Quake3World

I am trying to earn some extra cash beside my work and evening study, always helps

reference: http://www.garmin.nl

shameless self pimp, I know, but hey, never hurts to spread the word

lol working...

still selling yourself as a housemum huh?

try going through linkedin.com

or. call aquent partners.

What does your resume look like, dmmh?

Learn JSP and we could use you.

I think I'll be freelancing for a couple weeks in December. American Greetings is having a temp freeze on contractors for the week of and after Christmas. I'm salary at my agency, so it shouldn't really matter to me, but I can make some extra cash.

Where do you work, Eraser?

In the Netherlands... erm... in Delft... close enough?
I work at a company that makes CMS (Content Management System) software mostly aimed at (Dutch) government institutions. We also implement websites for our customers. Last summer I moved from the website-making department to the department where the CMS software itself is built. I'm mostly involved in building frontends on top of our backend systems.

I've thought about learning PHP, but I've done so much in Perl already I don't see any reason to learn both. Granted, I don't do web dev for a living either. Aside from an internal data-driven site I wrote for our department, it's just a hobby, although I'm thinking about creating sites for a couple of small businesses that I've worked with before.

I just can't decide if I want to get into doing ongoing web support and updates or not. =\

PHP is much easier to learn than Perl. Especially if you've already done some heavy-duty Perl hacking, picking up and mastering PHP will take you mere weeks. Might be a good move because there are always PHP jobs available (demand > supply, at least in continental Europe).

@Eraser: you wouldn't happen to work for Seneca, do you?

^misantropia^ wrote:PHP is much easier to learn than Perl. Especially if you've already done some heavy-duty Perl hacking, picking up and mastering PHP will take you mere weeks. Might be a good move because there are always PHP jobs available (demand > supply, at least in continental Europe).

@Eraser: you wouldn't happen to work for Seneca, do you?

lol, small world. I work for the company that developped the VIND2 Productencatalogus (webbased system with which governments can maintain and publish the services/products they provide), which we integrated last year with the CMS made by Seneca (did the same with Brein, Centric and a few others). How do you know them?

Although I'm not that active in that field lately, been more focused on biometric (fingerprint based identification, facial recognition etc) and healthcare solutions.

^misantropia^ wrote:PHP is much easier to learn than Perl. Especially if you've already done some heavy-duty Perl hacking, picking up and mastering PHP will take you mere weeks. Might be a good move because there are always PHP jobs available (demand > supply, at least in continental Europe).

@Eraser: you wouldn't happen to work for Seneca, do you?

Interesting, from just the random bits I've seen of PHP, I assumed it would be trickier than Perl. I certainly won't disagree with there being a greater demand for PHP monkeys than Perl though. Seems that everyone - in the corporate world at least - who isn't writing Microsoft stuff is doing PHP almost exclusively.

umm... Java?

^misantropia^ wrote:What does your resume look like, dmmh?

I dont quite have a resume. I am a self-thought PHP developer. Don't need anything big and difficult, just some side projects which I can finish in a few weeks. Maintenence work, small additions etc. Currently doing some freelance stuff but my current contract is not getting me quite the amount of paid hours I'd like.

Can't work in-house, so it needs to be low profile and my architecture study (12 college hours - homework/ projects) and my 32 hour daytime job as a building control officer don't give me much time, but I like coding and it's easy money, more or less

Eraser wrote:Learn JSP and we could use you.

no time m8

R00k wrote:I've thought about learning PHP, but I've done so much in Perl already I don't see any reason to learn both. Granted, I don't do web dev for a living either. Aside from an internal data-driven site I wrote for our department, it's just a hobby, although I'm thinking about creating sites for a couple of small businesses that I've worked with before.

I just can't decide if I want to get into doing ongoing web support and updates or not. =\

what ^misantropia^ said. assuming you're already familiar with html/css/js, php's a really handy thing to know and it's easy to learn, especially if you're coming from another language.

whatever methods you pick to do it, the main problem with making websites is the one you've already picked up on - after potentially losing hours on figuring out what the person actually wants/needs, you can end up losing even more on updates and modifications. if you can stick to a set of proper nerdy standards while you're developing then a lot of the problems go away (code becomes more easily reusable, projects are easier to come back to etc,.) but then some the fun goes away and it stops being a hobby.

the fun never goes away; because you never stop learning

took me some time to get familiar with PHP, but now I know it pretty well. Spent 5 months developing garmin.nl (did the front-end, back-end and the database design, the site's layout was handed to me) but I learned much in the process. Switched to object oriented programming for that, so that set me back a bit. It's nothing special on the front end, but there's a lot of usability in the back-end, like PHP generated AJAX stuff (re-usable), which adds to reducing the amount of time they have to spend filling the site with content.
They are really pleased with me and I get to charge trice the amount per hour my daytime job pays me because I know what they need and where I can save them time by spending a few more hours on programming. But I dont think I can switch to becoming a full time developer, even though I would earn much much more then I currently do.

I friggin love object oriented coding. Was reluctant to switch from function oriented programming, but it's worth the effort

I've done function-oriented exclusively in Perl. I've done quite a bit of VBScript using WSH, but no object-oriented CGI before. It just seems somehow incongruent or weird to me.

Fender wrote:umm... Java?

Oh yea - and Java. hehe

R00k wrote:I've done function-oriented exclusively in Perl. I've done quite a bit of VBScript using WSH, but no object-oriented CGI before. It just seems somehow incongruent or weird to me.

I hate to use this word, but thinking in OO is a paradigm shift. Before you get it, it is strange. After you get it, everything else seems clunky.

And just wait until you get to functional programming. Scheme, Haskell, Clojure, the fun never stops!

But then it's Monday morning again and you have to go back to your PHP/Java/C# day job. :(

Fender wrote:I hate to use this word, but thinking in OO is a paradigm shift. Before you get it, it is strange. After you get it, everything else seems clunky.

So I should stop being an old fogey set in my ways, and just give it a chance?

^misantropia^ wrote:And just wait until you get to functional programming. Scheme, Haskell, Clojure, the fun never stops!

But then it's Monday morning again and you have to go back to your PHP/Java/C# day job.

That sounds like it would take up a lot of your time to learn and wouldn't have very many practical applications.

Not many but FP has certain traits - immutable state, no side effects - that make it a good fit for concurrent programming. But mostly I dabble in it because it's fun and enlightening - it broadens your view, makes you look at programming problems from new angles.

^misantropia^ wrote:@Eraser: you wouldn't happen to work for Seneca, do you?

No I don't. I work for Green Valley, a relatively small company (about 70 - 80 people work here). We are familiar with VIND2 though but the last two years or so we've been working with SDU and integrated their E-Grant product catalog into our system, but we still support VIND2.