definitely will provide better and more relevant results than a global search engine if Google search was not limited to a particular site.

However, the only thing I don't agree with you is when you said it does not have to be distributed though, the search router can integrate the algorithms from the dedicated sites. Then I think it's not quite feasible since it's not possible for Stack Overflow or Wikipedia to share their algorithms with DDG.

Let me know if I misunderstood you. If you'd like to take if offline, I'll be happy to discuss with you via email. See my profile.

Upvoted you. We need more insights like this than the document itself. The concept of state machine, PIM (processing in memory) and parallelization is the core, looks like Micro has some implementation now. That's why they call it an Automata Processor (AP).

Because to my understanding, 2-tiered search means that the routing search engine scrapes data from the second level search engines and return it to the users. The second level search engines, e.g., Stack Overflow, are usually running by separate entities from the routing search engine, say DDG. If DDG does not own all the second level search engines, how can they get the local indexes and ranking algorithms from them? And even if DDG does get it, it's no longer decentralized any more. So what's the difference from Google?

I'm not sure how powerful it is which cannot tell from the looking. If it's the same powerful as the existing PC, I found All-in-one PC now is less than $500. So why do we need to have this nice-looking but still heavy machine? If it's super powerful, then a lot of engineering issues need to be taken care before how it looks like.

EDIT: I'm sorry, it's fully expandable. But sometimes the OS may not support the hardware expansion that much or become very low performance.

But anyway, I agree that we should make PC more customizable and more pluggable if it's doable.

Thank you for your explanation. Now I understand better. But a distributed system is usually defined in the second meaning of what you said inside the search engine, instead of across different websites.

I'm very interested in this topic because I've proposed my solution for how to improve search engines, not from algorithm point of view, but from systematic point of view. And making it fully distributed is the key.

While you mentioned about the 2-level search and "receiving their algorithms and data ...", I don't think it's very feasible. Do you agree? So vertical distributed architecture across various industries is not a feasible solution. But we can do a horizontal distributed architecture which will collect data from geographic locations. In each location, there will be many different verticals. It's matter of time if Google cannot find a better solution, search engine will be improved in certain way.

It's interesting that you are talking about "two-tiered search would decentralize efforts to improve algorithms". But you mentioned that "this solution does not need to be distributed: sites can share their local indexes and ranking algorithms with the routing search engine."

Can you elaborate a little bit about why it's not a distributed solution if sites share their local indexes with the routing search engine?

Yes, budgeting for days instead of budgeting for months. When we well manage the task list, usually a feature implementation takes 1-3 days, a project may take 3-4 weeks to reach a milestone. So no feature can take more than a week to finish. Priority is the key.

You reminded me in some cases I did, but I don't feel well about that. But I've already spent too much time on one item, if I didn't quit, it would delay the rest of the tasks.

Most of the time, I have to do extra hours of work to get it completed. Otherwise, it's hard get chance to revisit again unless it's a critical feature or bug.

Another strategy is, just like what you mentioned, once we are stuck at somewhere for more than 4 hours, we have to move to other tasks, give it up temporarily and later on when we come back, maybe things changed or mind changed, it's no longer that hard any more.

Thank you. Agreed.

I know. That's why I only embed URLs when it's relevant to the topic and provide my input to the topic first. I usually got negative points up to -4 which made me so frustrated.

Good for you to have such high response rate. I learned the first two tactics from other people and applied it to my project. My blog posts usually have some hits everyday without prospects. I think my blogs did help some people and brings interesting topics. Unfortunately no luck. I'd appreciate if you can give me any input. Here is the blog: http://bingobo.info/blog/.

Me too. I tried hard here, but I dare not to attaché the URL with every post. I got 0 conversations too, even though part of my target users/customers are here.

Oh, thank you both for your quick responses. So he really did a good job to solve the pains of his potential customers. Now the question becomes: how WP got so many consultants in the first place? But that's out of the scope of the parent posting, it still within the scope of the OP though, :)

Based on my experience, it's very hard for people to accept something new in the first place, for example, when WP was introduced. And this is still happening now. Once a group of people accept a new concept, building on top of it to improve the system is a little easier.

Very good point on "identifying my problem", maybe it's better to be "identifying my specific problem" that nobody else can resolve for me. Thank you.

I'm sort of learning this point from others and trying to apply it to draw people's attention. I showed people that you need to build a private version of the web that stores the only information you are interested in or related to you. And we have a tool to help you create your Private Web with a few clicks. But I failed. Can you please pinpoint out why? The Kickstarter project is here: http://kck.st/JNqv8z

You have a very good example for shooting against the target niche where you have your best audience to listen to you. But the question is: "when he was building WPEngine", there are already 40 folks "who were Wordpress consultants"? Then the result is not unexpected, and can not be consider a good example. Sorry if I misunderstood you. What we want know is how he got that 40 consultants to working on WPEngine in the first place.

Yes, on top of the 40 hours of intensive work including design, coding, learn a new technology with intensive reading, or even tackling business/marketing strategies and tactics, etc., the rest hours are on lighter work related things, such as email, news, phone calls, book-keeping, etc.

Regarding how to dividing the time slots, my usual practice is to concentrate on one major task and get it done completely in the shortest time period. For example, while I'm doing patent application, I have to complete it with all the available resources being collected and everything in the real-time memory for 2-3 weeks until it can pass the criteria. If it's a software development or fundraising, it may take 3-4 weeks to finish one round of intensive development and reach a milestone. After that period, I'm pretty much exhausted, and have to switch to something else to concentrate on, just like what you said. Focus and hammer down the nails with a deadline in mind is so important. Bug-fixing is a side job, light but time-consuming to cover every possible exceptional cases, but it also depends on whether it needs a redesign.

"My most personally productive run was on a job that I had 4 hours in the morning to program and was doing something completely different in the afternoon."

I totally agree with you. If you super concentrated on solving one hard problem within 4 hours in the morning, it's hard to have the same amount of energy to do another on in the rest of the day. So we need to manage our productivity in a better way to balance the work load and intensity. We need to have time to get recharged.