What frameworks, tools, platforms do you use, how does your usual work day look like?
James Cooke is a freelance backend developer from London. His weapons of choice are PHP, HTML, Mysql databases, administrating linux system, scripting, cron jobs, setting up servers, fixing servers, command line, Java, Kohana, Cake.
First thing in the morning for James is to go through his e-mail, social media, tumblr, and manage blogs. Networking is very important. Sharing ideas, reading papers. That part should take about an hour, then work starts.
Advice: Start your every project with developing problem that you want to fix in your own way.
“I don’t think you should start with php framework before learning php, but that might be soon same as saying first learn machine code and then C”.
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Are there many jobs out there for backend developers that code in php mostly?
James chooses his field of interest within developing back end, so e.g. he doesn’t install wordpress but he migrates them, writes plug-ins, hacks things that are more advanced than what everyone can do from tutorial in 5 minutes.
Building and coding is not as much important as having a general knowledge of the whole field and know what tools to use for the job. We are getting to the point where code is disposable and it’s all about tooling.
So…
- Capture the requirements from the client.
- How are we going to market this?
- What kind of people are you trying to reach?
- Is this a right way to do it?
- How is the internet responding to what you do already?
- Do what you love.
“Developer needs to be superman and turn water into wine:)”
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What was your learning curve?
He started writing code at the age of 6 and realized that he can tell computer what to do. Read manuals, explored operating systems for 10 years, then he discovered OOP (Object oriented Programming). On the University he had another one ot hese eye-opening moments, learned logical, functional and procedural languages.
Probably the moments you learn the most are these times when you stay up until 3a.m. in the morning and got to believe that you are going to make it work for monday morning.
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How about your life outside work?
Being freelancer he can stop working for a week and neglect his clients, but he stil has bills to pay and good reputation to maintain, so freedom that freelancing gives comes with a lot of responsibility. He can choose which jobs to take, which say “no” to and that gives a piece of mind. So a balance between life and work is totally up to you and how you choose to make your business.
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When you work in group what tools do you use to ensure quality and productivity?
There usually is a big overlap between what James and other developer does in the same project, so they breakdown project to small parts in the todo list and use for example subversion to comfortably work on the same code. When being hired as a consultant or hired to work on a project with people from clients company, you might know the better ways to work on the project, but the changes you would like to see may be not worth it (time-consuming, expensive or just creating temporary mess in the beginning), so in order to change stuff within company changes must be performed slowly and step by step.
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Have you ever been hired just before the project deadline to save it from disaster?
Fortunately James has never been hired for such a job, usually it would mean a lot of business politics and putting blame on someone for not making project happen. This part is also about how to maintain good relationship with your clients and make them recommend you to other companies. If you want to be succesful freelancer, build your network. Share everything. Draw attention to yourself and build your presence online based on a long-term plan.
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Who and what would you like to ask other developers around the world about?
James would like to interview guys from 37signals, Carsten Haitzler (Rasterman) who wrote Enlightment window manager, Linus Torvalds, the creator and coordinator of Linux kernel and DJ Shadow. These are some pretty safe blokes:)
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Open Source
James built his own operating system, long story. Anyway..:) Some thoughts on free software, sharing and code copyrights.
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