ioddly

Gotcha, thanks for the reply.

How much length do you leave between contracts? How have you found scaring up contract work after long layoffs to go?

I'm in a somewhat similar situation but I'm scared to leave too long of a gap. Not so much worried about the resume gap as falling off on networking and the other things that lead to getting more work. It seems like I'll probably end up working mostly continuously for the next couple years while pursuing FIRE.

Whoops, I didn't sleep much last night. Just meant it to be the one all the way at the bottom.

What I'm thinking of are synced ignore lists of some sort. I think I read in the issue tracker that this is something they plan to change eventually.

And related, sync % reflecting ignored files. For example I've ignored a bunch of transient things like node_modules so my backup server sync is permanently at 70% even though it's actually up to date with all the files I want synced.

I switched to Syncthing from Dropbox a few months ago. While there are a handful of warts, the actual syncing seems to Just Work (TM). I am massively impressed with this, as building even a centralized file hosting service is quite the undertaking. I donated and I'd encourage others to do it as well, link on the homepage: https://syncthing.net/

Here are two that I enjoy participating in.

Reactiflux: https://www.reactiflux.com/

Not freelancing specific but there's a lot of pretty knowledgeable people in #jobs-advice, plenty of banter, and sometimes I get a technical question answered too. It's probably the most active chat-style programming community out there.

And here's a freelancing specific one:

And this one: https://www.jasonswett.net/the-secret-alliance-of-freelance-...

> The exception would be if "the guy" is brought in as a contractor (which these days should probably be your goal)

Could you elaborate on that? Do you mean being a contractor should be your goal as "the guy" or the hirer?

A coworker and I sometimes work remotely from the local community college library, since they have private rooms that you can grab. You shouldn't feel guilty -- that's what it's there for after all. (You should feel guilty if you go on there and talk on the phone all the time though).

In my case, I found that giving talks at local meetup groups helped very much. It gets you used to talking about code in front of people.

I use mdx-deck: https://github.com/jxnblk/mdx-deck

Guess this approach depends on whether you want to "code" your slides or not. As someone who's never gotten along with Powerpoint et al, this approach agrees with me very well.

> Reading material design from Google https://material.io is a great start. You may not like the UI of it, but the UX and explanations of why things are this way are really interesting.

To add, I've found reading the design documentation of some web and mobile UI libraries to be very enlightening. For example, the colors section of BlueprintJS has helped really narrow down how I use colors: https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#core/colors

The one you're most comfortable with.

Personally I choose Python given the option: easy to write, slices and comprehensions generally make algo question answers very terse.

Elixir, Julia, Rust.

Elixir - Tried Erlang a long time ago, totally sold on Lisp and message passing since then.

Julia - Interested in multimethods and sort-of typing as core language features.

Both of them: I miss macros.

Rust - Some of my hobby stuff is in C/C++ but I don't particularly enjoy the compilation model or lack of safety.

Out of the three, Elixir is probably the most immediately relevant to me (web developer), so that's probably what I'll end up exploring next.

I think what you should do is get in touch with everyone you've worked with before and let them know you're looking for consulting work. The hard part is building up a network of people who trust you, which you've hopefully acquired with all the experience you have. I bet you this'll work a lot better than cold approaching people.

Thanks for the heads up on gqlgen. Have you used its subscription + websocket functionality? This is the part I haven't figured out with graphql-go yet.

I'm using graphql-go/graphql at the moment. Sparse documentation, but everything seems to work correctly. I'm not too familiar with the Python GraphQL stuff, but here I'm writing my own schema and resolvers, so I guess it depends on what you mean from "by scratch."

If you need something off the ground ASAP, maybe look at something like Hasura or Postgraphile: point it at your DB and get the GraphQL resolvers.

Yeah, implementing a precise GC is a pain, but in Go the hard work of that is already done for you. If I were to write my own Lua-in-Go, my inclination would be to try to make an API something like this

    table := lua.MakeTable()
    table.Set(lua.MakeString("five"), lua.MakeNumber(5))

Rather than manipulating values on the stack. But it's possible there are reasons for not doing that that I'm unaware of. Was just curious.

I'd think one of the big advantages of rewriting Lua in a GC'd language would be that you could ditch the stack API, which is necessary to keep track of pointers but not so intuitive to use. Seems like they didn't take that route though.

My two are both up; I was also able to log into netlify's control panel and view them.

I'm incredibly pleased with Syncthing. I use a small VPS with backups to cover the passive backup angle.

Requires minimal config, uses LAN if available, also supports multiple folders and ignores. I can store all my npm using projects on there now, and I can "spin up" a new computer very quickly by just syncing my config folder.

I'm very happy with my x230. I bought a refurb one for $250 and slapped a new $70 battery in there, runs like a champ. The only thing I wish I'd done differently was going out of my way to get the IPS panel: the TN is really bad.

I've been reading HN for a long time. I never attempted a startup, moved to the Bay Area or applied to YC, so I've always been on the outside looking in, but over the years software developer salaries continue to skyrocket and I've realized that financial independence is quite possible with a normal "boring" software development career. So I'm focused on maximizing compensation and savings while ensuring that I'm enjoying my day to day life.

My advice to people starting out: if you can save 50% of your take-home income in a month, you have a month of "runway" to do whatever you want, whether that's a startup on your own terms or something completely unprofitable.

I find it amusing how this seems to be a very common response to this sort of Ask HN question. If you want something right, you gotta do it yourself!

Here's mine: https://github.com/upvalue/meditations

It also supports habits and notes, but in mine the tasks and habits are combined. I'd like to go further like you have in combining the notes and task interfaces (right now it's basically two separate apps that happen to be in the same codebase + database).

Why would you start by caching it?

What are you storing the data in currently? If relational, I'd advise starting with simple relational tables (post_comments, user_comment_likes, etc). Render the HTML for logged in users based on querying that, and see how far you can get.

The source code for historical versions of both reddit and HN is available, so you could check that to see what they do. But caching probably won't be necessary for a long time.

I like this one, here it is for Fish shell: https://gist.github.com/upvalue/4f34df2397786535732a77676a72...

I have yet to use Zig seriously, but I'm pretty sure "defer" is its solution to this problem: https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#defer

Interviews & job applications are not a fair evaluation of your skills, they're a giant and terrible filter.

Don't let it stop you from continuing to apply for jobs. If you have written a Django/Angular site from scratch you are more than qualified for a junior position.

What's the name of that legislation? Just curious.

> I graduated my CS master. I like programming but don’t love it. I get a bit scared to think about that I have to do it for 8 hours per day like I am doing now at a startup. The stress is insanely high and my performance is clearly affected when I sleep terrible (which I sometimes do) at this place. Also

Is this also your first job?

My experience has been: stress mostly relates to the expectations and attitudes of the people around me, rather than the technical difficulty of what I'm doing. (Technical challenges are fun, provided I get time and space to work on them).

Exploring other things might be great, but if the stress is "insanely high," it might be this particular job that's the immediate problem.

There's actually a thinkpad X230 tablet edition. I'm typing this on an X230 (non-tablet) and fairly happy with the device. But it won't be out of the box tablet-like on Linux.

Quick search for Ubuntu Touch seems to suggest Canonical stopped working on it and it's now maintained by the community.