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by yakshaving_jgt 2468 days ago
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.
1 comments
arcturus17 2468 days ago
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.

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TheOtherHobbes 2468 days ago
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.

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arcturus17 2468 days ago
Yea agree, that’s what I’ve learnt in the last few months after years of thinking “this shit can’t be profitable”.
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