I was chatting today with a European freelance developer who is thinking about setting up a software agency. He asked me if I had any advice for him after building Salsita from a guy in his bedroom to a 40 person company with 25 full-time developers in a little over…
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Tech & Business
Why We Don't Do Fixed-Price Software Projects (And Neither Should You)
A few years ago, I took on a freelance project to implement an Internet Explorer component in C++. I was billing a healthy hourly rate on other projects at the time, but this particular client insisted on a fixed price. In a bout of temporary insanity, I made an exception…
The Silly Reason Why Apple Needs to Keep Growing
M.G. Siegler wonders out loud in a [recent post](https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/apple- the-oil-company-5b5983aa81e2) how Apple can continue to grow given the stupendous results they just announced for last quarter. They can't milk the iPhone cash cow forever, after all. But again, the bar is now just set…
What I Wish I Knew When Starting Out as a Software Developer: Slow the Fuck Down
The other day I read What I Wish I Knew When I Started My Career as a Software Developer, an article in Lifehacker adapted from a Quora answer by Michael O. Church. I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I guess I find it so thought-provoking because, while I agree…
The Shifting Definition of Front-End Developer
Until the advent of the web, professional software development didn't have a front-end/back-end dichotomy. There were C programmers, Pascal programmers and FORTRAN programmers, but the language they used was a detail rather than a reflection on their background and career path. Then the web came along, triggering the influx…
Is 2015 the Year for Reasonably Priced International Data Roaming?
I went to dinner with a friend of mine a couple of months ago. He was visiting Prague from Israel and carrying two phones with him so he could use both Czech and Israeli SIM cards. The reason? He "couldn't afford to pay the international data roaming charges."…