[lukaslalinsky]

I think the best way to learn to be a better programmer in your position is to find a more stable job with a good team of people. Learn from other people's experiences and mistakes. Working as a freelancer early doesn't have many advantages if you want to build a career, in my opinion.

Other than that - Keep trying different things. Go deeper with the frameworks and libraries you use to understand why do they work the way they do. Read about things that are interesting to you and you have some use for. When you have a problem, don't just "fix" it, understand exactly where, why and when it's happening.

[Bahamut]

Agree 100% - I only am now starting to approach freelancing seriously after 2 years of development at several companies, and I found I have learned a lot from working with other people. Working with other people means you can bounce a lot of ideas between each other and you can see how others code in code reviews or just browsing their code.

You will never get as strong feedback being a solo programmer - in fact, the feedback will likely be minimal.

[lukaslalinsky]

There is also one other disadvantage of being a solo junior dev - you will often work on very simple things. Complex systems usually require more than one person, and even if you are working as a junior dev who is just assigned tasks, you get to see how larger applications are built and gradually get into the design process. This is not something you get when building simple web apps as a freelancer.

[MalcolmDiggs]

I'd agree with that. My first 4-5 years as a programmer were solo. Then I worked on a team for a year. I learned more in that year than I had in the other years combined.

If being on a team fulltime isn't possible, you can always contribute to guided/managed open-source projects in your spare time, or go to meetups, hackathons etc. Anything you can do to get around more-experienced devs will help you in the long run.