What skill should I focus on learning?

phimix

Current situation: 10+ years of experience with C# and .NET in general. Last 5 years spent mostly doing SEO and small programming projects. Future situation: Might want to start working as a freelance programmer doing bigger programming projects/working with bigger organizations. The big question: What skill should I focus on learning to become a coveted freelance programmer? Should it be sharepoint programming, biztalk programming or something else (all based on my existing C#/.NET skills)? Currently, I'm better with Windows projects than I am with for example ASP.NET. But I can learn things quite fast :) Any good ideas/recommendations? Thanks.

Matt Gullett

In order: JavaScript (client side) - jQuery and become familiar with frameworks like Backbone, KnockOut, etc. NoSQL databases like Mongo, CouchDB, Raptor C++ Node.JS Become a SQL master

AspDotNetDev

ASP.Net MVC, TDD (e.g., unit tests), DI/IoC, and cloud programming (e.g., Azure, Amazon, CDNs, sharding).

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

JimmyRopes

phimix wrote:

The big question: What skill should I focus on learning to become a coveted freelance programmer?

SEO if that is what you have been doing the last 5 years. As a freelance programmer you need to talk the talk and walk the walk! :~ Studying up on it doesn't cut it. You need real experience to be able to arrive on a project and hit the gropund running. :doh:

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Roger Wright

I have no idea why you were downvoted for this, nor any idea what you should do to become a "coveted freelance programmer." But I voted a 5 just to annoy whoever gave you a 1 vote. As a spot of advice, though, I'd start by looking at job postings for places you'd like to live for a long time, and note what technologies are most often requested. After you've accumulated a decent number, pick the top three and start studying them. If your work doesn't present opportunities to practice them, create your own. In 6 to 12 months, if you've practiced enough, you should be able to command a decent price in the market of your choice. Good luck to you! I've worked as a freelance computer/network repair and design guy, and it's not my cup of tea. I don't like idiots very much, and the problems of dealing with morons aren't worth the meager rewards. You'll probably run into many of the same troubles in programming, and I wish you luck. I don't have the patience for it anymore.

Will Rogers never met me.

Lost User

First, focus on learning how to learn new skills.

Espen Harlinn

:thumbsup: well said - dealing with people who think they know something about software development, and thinks that developers are something you just hire regardless of particular skills, is often painful. The biggest hurdle will often be to teach them to provide the correct information, without any assumtions. Academics are usually great to work with, as they are used to this.

Espen Harlinn Principal Architect, Software - Goodtech Projects & Services AS It’s time for companies to realize that consumers have become very savvy and very demanding. Today’s consumer (B2B or B2C) does their homework, is well informed, and buys…they are not sold. -- Mike Myatt

Kenneth Haugland

Quote:

The biggest hurdle will often be to teach them to provide the correct information, without any assumtions.

This can sometimes be an art in itself. If you are really unlucky you can easily end up in a situation like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M[^] :)

R Giskard Reventlov

Marketing.

"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me

Kenneth Haugland

You are in fact right. By the way, look at this video clip with Steve Jobs[^] from 1982!!! He seems to be a visionary indeed, I whish I could have the same clairity today as he had then :)

Espen Harlinn

:thumbsup:Classic - a bit of confusion is great when you're making a commedy.

Espen Harlinn Principal Architect, Software - Goodtech Projects & Services AS It’s time for companies to realize that consumers have become very savvy and very demanding. Today’s consumer (B2B or B2C) does their homework, is well informed, and buys…they are not sold. -- Mike Myatt

Kenneth Haugland

Quote:

:thumbsup: Classic - a bit of confusion is great when you're making a commedy.

But can be an absolute nightmare in the consulting industy :)

jschell

phimix wrote:

What skill should I focus on learning to become a coveted freelance programmer?

Primary focus 1. Communication skills 2. Business skills 3. Project skills Last 2 are necessary so you can estimate and charge correctly for the work you do. Secondary depends on what you mean by "bigger organizations" but as one interpretation larger businesses deal with a lot more volume and so their designs must take that into account. So one must learn strategies for creating 24x7 systems that can handle large volumes.

phimix wrote:

or something else

SQL. You can start with MS SQL Server. Learn how to set up the server, create databases and how to program in TSQL. Then do the same thing with either or both Oracle and MySQL.

Joe Woodbury

Depends on what you want to do. If you are purely mercenary, the hot skills right now are Java (Android and J2EE) and Web Services. ASP.NET has steady demand.

phimix

Thanks. So what you do now, when you don't have patience for morons anymore :)

kmg365

1.[SAS or R (with analyst skills), (Spring, JSP, Tomcat, Apache), C] or 2.[Ability to leap tall buildings with a single bound, with at least one additional X-Men ability.] If you can do just one of the items above (either 1 or 2), I'll give you a job.

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ...I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…And an enormous debt to boot!” Morgenthau 1939 Secretary of Treasury

Espen Harlinn

Kenneth Haugland wrote:

But can be an absolute nightmare in the consulting industy

Ahh, so true ;) Seriously though: Know any business that employs more commedians? Showmanship is pretty important - for most people rooting out the facts; sifting through them; and arranging them into a cohesive model is boring. So you've got to not only sell the idea that facts are important to non-programmers; you usually have to sell it to programmers as well. Enticing people to work, and to feel that their work is importatnt, is always the greatest challenge, and a bit of entertainment can help a lot when it comes to motivating people. Humour is often called the sovereign remedy - but that doesn't mean that you can turn everything into a joke.

Espen Harlinn Principal Architect, Software - Goodtech Projects & Services AS It’s time for companies to realize that consumers have become very savvy and very demanding. Today’s consumer (B2B or B2C) does their homework, is well informed, and buys…they are not sold. -- Mike Myatt

Kenneth Haugland

This goes to the very heart of the human being, and the thing that we are so good at, at least from our perspective, is to make decitions based on many variables. Cumputer, mathematics and logic is the exact opposite, it is very good at finding the "right" answer. Some of the tings in the world is straigt forward, mening that a computer could handle it better or just as well as a human, other things arenearly impossible (or at least we humans hope that) like finding out who to marry, be friends with, were to work, how to treat people smart etc. You could read Charles Petzold's book "The annotated Turing" to find out the problems, and see Kurt Godel destroy our hope that "Wir willen wissen, und wir wollen wissen" (Actually disproven the day before he said it). We cant, and sometimes that is good to know :)

FyreWyrm

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” - Lazarus Long Whatever you can't do in the above list, focus on learning that.

Don't blame me. I voted for Chuck Norris.

Espen Harlinn

Kenneth Haugland wrote:

a computer could handle it better or just as well as a human

Met up with a professor in agriculture from Minnesota this weekend, and I think it's safe to say that he didn't leave much hope for manual labor.

Kenneth Haugland wrote:

how to treat people smart

This is from 1972: Computer simulation of psychologists' decision-making[^], people have been playing around with this for quite some time.

Kenneth Haugland wrote:

Charles Petzold's book "The annotated Turing"

Perhaps I will, I haven't read Turings' work - which is, perhaps, a shame :-D Edsger W. Dijkstra wrote a few essays like:

As relevant today as they where then - and I find his questions "Are we decent by remaining silent? If not, how do we speak up?" to be most disturbing - as I mentioned above, not everything can be turned into a joke.

Espen Harlinn Principal Architect, Software - Goodtech Projects & Services AS It’s time for companies to realize that consumers have become very savvy and very demanding. Today’s consumer (B2B or B2C) does their homework, is well informed, and buys…they are not sold. -- Mike Myatt