[akor]

What languages do you suggest? Does Javascript have the same association with "race-to-the-bottom markets"? Having used Symfony and Laravel I don't understand why PHP has such a bad rep except that it's on the easier side so any language that makes things simple would suffer the same fate (attracting inexperienced developers (hello Javascript, Ruby, Python)). Both PHP and Javascript have many language specific issues so I'd say they're on equal footing.

[starvingbear]

I think PHP is still good. It definitely seems lower in priority for most companies remote or local than it used to be by far but it isn't going away or anything. Niche languages depend on a lot of factors. And debatable on what is still niche but I think Elixir, Scala, Go and Rust are a group to look at. My personal choice has been Elixir and that has worked out great. Lots of remote jobs too with it. A fellow made a post recently about how to find remote jobs in it https://blog.lelonek.me/how-to-find-an-elixir-job-db4c836890

[yakshaving_jgt]

I intentionally didn’t suggest any, because I didn’t want this to turn into a language shootout, or for me to sound like a fanboy of the particular languages I prefer. It’s the same reason why I avoided levelling criticisms at PHP. And yes, I do think JavaScript has the same market supply issue.

If you haven’t done much other than PHP and JavaScript, I’d suggest going through the Seven Languages in Seven Weeks book, and also doing a bit of market analysis; see who’s hiring for which languages.

[arcturus17]

I personally don't find PHP attractive at all, but in recent months I've been very surprised to meet some devs who are making absolute bank with it (including WordPress devs). I think success as a freelancer depends a lot on being a good salesman, delivering value to your client, and being efficient. Whether the end product (eg, a WP installation) is "quality" in terms of software engineering might be highly debatable... I can totally understand why a Scala dev wouldn't want to touch PHP projects with a 10-meter pole, but that doesn't mean that you can't be highly successful with it.

Personally, I can code in a few languages but I build mostly in JS. I understand why some engineers would not want to work with it and I'm not personally offended by that, but I think ES6+ can provide a great dev experience. And while there's certainly a lot of crappy jobs in the space, there also seems to be really interesting work to be found around Node / React / Vue etc.

[TheOtherHobbes]

WP is such a dumpster fire it's unlikely that PHP skills are going to become obsolete any time soon.

From a freelance/consultancy niche it's almost ideal. Demand is high, and employers/clients are likely to have relatively simple requirements (i.e. a brochure/catalog site with a bit of a backend, not a huge industrial db that needs to run at planetary scale backed by a devops machine.)

It's not a personal interest but it seems to work well for people who can stand out from the pack, even a little.

[arcturus17]

Yea agree, that’s what I’ve learnt in the last few months after years of thinking “this shit can’t be profitable”.

[caseydm]

I freelance and agree that you will command higher rates with another language or speciality. Yes PHP is widely used and can get the job done just like a lot of other languages. However, I worry clients do not appreciate a professional PHP developer the same way they do a python or javascript developer.

My recipe for being a successful freelancer is to write clean, tested, maintainable code, PLUS specialize in some kind of niche. I mean specialize like crazy. I feel that employers like to hire polygot programmer employees because they envision them doing different things over a long period of time. But clients hire freelancers for very specific purposes and they only care about the immediate need right in front of them.

For example, my speciality is improving existing web applications written in python with Django or Flask frameworks. I can talk all day about monitoring errors in production, reducing response times, adding features, or improving app reliability, etc. But if someone asks me to support data science, build a new app from scratch, or an alexa skill, I decline.

You can definitely do well with Javascript, but again, I would be really good at one framework, such as Angular or React. Then I would focus that skill on a particular industry.

[smnplk]

Clojure seems niche enough.