Ask HN: How to move beyond "freelancer"? - <AUTHOR> I've been doing freelance web development for the past 7 years. I have consistent work and "OK" pay. I've experimented with my rates over time, and am at a point where I have trouble finding work if I raise them...but become part of the "commodity freelancer market" if I charge less.
Last year, I had a client (who had their own client...which we'll call the "true client") for a big project. At the beginning of the project, upon receiving my quote, my client told me that it was "way above" what the true client was willing to pay. I asked for more clear budget numbers, and was told very clearly that it was 60% of my original quote. After days of negotiations, I ended up reducing my quote considerably. Keep in mind, this did NOT involve me reducing my rate; I know better.
Part-way through the project, I found out that not only was my original quote under the true client's budget, but my client had also quoted them a price which was 3 times my original quote amount. Not only that...but they had used my quote to create their own, and then proceeded to cut me down farther.
I felt undervalued and belittled by the news. I wasn't upset about another company profiting off of me (of course that's going to happen by default, if I'm working through an intermediary). Rather, I was really bothered by the nickel-and-diming and flat-out lies I was told about the project's constraints and budget.
Since that time, I've paid closer attention to the companies I work with. They're consistently profiting off of me at ridiculous rates; however, if I raise my rates to compensate, I don't get work. I've tried to form my own "digital agency" with another partner...but we had a harder time finding work as a new agency than as freelancers.
TL;DR: I'm tired of being nickel-and-dimed, and want to move beyond the "freelancer" title. How did you become the digital agency that you are today? How did you drop the "freelancer" title and make something more of your daily life? <comment><USER3> Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not a freelancer, you're a contract developer. I make a lot of money off of guys like you, because I have relationships with the guys who ultimately hire you. They're willing to pay me $120/hr for a developer because they trust me to fix things if they get fucked up. I pay a staffing firm $90/hr, and the staffing firm pays you $65/hr. You get fucked over because you're playing the wrong game; clients don't pick up the phone and call you because you do good work, they pick up the phone and call you because they remember who you are and like you.

If you were really a "freelancer" or "consultant" instead of a contract developer, you would have these relationships yourself. You would be able to convince your clients to cut out the middleman and pay you $100/hr instead of paying me $120/hr. But first, you have to build that trust with the people ultimately paying for your services. This generally means upping your game with respect to salesmanship, which isn't something you can "hack". It also means turning down opportunities that may pay well, but don't offer any opportunity for building relationships.

Again, that's the thread that's missing here: personal relationships. Get to know your clients, understand what needs they have, and make them like you enough as a person that they think "Hey, I need a developer. I wonder if ryannevius is available?" You and your friend had a hard time starting an agency because you don't have a pool of potential clients because you don't have that symbolic rolodex of people you can call. You're selling professional services, and professional services are sold through person-to-person relationships.

<comment><USER4> The tone of this comment sounds a little aggressive, but, in my experience, the following is the truest advice:

> _clients don 't pick up the phone and call you because you do good work, > they pick up the phone and call you because they remember who you are and > like you_

People want to work with people they like (and to like them they first need to meet them).

They'd rather work with people they like, that do good work, than people they like that do bad work, but given the choice, they will pick people they know and like, that are mediocre, over "superstars" that they don't know and/or don't like.

Which means

\- if you don't have direct access to the final ("real") customer, you're mostly wasting your time

\- extra hours spent turning out stellar work would be a 1000 times more productive/useful getting to know your clients on a personal basis

\- relationships with "customers" will only last as long as the people you're interacting with stay at the company; when people change companies, it's sometimes more effective to follow them to their new home than try to build a new relationship with the new team at the old company

\- intermediaries are vampires; do not go near them. They fear light: expose them and they will flee.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> I didn't mean to come off as aggressive :) But the reality is that there is way more money in knowing people than in doing work. The sooner in your career you can make the transition from being someone who creates value by doing work to someone who creates value by knowing people, the happier you will be and the more control you will have over your destiny.

<comment><USER5> I like to think of myself as someone who takes pride in their craftsmanship (whatever the craft may be); I'd imagine many developers feel similarly. As such, this advice stings. But it really has the ring of one of life's "hard truths", and so thanks for being direct (in both of your comments).

<comment><USER3> It shouldn't sting! Doing a good job is the first step in building a relationship, so you should absolutely work hard and take pride in your work. I'm only able to leverage my relationships to make easy money because my clients trust the quality of my work (and I ensure the quality of the people who are hired through me). Doing good work builds trust, but unfortunately many people stop at that.

I'd recommend reading The Trusted Advisor [1]. It was originally written with management consultants in mind, but it is a good guideline in general for how to walk the line between personal and work relationships. Basically, you should look at your clients as you would a friend: be their friend, know their problems, and help them with those problems. Become invested in them and their success, and they will invest in you. Business is ultimately about people, but I feel many technical workers focus on the technology and get screwed over as a result.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Trusted-Advisor-David- Maister/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Trusted-Advisor-David- Maister/dp/0743212347)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the recommendation! I'll be sure to check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most profitable advice I've gotten for charging good rates comes from two sources:

1\. Jim Camp's negotiation book, "Start with No": [http://www.amazon.com/Start-No-Negotiating-Tools-that- ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Start-No-Negotiating-Tools-that- ebook/dp/B003EY7JEE) One key takeaway: You can refuse to compromise on your rates, provided that you can afford to walk away if necessary.

2\. Patrick McKenzie's (patio11's) advice for moving beyond the "freelancer" title, in particular [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself- a-pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a- programmer/) and [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and- patrick-...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick- mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/)

I used these strategies to double my daily rate as an Ember.js consultant from $1k to $2k, and it was a fairly straightforward exercise in the end.

<comment><USER7> > _You can refuse to compromise on your rates, provided that you can afford to > walk away if necessary._

This is very important advice, and I've applied it to car purchases, condo lease agreements, cable and phone contracts, you name it.

It's about _leverage_. If you have alternatives, and what the person on the other side of the table offers doesn't fit your needs, _take your business elsewhere_. You have to be prepared to leave or say no.

On the other hand, if you can't say no, then you don't have any leverage.

<comment><USER8> This is mostly true, but not entirely.

The key is the perception of the other party, not the actual reality of whether you can say no or not.

Robert Ringer's amazing (and must read) book, "Winning Through Intimidation." Talks about how he manufactured the perception of being able to walk away, and why image and perception are more important than actual circumstances.

It's of course much simpler to play the part of being able to say no, when you can actually walk away...but you can hack your own perception to believe you can walk away even if you can't, and pull it off... or you can be a good actor and take some risks...

Either way... The premise is true...but it's more about the story you are selling than anything else.

<comment><USER9> Would love to hear more about the book you mentioned "Winning Through Intimidation". Just marked as to read on Goodreads. What'd you like about it?

<comment><USER8> Where do I begin :)

My favorite quote from the book is...

"I didn't mean to cut off your hands, but I had no choice when you reached for my chips." This is his argument for DEMANDING a contract for every business deal, especially with friends or people you trust. (I admit I am not great at this...)

He opens with a theory that most successful people who claim "hard work and a positive attitude" drive success are lying. They are either too embarrassed to admit how easy it was for them...or they can't see the forest from the trees and really have no idea why they are successful.

He has a few key points that really stand out for me...

"The results you get from a negotiation are inversely proportionate to how intimidated you are."

"With every deal...The key is to hope for a good result, but expect a negative one. (otherwise you will get discouraged way too quickly and give up.)

Image is everything... "It's Not What You Say Or Do That Counts, But What Your Posture Is When You Say Or Do it."

I wrote a few blog posts over the years about his book... [http://www.davidmelamed.com/2012/11/19/robert-ringers- theory...](http://www.davidmelamed.com/2012/11/19/robert-ringers-theory-of- intimidation-and-how-to-make-sure-you-end-up-on-the-winning-side-of-your- negotiations/)

[http://www.davidmelamed.com/2012/11/20/i-really-didnt- mean-t...](http://www.davidmelamed.com/2012/11/20/i-really-didnt-mean-to-cut- off-your-hand-but-i-had-no-choice-when-you-reached-for-my-chips/)

Edit: I have a few extra copies. Would be happy to mail one to the first two people who ask. Just find my email on my profile and email me.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to read that book, but I'm not comfortable giving out an address.

Do you have a link to amazon? I'm willing to buy the book and give you a little profit while doing so.

<comment><USER8> You are better off finding a local goodwill or used book store. It was a very popular book in the 70's and 80's...

<comment><USER10> I was able to find a used copy published in 2013 on Amazon :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been a web-dev freelancer for 5 years and is now building a small team to make quality websites (mostly webtools).

Some random things I learnt from the transition :

\- The most interesting projects rarely (mostly never) relies on a one person "team". Big projects are important for the customer and they need to know they will have someone to contact even if it's holiday time. You want the true customer to buy from you interesting projects : don't be alone.

\- Once you have a team, you will look for interesting projects. They are more complicated to get. They often come from medium / large organization. Those orgs. have important inertia. Projects can take weeks of month to start. Chase multiple projects at the same time.

\- Once you have bigger project you must learn to make precise time evaluation. It is really complicated. It must be done before the project is sold but you must not spend too much time on it. It is key since you want to earn money (no brainer) but mostly to have a smooth production calendar.

In my case, we are just a team of two. I spend half time in sales activities and the other developing websites. My coworker is full time dev.

If you want to discuss in details, reply here or email me : paul@agence- donatello.fr

Good luck ! There are freakingly high mountains of demands and needs outside. You can take your piece.

<comment><USER12> This is really interesting. So, you are basically saying if you want to work on interesting projects, your options are:

       * join a team (as a contractor or as an employee, and take the rate cut)
       * build a team (and move from development to project management, at least part of the time)
       * become a 'name' in an area and become a true consultant--specialize, but don't pick the wrong area, or if you do, be prepared to switch gears.  (You didn't have this, but I've seen this work as well.)

<comment><USER11> Or be a contractor (in this case you _might_ only execute interesting projects, not design/think them).

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't it be more precise to day 'or be a subcontractor'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seth Godin told me if you want to be a entrpreneuer, you need to hire others to do EVERYTHING you can possibly outsource.

Otherwise you will hire the cheapest labor -which is yourself...and you'll never break free of being a freelancer.

My personal advice...the reason raising your rates isn't working for you is because "you don't get the work." This is key...if you need the work, you will never successfully raise your rates.

I have fetched $350/hr for SEM consulting...when you can easily hire an experienced pro for $50 and someone more experienced than me for $175. How do I charge that much? It's simple. My opportunity cost let's me turn down lower paying gigs.

The secret to winning a negotiation is going in believeing you can walk away without feeling like you missed out. If you can walk away....you are in the driver's seat.

<comment><USER13> Or in other words,

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it."

       - Paul-Muad'Dib to the Guild navigators, at his confrontation with the Emperor Shaddam IV.

<comment><USER14> >> The secret to winning a negotiation is going in believeing you can walk away without feeling like you missed out.

Well said and always works. In every business.

Car dealers would absolutely hate for people to know that.

<comment><USER15> People who know that probably don't walk into car dealerships...

<comment><USER16> Where would they go instead?

<comment><USER17> Do some research, make a short list of cars that you want (and can afford), have some range of quotes from various websites (I used to check truecar and KBB, not sure if it's still a good source). Then make a few phone calls to the dealers, press for prices (with the exact base model and add-ons you need). Any dealer who doesn't want to give a quote, you can walk away, or rather, end the phone call.

A few years back, it took me half a day researching and half a day visiting two dealers to get the car I wanted, at a reasonable price: I think it was in the 90% percentile cheaper in true car's range, even though I bought my car in SF bay area, which is supposedly more expensive than the average price.

<comment><USER3> It's not hard to find auto wholesale prices online. Most dealers these days you can call up and say, "hey, I know your wholesale price on this car is $x, can you give me the car for $100 more than that?" They're pretty used to this anymore; they don't expect to make anything on "internet orders". If nothing else, it adds revenue and sales volume to their aggregate numbers.

<comment><USER17> One of the people in the car dealing industry I talked to recently told me that the business model now is not based on selling new cars, but to sell services/insurances and a bit from used cars. This makes total sense because they got the first placement for the services, and people are probably not as prepared with service/insurance quotes compared with new car price quotes :) Maybe this is also why Tesla gets a hard time with the auto dealers when they want to do after sale services too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I did this successfully with my agency [http://bootstrapheroes.com/](http://bootstrapheroes.com/) [https://experts.shopify.com/socialproof- it](https://experts.shopify.com/socialproof-it) we grew from a team of two to 10+. The biggest lesson I learned is if you want to create an agency you need to become one of the top experts in a specific area that is relatively new and growing like crazy. In new areas their is no experts so very easy in the beginning to become one or fake it until you are one. For me it was becoming one of the top Shopify app development experts. If I had tried to start an agency in a mature market like development for Magento/ Drupal sites I would have had a way harder time for their is lots of agencies with great track records in these areas.

</comment><comment><USER19> I freelanced full-time for several years. I had similar experiences.

I found that the key was to find clients who value your work. Working with individuals or small businesses can be tough because they are usually highly constrained by budget and do not understand everything that goes in to what you do. They want freelancers because they can't afford full time people. They will compare you to the rates they can find on Craigslist or Elance and balk when you require market rates.

Instead, find startups with technical people doing the recruiting or large companies with established roles and processes for freelancers. They will at least understand market rates and what you actually do.

You also need to have the power to say no to clients. That usually means savings and the willingness to wait long periods between jobs in order to find the right one. For me, the hit rate of was 1 out of every 8-10 job opportunities.

<comment><USER20> If you wait long periods of time, does that not reduce your overall hourly rate? Because if you are doing nothing your hourly rate is $0. With such a strategy can you make as much as someone who is full time employee or someone who charges much less but who is filling most of his/her hours?

<comment><USER21> Do not bill hourly. Bill daily.

<comment><USER22> Do not bill daily. Bill per project.

<comment><USER23> Only if you never learned the lesson of feature creep on a fixed budget project. Always put a limit on the time you spend.

<comment><USER22> Of course! The great thing about project-based billing (in my opinion) is that it forces you (and your client) to come up with clear requirements at the beginning of the project, and anything extra is an additional scope of work. Of course if the requirements are unclear, hourly would be a better option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My favorite post on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4245960#up_4247615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4245960#up_4247615)

<comment><USER25> I like tptacek's list but I'm wondering about how to get clients.

tirrellp makes a good point, though. I guess that's how?

<comment><USER26> Here's how I got my first clients:

1\. At university there was a billboard for people looking for developers.

2\. Responded to everyone, with a ridiculously low price of $25.

3\. Completed first job with flying colors. Collect glowing reference.

4\. Stitch up reference on to personal website.

5\. Hike price by 50%, find next client.

6\. Rinse and repeat.

I got up to $100 per hour for some clients[1], or $450 per day for other clients, before I finally found a full time developer job.

I'm glad I did this freelancing thing because my company knows I can walk any time and make 6-figures on my own.

I still get pinged by my former clients about new projects and refer them to friends.

[1] (I was offered $115 one time but I felt that was too much of a raise - <USER2> priced myself at the highest possible rate where I am certain I will receive a glowing reference. And glowing references means raises.)

P.S. I read patio11 and tptacek's advice at the time it was very useful.

<comment><USER27> Why did you switch to full time job if you were successful as a consultant?

<comment><USER26> I haven't tried being a full time developer.

As a consultant it's rare I had engagements lasting more than a couple of months. At a company there's more of a "narrative". It's like reading short stories vs reading a novel, both are good at various times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Here's some solid advice which I used to make the transfer myself.

First of all, pick a niche industry and own it. Too many agencies I see are just out to make money by developing as many apps and sites as possible. This means a lot of cold calling into different industries and talking to a lot of different people with different needs. If you stick with one industry, pretty soon, you'll find areas where you can really start to focus. This in turn makes you valuable to not only business, but then your name starts to get passed around since you have specific ways you're helping other people in that industry. Less cold calling and more referrals is what follows then. I would also start locally, get as many customers in your local niche then broaden out, go regional, then national.

Secondly, the one thing that has made my agency successful is minimizing overhead. It's basically me and my partner. We work from our homes, but are in constant contact with each other (technology is great ain't it?). This means, no employees to pay, no office rent, no heating bills, no additional hardware or furniture. It allows us to keep our rates fairly low and still have a very nice profit margin since we have so little upfront costs. This also benefits our clients since it saves them money too.

Lastly, I use a progressive billing system. I start out working with my clients on an hourly rate - mainly doing consultation work. Then once we start having steady work, I go to them and say, "Hey, you're paying a lot for my hourly rate since and we're always doing work for you, why don't we just set up a monthly total (a 5-8% discount off my hourly rate) with a minimum of hours I need to work for your company each month and go from there?" 90% of our clients have switched over to a monthly or yearly billing subscription. This is a biggie since you don't have to worry so much about where your next project is coming from, you can really focus on your clients and know you have a steady stream of revenue coming in. This also allows you to continue to cold call and bring in new business - makes a huge difference compared to working project to project.

Hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER28> Most people run into this at some point. Many times a business will try and take advantage of freelancers and beat you down on rate because "some guy" is 50% cheaper or whatever. You have to learn to walk away from these deals, that is part of what changes you from freelancer to consultant. A consultant knows to walk away from these deals or arguments because you cannot win in a race to the bottom. Not that being a consultant is better than being a freelancer, I just feel it is a mental shift in how you approach deals and set them up.

People have suggested building our own product. That is all well and good, and honestly at some point you will want to stop selling your time because your time is finite and can't be scaled. That's when product development becomes more attractive. But if you are still having fun writing other peoples stuff and just want to get out of a rut and increase your rate then you can do that.

Pricing is a skill, we charge weekly rates (based on 32hrs) per person and honestly most clients equate that to an hourly rate in the end. We also set a minimum charge for all projects and bill based upon value delivered instead of hours when appropriate, for example, we just picked up a small project < 1 week in duration where we charged $7k. Every time a potential client starts trying to negotiate our rate down, I move the conversation to value and most of the time I can win solid deals and I don't negotiate my rate down. I have in the past, but once someone knows you will negotiate your rate, they will always go for more and you end up in a death spin to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice thread there since I'm pretty new in Web Dev+Design freelancing (2y part- time, 7m full-time), but I think I've got in touch with a hint of an answer few days ago.

Someone came to me 2 weeks ago with a clear idea of copying a website, because her business was in the same market. We finally met 3 days ago about her project, and she told me she has seen 5 freelancers and 2 agencies for her website, but she still wanted to speak with me because she wasn't decided yet.

The first thing I asked her was: "Can you explain me about your business ? And what process the customer is going through ?". Then we went through a pleasant hour-long brainstorming phase, until she realized her point was totally different from the existing website she wanted to copy, and that we ended up with a way better and more suited solution for her. She surpisingly said : "You're the only one that asked me those things, and I loved it!".

Then I asked her how it went with those 7 other clients and she told me nobody cared about her business, and how they only seemed to want to get the contract, at any price. Even though some of them looked professionals, she wasn't sold.

After this meeting, I understood that a freelancer shouldn't be positioned as an "expert" sitting at the opposite of his client, but as someone sitting alongside his client, as a friend caring about their goals. When you're the right person, your time is invaluable, and your price will be the right one.

In conclusion, there is a lot of bad freelancers out there. Just be nice, get close to your client by genuinely caring about their problem, be honest , and you will build a strong network that will like you, trust you, and pay you well.

</comment><comment><USER30> How much of a commodity is your work? Are you doing work that most web devs could do? For example vanilla PHP is easier to find than a cutting edge SPA developer who knows the latest frameworks, architecting important services, etc.

How good are your communication skills? In consulting/freelance/contract this is huge. You will never be able to charge as much as someone who has great rapport with the customer, articulates points in a clear way, and shows understanding of the big picture goals.

How big are the companies you work with? As a rule of thumb small companies are not usually paying the highest rates. Small companies have more interesting work, but pick your poison.

What percentile are you capabilities in? This requires some brutal self honesty but usually it's harder to get top rates if you are not at the top of your field.

Do you try to work remote? Jobs usually pay more if you are willing to stay on site most of the time. Hate this but it's true.

Do you have an impressive portfolio of work to show? When people see it do they "ok, thanks", or do they say "wow that's really cool"?

The good news is you can change and improve everything on this list.

</comment><comment><USER31> It sounds like you are a successful freelancer. What you are trying to become is a successful business owner.

You need to hire a couple people to write code, and start selling full time. This is where things get hard. I haven't made it work correctly yet either. Good luck!

<comment><USER8> This is the reason the EMyth was written - to help freelancers become entrepreneurs. Read it if you have the time.

<comment><USER31> Is this emyth.com? Or the book on Amazon, or is there a relation between the two?

Edit: Wow. In the small sample on Audible this guy already mentions something I've seen over and over with the clients I work with.

When you start your company you go from employee to business owner. But your mind stays in employee mode. You keep doing your job just like an employee. You get over worked (those 80 hour weeks) and never thrive.

Everything you do needs to involve building a process to hand off to someone else. Otherwise you are simply substituting a 40 hour work week for an 80 hour work week.

<comment><USER32> _Everything you do needs to involve building a process to hand off to someone else_

Derek Sivers also discusses this issue in _Anything You Want_ ([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936719118](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936719118)), which one of my favorite books, ever, and highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's all about relationships and the client's experience. If it helps, think of the clients as users of an app, who go through an onboarding process. How do they discover the app? What do they associate with the brand? What steps do they go through and what is the conversion rate on the "funnel"?

You simply build your brand, including a website, a blog and attract people to it. Get known widely (by having content that people share) and deeply (through good work and referrals). This takes time to build. But it's like any other brand.

Basically, you need a brand, and cultivate relationships. Probably the best two pieces of advice I can give you are:

1) Make it safe to fail, so you can iterate and try better things. For example, have 100 users and only try a particular pricing or offer with 5 of them. A/B test various website designs, email marketing strategies, etc. Partner with one or more business developers who are passionate about client relations, and give them % of PROJECTS, not the company. This way, if anything fails, it doesn't bring down the whole thing. And you can do this "all day" because your expected value is always nonzero, so the more you do it, the more you get. You can even hire others to do your job for you - again, on commission. Like 2 levels of MLM.

2) Establish relationships before you need them. Network, and let people know what you need without pushing them. Over time when you really need something, you do 90% of the work (set up the whole experience etc) and let them know how they can be of help by doing only 10% of the work. Something simple and well- defined that starts off your onboarding process. Inbound leads basically, and "warm introductions".

</comment><comment><USER34> To get more in depth than patio11's link below, I would recommend looking at Brennan Dunn's courses (the free one is great to get started), and at the risk of being accused of self promotion: sign up to my course at: productizedconsulting.com (free and my own service was inspired by Patrick and Brennan's workshop a while back)

The TLDR is: package a small part of your expertise as a product, and sell it as a SaaS. Having dependable recurring revenue is a game changer.

<comment><USER35> Thanks for the suggestions - I signed up for Brennan course and yours. I am on the "interested but not ready" side of consulting and want to learn as much as possible before jumping in. Looking forward to your course!

<comment><USER34> Thank you - hope the course helps you. The reframing into product focus has been a life changer for me. (And I say that as a YC alumni)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "but my client had also quoted them a price which was 3 times my original quote amount."

There's your answer. You just found your new rates. Get a part-time dev job if you lose work for a while, to keep the lights on. Stick to that 3X amount and don't waver. Profit.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wrote about how I stopped freelancing and joined an agency. If you can't setup your own one (for whatever reason), then it's worth looking around for existing agencies who have established themselves and know all the ropes. Here's my post: [http://blog.higg.im/2014/12/06/freelancing-financial- freedom...](http://blog.higg.im/2014/12/06/freelancing-financial-freedom/)

My post was inspired by a great book called "stop thinking like a freelancer". It's a good read ― [http://myshar.es/freelancer- book](http://myshar.es/freelancer-book)

</comment><comment><USER38> You can consider becoming a consultant. See "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer"[0] by Patrick McKenzie. Also see the link he posted to another thread.[1]

You're being nickel-and-dimed because you don't value yourself enough. Stop charging hourly rates and stop working for middlemen.

[0] [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a- pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4245960#up_4247615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4245960#up_4247615)

</comment><comment><USER39> Finding direct clients/projects/work is the harder work, and as such, you'll make more when people come to you directly, but you'll need to spend time actually making connections and selling (vs being sold).

What are you doing to find work directly?

<comment><USER25> I'm not OP but how do you find work/clients/projects? I saw a posting earlier that had some suggestions.

<comment><USER39> Nearly all networking and word-of-mouth. Sounds trite, but... some suggestions:

1\. Go to technical meetup/groups relating to technology you're interested in. Get known in that community.

2\. Go to technical meetup/groups relating to technology you're _NOT_ interested in. Get known in the community. With PHP and Java skills, I go to the .NET group a few times a year. When some of those folks I network with need PHP, I'm the first (and sometimes only) person they think of.

3\. Go to industry group meetings that relate to a particular industry you want to serve - education, govt, manufacturing, retail, etc. Learn who's doing what, what their terms are, etc. Start making connections there.

4\. Go out of your way to connect people in your existing network who you think might be able to benefit each other. Invite them for a mutual coffee, make introductions. See what happens.

5\. If there's not any sort of meetup in your area that doesn't cater to your interests, start one, and publicize it. If it's successful, you'll be one of the 'go to' folks for that topic in your area.

There are many other steps and paths to follow; this is just one I point out to people.

For me and most of the folks I know this isn't a fast process, but it does have payoffs over the long haul.

<comment><USER25> These are very good points. It's what I tried but it seems like I never met anyone. Just keep at it, I guess.

<comment><USER39> It's partially a function of geography though - not every area is as amenable to this approach as others. And you may need to change approach if this really isn't working. If it's working for others in your area, and not you, it's probably something in what you're doing (or not doing). If no one is having success in your area, it's likely more geographic area.

Happy to take this offline at firstname.lastname@example.com if you or others want to dig a bit deeper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There are a lot of ways to do it as proved by the comments here. My personal move from freelancer to "company" was a slow transition that involved moving away from clients that nickel-n-dime and moving towards those who do not.

For me, life did not really get easier until I had a roster of clients that wanted repeat work - either as a formal retainer, or just a somewhat regular billing amount each month.

Rate hike was one technique which rid me of a client that was too much hassle, but as you know it takes a lot of guts to let go of a paying customer. You claim that raising your rates led to losing work. You do lose clients when you raise rates, that is the point. You don't want to employ this strategy if you have zero clients who are willing to stick around at the higher rate.

Another is actively seeking out your own clients to cut out the middle-man. I found my sweet spot with small (10-50) companies who did not have full-time programmers on staff and were located in my area. It took me about five years of actively seeking clients and word-of-mouth to get a decent business going.

</comment><comment><USER41> I would strongly recommend reading the following book: [http://www.amazon.com/Go-Alone-Streetwise-Secrets- Employment...](http://www.amazon.com/Go-Alone-Streetwise-Secrets-Employment- ebook/dp/B005CCUGDM/?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427731688) It's very clear and accessible, and is aimed at people with domain knowledge but not business knowledge and experience. It's consistent with the excellent advice offered by others in this thread, in book length.

I'm getting my cofounders to read it now, I first read it 12 years ago, and I still think it's the single best introduction to business and sales skills I've seen, despite having read a LOT of such books before, during and since my MBA. Good luck with the business!

</comment><comment><USER42> I left "freelancing" to do "Contracting" as I was in a similar position.

Alas this also means that I often need to actually turn up to the clients office.

Working though an agency has similar issues, as you describe, but let's face it - no-one likes paying their bills or pay the full whack for stuff.

It's just the cost of doing business.

The only way (that I can see) to totally escape is to actually make something other people will want to buy and sell direct.

<comment><USER38> > The only way (that I can see) to totally escape is to actually make > something other people will want to buy and sell direct.

There are many consultants (myself included) who make a living consulting, have fantastic clients, work remotely, and are able to deliver massive value to those clients without having to work through middle-men.

<comment><USER42> My comment was rather negative, and I agree it's possible, personally I try to keep to a few small but busy clients and avoid agents when I can.

However when you're having a bad period, or just get tired of it all, the temptation to pack up and do something else can be very tempting :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's also worth quoting the famous business aphorism: "Production - Sales = Scrap"

In your case, production is worth 3 times what you quoted the middleman (because the end customer was willing to pay it), what you got was scrap value, and the difference between your price and the end-customer price is the value the middleman created by selling well. TL;DR: Learn to sell!!! :-)

</comment><comment><USER43> Don't you have a considerable portfolio and work history? Even if you went through an intermediary before, you should be able to prove you did the work, right? Whatever your weaknesses are, play them out as strengths.

If you don't have a huge history as a 'company', that's not a weakness, because you can pay more attention to each new client you get.

</comment><comment><USER44> My personal trick was to move the hell out of SF and the Bay Area (this could be generalized to out of any large concentrated hub of people who also do the same thing as you). If you're not dealing with tons of other engineers who need odds and ends like dev tools, integration testing, api adapters, and other such things that will never see the light of the outside world, you can get much "better" terms on your projects. For example, if your client is a starving country musician in backwater Louisiana, you can build his entire website for him and charge him a portion of whatever album sales happen through his website. This means a lot less upfront $$, a little more risk, but generally much more stable long term pay-offs because you've aligned your mutual incentives.

</comment><comment><USER45> 1\. Meet and befriend more freelancers of similar caliber and complementary skillsets.

2\. Help each other find new clients and pool your incoming work.

3\. Hire subcontractors for the little stuff that piles up.

4\. Slowly back away from the less interesting stuff, and take on the most- interesting/high-paying/high-responsibility jobs.

</comment><comment><USER46> This post has received several excellent tips and reading suggestions already.

If you're looking to up your game from Freelancer/Contractor, you'll do well to read Alan Weiss, The Guru of building a successful consulting business > [http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Consulting-Alan- Weiss/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Consulting-Alan- Weiss/dp/0071622101/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427816142&sr=1-1&keywords=weiss+million+dollar+consulting)

</comment><comment><USER47> Maybe in webdev it is different but my story is simple - offer clients something they cannot get anywhere else. I offer rails security audit and charge minimum 375 per hour, but usually around 500.

Bugs I find can save clients millions. Others firms in the industry charge 200-250 but I truly don't care - they don't have what we have. Find your niche.

Oh, and marketing of course. I had plain text website but new version gets better conversion see sakurity.com

</comment><comment><USER48> Stop working for agencies and work with the end clients. You'll have to work harder to find clients but you will be valued and will make more money.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm coming at this question from the other side, as a person who has hired web developers, and orthogonally, as a person who also works in a small consulting business.

1\. Word-of-mouth.

2\. I do grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies, and we occasionally get pitches for the "true client," and we always tell the would-be middlemen to just send the true client to us. This almost never happens, and in reality there is rarely a true client, and even if there is the middleman won't pay our rate because we're already near the top of the market (see point 4).

3\. You might not be able to move beyond "freelancer" without getting a conventional job or starting a startup.

4\. If you can't find a way to charge more you may have found the market rate for what you're doing and who you're doing it for. In my consulting firm ~$200/hour is the top market rate. We can't functionally charge more.

5\. I don't want to be a jerk, but I wonder how your sales and marketing skills rank. I wrote more about that issue here: [http://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/07/how-i-learned-about- assert...](http://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/07/how-i-learned-about- assertiveness-and-reality-from-being-a-consultant). In many small consulting firms, sales and marketing are at least as important as product. Have you thought about hiring a business or voice coach? What's your sales funnel like?

I do know that we're in the process of hiring a firm to re-do our website, and we found a couple through [http://wpengine.com/partners/](http://wpengine.com/partners/) and one through our ISP. One guy we sent an email to, and he said he didn't talk on the phone. Not surprisingly he's off the list: If he's that uninterested or busy _before_ we send him a lot of money, what's he going to be like _after_?. We found an outfit named Orange Blossom: [http://orangeblossommedia.com/](http://orangeblossommedia.com/) that has an impressive portfolio, and they seemed to understand the non-standard stuff we needed. CohoWeb: [http://cohoweb.com/](http://cohoweb.com/) is another favorite, and they came through our ISP. In both cases their sales guys were efficient.

Clients often have a hard time evaluating consultants. That's one reason we've been writing a blog for the last seven years: We're professional writers, and the blog does at least show that we can write, and it also attracts a lot of potential clients via search traffic. How are your clients finding you?

If your sales and marketing are not very hot—and I'm not saying that, but I am saying it's possible—you may want to consider trying to work for Orange Blossom or someone else on the WP-Engine list.

</comment><comment><USER49> Do good work. Over, and over, and over (referrals).

Know your worth. Be increasing your rates ever 6-12 months based on how much learning you've accomplished.

You're a consultant, not a freelancer. You want to be paid for your deep expertise and experience, not just your ability execute code/pixels/words etc.

</comment><comment><USER50> Care to share your email in your profile? Would love to follow up with you as I am looking into the same problem as well.

</comment><comment><USER51> It's hard to build a team. We are working on that for 3 years now. Since we are in a developing country clients expect lower rates.

But you have to stick to your rates no matter what. Usually the good clients come once you can provide good quality work. Word of mouth is much powerful that anything.

</comment><comment><USER14> Freelancing is very competitive with lots of supply. Hence struggles with rates.

Build and sell your own product or service. This also will carry way higher residual value than hit-and-run freelancing gigs.

</comment><comment><USER52> You've been doing web development for 7 years and you're not familiar with this practice?

Get involved in a business before you try to start a consultancy/agency.

</comment><comment><USER53> Don't sacrifice quality for nothing!

</comment><comment><USER54> Check out doubleyourfreelancingrate.com.

</comment><comment><USER53> Everyone is finding ways to save money!

</comment><comment><USER55> It sounds like you want to create a company (digital agency) as opposed to a sole proprietorship (freelancer). This doesn't mean that you need to start a huge company, but it does mean that you need more infrastructure. Infrastructure will give you more leverage.

I founded Glass & Marker (www.glassandmarker.com) with 2 creative directors who were tired of being paid low freelance rates, and working at big agencies who stepped on their ideas. Today, we've been in business 4 years, and we have a strong portfolio of tech clients (including over a dozen YC alum companies!), and a much larger team. I helped my partners by building business infrastructure; a strong and profitable vehicle to make content for our clients.

My business partners and I complimented each other because they wanted someone to run the agency who knew how to (1) generate new business (2) negotiate (3) ride the delicate balance of client management and enforcing the rules of the SOW (4) manage employees and (5) identify new areas for growth and scalability (expanding services, hiring, pricing, etc.).

My advice would be to find your business counterpart. Let him or her handle all money, contracts, difficult client scenarios, and all of the other stuff that aren't interested in. You have much better things to do with your time and your talents. In looking for a business partner, I recommend identifying a candidate with these characteristics:

-Transparency/Honesty: Clearly you don't like it when you have a client who is shielding the truth from you. 3x markup on your work is too much, especially if they are getting that while asking you to drive their price down (if you got to name your ideal price, it doesn't matter if they made 10X). Find a partner who speaks truthfully and doesn't mind pulling back the curtain on finances, even in front of client. I do this, and it has always been appreciated.

-Confidence: Your work is valuable. You want someone who understands that, and isn't going to wimp in the negotiation with the client. Sales hungry leaders often short themselves because they can't play chicken with the client. Get someone who will hold their ground in the sale. Ditto on revisions. Not that you want someone who is keen on conflict, but don't get someone who is conflict averse or passive aggressive. When clients get pissed about overages (even though they totally blew past the scope), your partner should be able to resolve conflicts while making the client both feel positive about the work and paying the additional fee.

-Meticulousness: If I let a client get a revision for free, it is definitely not because I'm obligated to. I made sure that my contracts were written simply, and effectively. That gives me confidence that if I had to, I would be entitled to enforce a tough client decision. I have NOT ONCE had to use a contract on a client and my agency has had over 130 engagements to date. I'm also organized with my account management, and I've trained my account managers to be this way. When a client first takes a step outside of bounds, we address it politely, immediately, and clearly. We don't let small grievances build up until the final stages of the project. Organized and meticulous communication is key, and your business partner should be a master of this.

Those are my initial thoughts.

TL;DR: Sounds like you need a business partner. Let him or her handle all money, contracts, difficult client scenarios, and make you more profitable. Find someone who is honest, transparent, confident, and meticulous.

</comment><comment><USER56> Sounds like the middle man you worked with was an asshole. What's the lesson there? Don't work with that company/person. And think about what signs you can look for in future partners that can tell you they are a similar sort of asshole.

The "true client" proves there's business for you to get which will pay you what you want to be paid. Go out and find the customers. That's really what it comes down to.

</comment><comment><USER57> there's plenty of other good advice here, but unless you're turning down 3-4 offers for every job you do accept, you're not charging enough money. this is true _even when you 're not working_.

wrapping your head around this and going without a paycheck is tough. most people aren't tough enough to deal with it, including you, until now. this is why agencies can charge 200% markup on your estimate AND screw you for 40% on the backend.

<comment><USER58> Are they "not tough enough" or not rich enough? If you don't have much saved, are running out of food and have a kid and your rent is due, turning down a job because it doesn't pay well means your kid goes hungry and your wife divorces you.

<comment><USER57> yeah, sure, that's true. so what?

i mean literally, so what? do you want to make the money, or not? nobody is going to hand it to you. you have to go out and find it. you're competing with people with no kids, no debt, no spouse, and plenty of savings. tough cookies.

if you don't want to risk it, then don't. going on your own is not for people who sit around all day and think of reasons why they _can 't_ do something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm looking to get away from contract programming, to being a consultant.

A contract programmer will write a software package, whether for an hourly or a fixed rate.

An example of consulting I've actually done, is that a client flew me from San Jose to Albuquerque to look into why his programmer's application repeatedly crashed. After an hour or so of discussing it with him, I determined that his custom memory allocator was not respecting the alignment restrictions of the CPU.

That second case is what I'd like to do. It's not about the money, it's that I would like more people to benefit from my many years of experience.

</comment><comment><USER58> The trick is avoiding middlemen and finding rich clients. Its not easy and I haven't figured it out. Maybe try to look more hipster.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a theory to study traffic flows in a grid? - <AUTHOR>

As a side project, I am building a tool to visualize traffic flows between various points in a model "city" (to start with, I have a simple grid layout in mind) as a function of the layout. See how these flows vary if the residential/commercial areas are far apart v/s close by etc. What is the best way to study the underlying mathematics of it ? <comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality)</comment>


Whois on any .fr domain displays "je suis charlie" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TcitWorld/status/553530506453987328/photo/1

<comment><USER2> Appears to be true:

        [ryantanner@Hawkeye ~] $ whois lemonde.fr
        %%                                       _               _
        %% This is the AFNIC Whois server.    _ | |___   ____  _(_)___
        %%                                   | || / -_) (_-< || | (_-<
        %% complete date format : DD/MM/YYYY  \__/\___| /__/\_,_|_/__/
        %% short date format    : DD/MM      ___ _ _ ___ ___  _   _ ___
        %% version              : FRNIC-2.5 |  _| | | . | . \| | | | __|
        %%                                  | |_|   |   |   /| |_| | _|
        %% Rights restricted by copyright.  |___|_|_|_|_|_\_\|___|_|___|
        %% See http://www.afnic.fr/afnic/web/mentions-legales-whois_en
        %%
        %% Use '-h' option to obtain more information about this service.
        %%
        %% [184.108.40.206 REQUEST] >> lemonde.fr
        %%
        %% RL Net [##########] - RL IP [#########.]
        %%

</comment><comment><USER3>
      $ curl -I charliehebdo.fr
      HTTP/1.1 302 Found
      Server: nginx
      Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 15:55:10 GMT
      Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
      Content-Length: 221
      Connection: keep-alive
      Location: http://www.charliehebdo.fr/index.html
      Vary: Accept-Encoding
      X-Charlie-fr: Je suis toujours Charlie.
      X-Charlie-en: I am still Charlie.
      X-Charlie-es: Todavia soy Charlie.
      X-Charlie-de: Ich bin immer Charlie.
      X-Charlie-ro: Inca sunt Charlie.
      X-Charlie-cz: Jsem stale Charlie.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was ready to heavily criticize but it is just the comment section where AFNIC displays its information. So it is not some endorsement of the term added to each whois record, but the endorsement of AFNIC showing in their legal banner.

</comment><comment><USER5> Alternatively, more and more sysadmins have added custom headers to their web servers:

curl -I pilgrimbreak.com

      HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
      Server: nginx/1.6.2
      Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 15:39:36 GMT
      Content-Type: text/html
      Content-Length: 184
      Connection: keep-alive
      Location: http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/
      X-Charlie: I am Charlie

<comment><USER5> Spread the word if you manage an nginx server:

[http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/nginx-custom-http- header/](http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/nginx-custom-http-header/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not bad but its a little easy.

I am still disappointed so many media are voiding to publish the original, drawings.

After all, we are ready to send war planes, military consultant, surrender some of our privacy etc. to either fight or protect ourselves against groups alike the people who did this. Yet, we won't do the thing that seem to have hurt them enough that they perpetrated very specific and targeted killings of the people doing it.

<comment><USER7> A very good thing of the "je suis charlie" message is that _it can be endorsed and adopted by moderate muslims_.

Terrorism can't be combated by throwing bombs at targets, nor by elevating the discussion level to extreme confrontation; those actions just escalate the spiral of violence. Historical experiences, like the recent disempowerment of ETA in Spain, show that terrorism is defeated by insulating the radicals from the community whose interests they purport to represent.

That so many muslims in Europe have condemned the attack and shared the phrase is the best answer we could hope for. If only the same response had been made throughout the Islamic world as well, these undesirables would known that they can't claim any moral support, and soon they would find themselves without economic support as well.

That simply couldn't happen if our reaction was to place an emphasis on the images that are offensive to islamists. The ideals we value are that we're free to express and discuss any idea (even when it's despicable) without facing prosecution from authority, not that we can say things intended to hurt a different religion with impunity; the second is merely a by-product of the first, and it's OK that people may hold a strong disagreement with those expressions, as long as they are pursued in a peaceful manner.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. The moderate Moslem world needs to stand up and condemn/exile their radical brethren.

<comment><USER9> They already are; French muslims made it the subject of the friday prayer and are all over the media condemning these actions as anti-islamic. [https://twitter.com/StephaneArnaud_/status/55356335633938432...](https://twitter.com/StephaneArnaud_/status/553563356339384322)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Confirmed:

        zx2c4@thinkpad ~ $ whois zx2c4.fr
        %%                                       _               _
        %% This is the AFNIC Whois server.    _ | |___   ____  _(_)___
        %%                                   | || / -_) (_-< || | (_-<
        %% complete date format : DD/MM/YYYY  \__/\___| /__/\_,_|_/__/
        %% short date format    : DD/MM      ___ _ _ ___ ___  _   _ ___
        %% version              : FRNIC-2.5 |  _| | | . | . \| | | | __|
        %%                                  | |_|   |   |   /| |_| | _|
        %% Rights restricted by copyright.  |___|_|_|_|_|_\_\|___|_|___|
        %% See http://www.afnic.fr/afnic/web/mentions-legales-whois_en
        %%
        %% Use '-h' option to obtain more information about this service.
        %%
        %% [188.8.131.52 REQUEST] >> -V Md5.1 zx2c4.fr
        %%
        %% RL Net [##########] - RL IP [#########.]
        %%</comment>


A 1/48 scale model of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket - <AUTHOR> https://bps.space/falcon-heavy <comment><USER2> This is all the more impressive when you realise all the design, build, programming, filming, editing and even the music is done by one guy. I highly recommend subscribing to his YouTube channel to keep up with his current project: [https://youtu.be/eh8ic1-5wFo](https://youtu.be/eh8ic1-5wFo)

<comment><USER3> There's another guy who's been blowing up the /r/electronics subreddit for making his own pick'n'place machine.

It makes me wonder if their endgame is productizing their projects, or trying to "make it" as YouTubers, or they are just having fun and documenting the process of their fun-having.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a link for that pickandplace machine?

<comment><USER3> Not offhand, but if you search for reddit user /r/sphawes or YouTube page "Stephen the Robot", you should be able to find it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's exactly the content I'm on HN for

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is cool to see.

But at the same time it shows that rocket tech is not as difficult as people make it out to be. (Rockets were difficult when we didn't have computers.) Also, some universities have student teams which regularly launch similar rockets.

I'm personally hoping for someone to build an IC fab or even a wafer stepper in their garage.

<comment><USER6> > But at the same time it shows that rocket tech is not as difficult as people > make it out to be.

It really doesn't. The scale model probably weighs a few pounds where as the real Falcon Heavy weighs 3 million pounds [1]. Think about what a different scale that is!

Also note that the scale model's (really cool) test flight failed -- with the real Falcon Heavy that lesson would cost something like $150M.

I think this is kind of similar to: it's really easy to query/serve a SQL database even if it's a few tens of terabytes in size. But make it a few tens of exabytes, and things are dramatically more difficult due to the scale. The architecture that works at the terabyte size (single machine) falls over completely.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The whole time I was reading this article, I was hoping I would eventually see a "buy now" button at the end. Alas...

<comment><USER8> He has a shop here - [https://bps.space/shop](https://bps.space/shop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember my first play around with the small rocket kits. 1 small motor and you press "Fire" annnnd it's gone. You can't see it anymore and it's lost lol.

<comment><USER10> That just means you put too big a motor in it! Each motor letter designation is double the total impulse of the previous one - it's a log scale. If you stick a C motor into a small, well-built, lightweight rocket, it's going to go over a thousand feet. Unless you painted it a _very_ bright color, you're probably going to struggle... so stick to the A motors for your maiden flight!

(Also: launch from the upwind edge of the field!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gimballed thrust puts this squarely into all the cool hobbies involve ITAR territory.

<comment><USER12> The tube launched rocket looked decidedly weapon-like too.

Cool tech though. Hope he doesn't get into trouble

<comment><USER13> He's been pretty careful to not do anything illegal (he's talked about this in a few live-streams), for example not open-sourcing any of his control software and using just local IMU data for in-flight control.

<comment><USER14> Is this a typically US thing or does this kind of thing risk getting you into trouble elsewhere too? I mean the first thing you'd want to try once you have a "platform" is things like GPS guidance, adding wings & making cruising rockets, trying terrain guidance etc. Isn't the cat out of the bag with this kind of tech already, much like strong crypto was once a non-exportaple technology in the US, but now it isn't? What exactly is the tech that is off limits (I don't mean tech that will get someone to come to your house and ask questions, but tech that is actually 100 % certainly illegal?)

<comment><USER15> Didn't work out great for this guy from New Zealand: [http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml](http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml)

(Not "go to jail" bad, but "The New Zealand government has moved aggressively to shut down this project -- and by using quite unscrupulous methods which appear to be in breach of the law." type of bad...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The guy even looks a bit like Elon. 1/48 scale net worth too?

<comment><USER17> Shouldn't it be 1 / 110,592 scale net worth though? Saying 1/48th model is a bit misleading as it's 1/48th in 3 dimensions, whereas worth is one dimensional.

<comment><USER18> Not really, since we're really talking about the size of swimming pool you need to hold the coins you dive into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If it's possible to fit that electronic hardware on something the size of a credit card how does it compare to what is used for that purpose in a real orbital rocket other than redundacy features?

<comment><USER20> It's basically the same technology. They're pretty common in airplanes nowadays. Here is an example of a portable unit intended for use as a backup:

[https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/iLevilSport.p...](https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/iLevilSport.php)

And another one designed to be panel-mounted:

[https://www.dynonavionics.com/pocket- panel.php](https://www.dynonavionics.com/pocket-panel.php)

If you want to get more details, the search terms you want are EFIS (electronic flight instrument system) and AHRS (attitude and heading reference system, pronounced "ay-harz").

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Longtime supporter of Joe and his incredible model flights. Also worth looking up his Sprite development!

</comment><comment><USER22> Been watching Joe for a long time. The dude deserves more support

</comment><comment><USER23> How high does this thing go? I read the article but as far as I can tell, it was never mentioned.

<comment><USER24> Based on the videos, maybe 100-300ft?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> That's really cool!

I wonder what the bottom-line price tag on something like that would be.

</comment><comment><USER26> Qu8k ([https://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html](https://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html)) is some impressive amateur rocketry from 2011.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, not exactly. First stage has 27 Merlin 1D engines.

<comment><USER28> Depends which Falcon. Falcone 9 has 10 Merlin engines, while Heavy has 28.

[https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon_users_guide_042020.pdf](https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon_users_guide_042020.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, he is even is trying to design landable boosters like in the real thing! WTF!

</comment><comment><USER30> If SpaceX doesn't hire him, then Space Force surely has an opening!

</comment><comment><USER31> Did it blow up during an engine test?

</comment><comment><USER32> SpaceX has a huge potential opportunity for raising funding / earning profits via toy licensing and sales: [https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacex- overwhelmed-by-deman...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacex-overwhelmed- by-demand-for-toy-dinosaur-that-went-into-orbit-51590931933)

Wouldn't it be interesting if Elon could achieve his Mars objectives faster not by selling LEO satellite services or space launch capacity but by selling and/or licensing toys (and sparking dreams) here on Earth?

Despite the current pandemic, this is a great time to be a young person. Dreams and human potential seem infinite.

Edit: Who would own the IP, NASA or SpaceX or both?

<comment><USER33> Absolutely. I would buy the heck out of a 4000-piece Falcon Heavy LEGO set, and I suspect I'm not alone.

<comment><USER34> Yep, it can go right next to my 1969 piece Saturn V.

<comment><USER35> Saturn V scale Falcon 9 fan submission under review.

[https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba...](https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba917b6e5b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was just watching this channel yesterday after the SpaceX launch. Anyone know what he uses for the actual rocket engine bit? They don't seem like something that can be throttled.

And yes he definitely looks like Elon!

<comment><USER37> If nothing has changed from my childhood, probably Estes model rocket engines, that are solid fuel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> A single guy has probably achieved what a whole division of a large corporation or a large govt agency would not be able to achieve in years

<comment><USER33> In a just world, he would have 1/48th of Elon's fame/fortune too.

<comment><USER39> Unfortunately, sending 1/48 of an astronaut into orbit is not as valuable.

<comment><USER15> At around $3k per kilo to orbit, I'd bet he'd be _very_ happy with the $6k or so 1/48th of a ~100kg astronaut+spacesuit would mean per launch!

He ain't getting anywhere near orbit using Estes motors though... Not even 1/48th of the way to orbit I'd guess...

(Hmmm, spaceflight.com's pricing page says they'll send a 3U 5kg cubesat payload to LEO for $295,000... That's I guess pretty close to "1/24th of an astronaut to orbit"? Minus the ~10,000% surcharge for "manrated" though, I'm guessing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> amazing perseverence, but a bit overproduced :)</comment>


Deis to Join Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://deis.com/blog/2017/deis-to-join-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> Congrats to Gabe and the whole Deis team on the acquisition.

For folks not familiar with Helm, it's basically apt-get for Kubernetes, but with the ability to deploy complex multi-tier systems. It has now graduated out of the Kubernetes incubator.

And their Workflow product (also open source), is basically the smallest piece of software that lets you run Heroku buildpacks on top of Kubernetes. So, you can get a 12-factor PaaS workflow, and still have the full Kubernetes API underneath if and when you need it.

Update: And I left out my all-time favorite piece of marketing collateral, their Children's Illustrated Guide to Kubernetes (available both as children's book and video): [https://deis.com/blog/2016/kubernetes-illustrated- guide/](https://deis.com/blog/2016/kubernetes-illustrated-guide/)

(Disclosure: I'm the executive director of CNCF and Gabe has been a super valuable member.)

<comment><USER3> So Deis PaaS is dead. Is this now a AquireHire to get Kubernetes to Azure?

[https://deis.com/blog/2017/deis-paas-v1-takes-a- bow/](https://deis.com/blog/2017/deis-paas-v1-takes-a-bow/)

<comment><USER4> Brendan Burns (k8s co-founder) joined Microsoft last July, so this is certainly not their first move in the Kubernetes area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The industry is consolidating around the Kubernetes ecosystem. This acquisition is an example of many others that will follow as the major players want to build up their offerings and expertise.

</comment><comment><USER6> Every time someone is acquired by Microsoft I can't avoid feeling sad for them.

It's true they'll get a decent amount of money, that, from now on, they have infinitely deep pockets, that they'll have some of the best keyboards and mice, but it's also true their wiki will end up in Sharepoint and their e-mails in Exchange.

<comment><USER7> And what's the fate of their source control system?

<comment><USER8> Microsoft is aligning on Git, so it's unlikely that anything will change (and the horror stories of the past are no-longer applicable for new aqui-hires.)

<comment><USER7> Vanilla git can't handle a repo the size of Microsoft's combined codebase though; surely there must be some additional secret sauce involved?

<comment><USER9> There is no combined Microsoft codebase

<comment><USER10> From the cited Microsoft link:

>"the Windows codebase has over 3.5 million files and is over 270 GB in size." //

<comment><USER11> That's just Windows. There's no combined codebase akin to Google's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wait what? Didn't the Deis team just join EngineYard last year? Furthermore, why would Microsoft want Deis? They haven't really shown an interest in Kubernetes thus far.

<comment><USER13> > They haven't really shown an interest in Kubernetes thus far

Except for helping with Windows Server support for kubernetes[0] and supporting kubernetes in Azure Container Services[1]

[0]: [http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/windows-server-support- kub...](http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/windows-server-support- kubernetes.html)

[1]: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/kubernetes-now- genera...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/kubernetes-now-generally- available-on-azure-container-service/)

<comment><USER9> And hiring the founder away from Google (Brendan Burns).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really curious how people administer their K8S clusters for installation, upgrades, etc.

I'm very familiar with docker, which we've been using for over 2 years. But now, we're trying to get k8s running, with either kargo, kubeadm, deb packages, etc.: They all failed with different bugs on different set of clouds / settings. (Trying to stick to running it on Ubuntu xenial).

Not sure if it's because 1.6.* just came out of the oven when I started...?

Thanks to Minikube, I understand how powerful k8s can be, and actually find kubectl quite simple to use, but I'm confused by how fragile and complex installation and setup seems to be. I'm unsure how someone is supposed to maintain this system considering how (overly?) modular it is and the bugs I've encountered. Knowing that docker has a LOT of bugs, and k8s builds on top of it, I'm a bit scared. And there is no clean documentation on how to install it, with sections for all your choices, in a generic/agnostic way (deb+rpm distros, cloud integration or simple abstract VMs, ...)

What is you workflow? :)

<comment><USER15> We are using [https://github.com/openshift/openshift- ansible](https://github.com/openshift/openshift-ansible) which gets you a k8s cluster + user management and a great web interface. I actually learned a lot about cluster management from that repo since it goes through all the standard best practices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really hope Microsoft doesn't hurt this. For example, there are great docs for AWS and Google, but given the way they've ruined Skype, I really hope they don't turn this into some kind of Azure-focused system while dropping support for AWS, etc. Congrats to the awesome Deis team -- let's just hope that Microsoft doesn't just run it into the ground when it comes to non-Azure platforms.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations Gabriel! Having worked on containers space in Microsoft Azure before, my opinion is that this is a great move by Microsoft. In the past years, I've seen the company struggle in finding great talent in OSS/Linux stack. Simply, there are a lot of areas Microsoft could expand, but there is not enough talent. Deis will definitely take a ton of expertise in open source software and community to Microsoft. Now that Kubernetes is a big part of Azure's container service, Deis brings a lot of fresh blood to Microsoft. I hope it works out great for both companies (and the open source Kubernetes community).

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm somewhat surprised. Why would Microsoft put weight into Deis vs use something like Kubernetes or Mesos? I haven't kept up with Deis's growth and I'm obviously very happy for them, but I'm curious what the gain is. Based on HN posts and other devops forums, Kubernetes eeems to have gained a lot of momentum recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best to think of Deis as a Kubernetes company. We are much more than the PaaS solution many folks know us for.

<comment><USER19> Congratulations! There are few Kubernetes experts on the market right now. Deis is certainly a smart acquisition for Microsoft (along with hiring Brendan Burns).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Deis has changed a lot since I last looked at them. They've dropped their original PaaS and developed an ecosystem on top of Kubernetes. Microsoft has been showing a lot of interest in Docker, so can see why this acquisition would make sense for them.

<comment><USER21> > They've dropped their original PaaS

Just to clarify, we never dropped the original PaaS. Deis (now named Workflow) is still in active development, uses Kubernetes as the underlying scheduler and has monthly releases. We actually just released v2.13.0 5 days ago. :) [https://github.com/deis/workflow](https://github.com/deis/workflow)

<comment><USER22> In a sense it is the same product (for the users, Deis Workflow / Deis v2 is basically a drop-in replacement for Deis v1, and API Clients such as Deis Dash [http://deisdash.com/](http://deisdash.com/) can work with both). But in a very real sense also, the old product was End-of-Lifed and Workflow is a completely separate and different product.

There is no direct upgrade path from v1 to v2, the branding was changed (new product name entirely) to coincide with the release of v2, and the v1 LTS branch is no longer receiving updates, support, or new builds when issues are identified.

It's kind of like the axe that is passed down from generation to generation for 150 years. Can't really call it the same axe anymore when you've replaced the blade and the handle several times over.

(This coming from a happy Deis user that still has living installations of both v1 and Workflow.)

Congratulations on the acquisition!

<comment><USER21> > the old product was End-of-Lifed

To be fair, we did continue to support Deis v1 for 3 whole years(!), which is very long considering we're just a small startup. Being woken at 3AM from yet another obscure etcd/fleet server failure really sucked, and systemd never truly got along well with Docker making for some fun interactions with Fleet. Overall (speaking personally as an engineer and support engineer), we are very happy we made the decision to switch to Kubernetes. Mind you, we were as early adopter as you could get with Fleet and etcd at the time, and etcd in particular has been significantly better for us in terms of stability/error reporting.

> There is no direct upgrade path from v1 to v2

I agree that it sucks there was no upgrade path from v1 to v2, but we felt it was necessary to make breaking changes to move forward from Fleet into the world of Kubernetes. That doesn't change the fact that we never dropped the PaaS product as a whole, though.

> the branding was changed (new product name entirely) to coincide with the > release of v2

This was actually more to do with us becoming "Deis the company" more-so than the v2 release. Lots of users were getting confused with "Deis the company" and "Deis the github project", so we decided to rename it Workflow to help make it more clear in conversation.

> and Workflow is a completely separate and different product.

Curious to understand how you feel like v2 is a completely different product. From a user's standpoint the product offering never changed. The API, CLI and `git push` workflows were all still present in v2 and were drop-in replacements, save for backwards-incompatible database migrations (hence v2.0.0). It was just the administration's point of view that changed (Fleet -> Kubernetes, deisctl -> helm). To me it still feels like the same product, but I'm curious to hear from you why you feel differently. :)

<comment><USER22> Please do not take anything I said as an attempt to throw shade or being critical of your team! As a non-paying customer, I have to say I'm extremely happy with the support you've delivered (and consistently.) I wish I could have got my company to throw money at you, but it did not work out.

The kind of support I got from Deis the company is really without comparison when it comes to Open Source projects anywhere else.

The fact that v2 is a drop-in replacement for v1 really eases the sting of the fact that there is no direct upgrade path. I still have an old Deis v1 kicking around because I left the company, transitioned to hourly, and made an agreement to draw down my hours at this company, where we are in reality hardly using Deis at all. But in the small capacity we are using it, there is what I'd call "VMware Levels of Reliability" and so it successfully became a piece of the infrastructure there.

So it is disingenuous for me to say that I was not able to upgrade my v1 installation. The reason I was not able to upgrade is because there was not strong interest in upgrading. The unsupported product is as good as our (also unsupported! but luckily not End-of-Life) VSphere and VSan environment.

It is a different product to me, in short because I am the one administering it. It runs on a different platform altogether, it has no distributed filesystem component where the old version did, and it has not really harmed me in any way that there is no upgrade path. It is just a couple of facts that led me to the conclusion that they are in fact distinct and other products that are not directly related to each other, except that they could easily pass for one another if you asked a user.

I am really happy for you guys, Microsoft is a real big name compared to EngineYard, and while I could get behind EY+Deis, it's a hard sell for the Design Review Board. But I can tell them "look, Microsoft is doing this now" and they will know what that means instantly. Big guns. No joke software.

This is how I've actually felt about Deis from the beginning, but now it's going to be a much easier sell to get Big Wigs to sign off on. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft!

<comment><USER22> Not to mention (but I'll mention)

Your announcement to End-of-Life Deis v1 came what seemed like days before CoreOS announced their decision to kill Fleet. So, not like there's anything you could have done about it, save deciding to pick up supporting Fleet for yourselves.

(And I like fleet, but I understand thoroughly why it was a good decision for CoreOS and for Deis to end support for it. It was a wholly inferior solution, begging for a replacement.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Microsoft has a storied history of building tools and technologies that work for developers."

I'm not sure how I feel about that statement.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does this mean a commitment of Microsoft on k8s ecosystems or simply a talent acquisition or both?

<comment><USER24> They've just hired one the founder of Kubernetes so my guess would be yes [https://www.onmsft.com/news/google-engineer-kubernetes- found...](https://www.onmsft.com/news/google-engineer-kubernetes-founder- brendan-burns-joining-microsoft-azure)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congrats to the Deis team! I was an early adopter and the team was just fantastic at answering questions, implementing feature requests and resolving issues on GitHub.

PS: I'll take this opportunity to shamelessly promote my web based Deis UI: [http://github.com/olalonde/deisdash](http://github.com/olalonde/deisdash)

</comment><comment><USER26> Congrats on the acquisition, I'm just sad I can't be there to congratulate you.

</comment><comment><USER27> What!? I never would have expected this, quite a surprise. I hope it works out for them.

</comment><comment><USER28> If Deis was that valuable, one could assume that EY agreed to this arrangement because they are low on cash and needed the money.

How often is a company, in effect, acquired twice?

</comment><comment><USER29> Love Deis, we have used V1 and V2 (with kubernetes) at my current job with success, but also had weird stability and reliability issues from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER30> The Deis team was extremely helpful over IRC when I was building on top of their PaaS. Great team and culture, Microsoft is lucky to have them.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, that's definitely a way to buy yourself into the Kubernetes ecosystems. Congratulations to the Deis team!

</comment><comment><USER32> Congratulations to the Deis Team. It's been a pleasure working with them on the Helm project.

</comment><comment><USER33> Next week, Flynn to Join Apple.

Let the PaaS arms race begin.</comment>


The Last Stable Release of OS X Was Snow Leopard; Mountain Lion Changes This - <AUTHOR> http://zerodistraction.com/the-last-stable-release-of-os-x-was-snow-leopard-mountain-lion-changes-this <comment><USER2> I'm still hunkered down with 10.6.8 but I'm feeling more and more like its time to try 10.8 by the day.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do I feel like the only person who doesn't mind iTunes?</comment>


A Long Ago Christmas in the Most Remote Place on Earth - <AUTHOR> http://lithub.com/a-long-ago-christmas-in-the-most-remote-place-on-earth/ <comment><USER2> It's an extreme case, but that's kind of the point of Christmas, and the winter festivals it evolved from.</comment>


Why the hell are all app demos done using Macs? - <AUTHOR>

When I see demos of web apps (videos, screenshots), I can't help but notice that they are all almost exclusively done using Macs.<p>Is there some secret to why everyone's doing this? Why am I not seeing more demos on Windows? Or Linux for that matter? <comment><USER2> I think there are a few reasons

1\. Mac UI looks good, browser fonts look good there too 2\. A lot of open source stack developers use OSX as their dev machines, so the code has already been tested there 3\. Since OSX is BSD, a lot of the same server code runs, and runs well on OSX, so demos can run well with everything hosted on the same machine without needing VMs or other tricks.

Windows can do all of this too, but some stuff doesn't work as easily on Window. Microsoft server stack runs great on Windows, but 'the cool kids' are all running open source stacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can say the same thing (open-source stacks) about Linux, and not many Linux demos are out there

<comment><USER2> Almost no-one uses Linux as their desktop. A lot of the UI tools don't work as well on Linux, or have no Linux versions at all.

<comment><USER3> I always use Linux as my desktop - never touched a Mac except for when I use my brother's mbp and I only use windows for gaming. (though to be fair I am considering finally venturing into mac-land and getting a mbp for myself).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mac OS X is generally seen as the most visually appealing OS, so I figure that's likely to be the reasoning

</comment><comment><USER5> Chances are, that's what the developers are using to build the product. Same with the people making the screencast, if this is a different party than the developer(s) themselve(s).

</comment><comment><USER6> I ended up re-doing screenshots of my web app on OSX because the browser windows have slightly thinner frames. It just looked better.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think a lot of hackers are using macs, and a lot of startups are using them too. It's part of the new "uniform" for startups.

<comment><USER3> The idea of a "hacker" and a "uniform" don't really seem to fit together.

edit: and actually, I think the whole "uniform" mentality is exactly the way that apple wants people to see its products, whereas that kind of thinking makes Linux users' skin crawl (at least this linux user's - coming on HN is making it harder and harder to make myself buy that mbp...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What difference does it make?

</comment><comment><USER9> The fidelity seems to be better on OS X than on Windows, and therefore the site justs looks more crisp. Its something that I noticed testing websites on both Windows and OS X.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want to be really funky, create your demos on Haiku (BeOS work-alike) !

<comment><USER11> What a cool idea! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> pg covered this nicely:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html></comment>


Walrus Operator in Python 3.8 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@animeshgaitonde/unleashing-the-power-of-walrus-operator-in-python-3-8-5c8c86cf6f09 <comment><USER2> TL;DR:

> This new operator (:=) enables us to assign value to a variable in an > expression</comment>


Show HN: Evryca–platform for collecting questions and ideas, e.g. for streamers - <AUTHOR> https://www.evryca.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Lately we all have seen a lot of streams.

I've noticed how desperately every streamer tries to find questions in a long chat history.

This definitely lacked of some convenient tool:

— I'll make it!, — dawned on me.

But it was not that straight — I already had an idea of a platform with working title "Add, Fix, Remove". Place, where, say visitor of B&B, can leave not usual feedback for future visitors, but some advices for a host: "Add hook on the bathroom door", "Fix stinky sink in the kitchen", "Remove that round table", etc.

I agreed with myself that it should be one thing. So here it comes — [https://www.evryca.com](https://www.evryca.com)

For the sake of progress through exchange of ideas.

Will be glad to get some advice on what pitfalls I should expect, while building discussion platform.</comment>


Ask HN: Can We Identify Patterns in Source Code? - <AUTHOR>

I am a new to Artificial Intelligence and was studying how convolutional neural networks are used for image recognition. Can a similar technique be employed to identify patterns in source code. If yes, we can use such a technique for suggesting the code snippets from the existing code. Now given the amount of open source code we have it would be fair to assume that we can find patterns in code. I understand the complexity of such a system would be huge but I just want to understand if its possible from an AI perspective. <comment><USER2> I believe you can. I know at least one work [1] using a machine learning approach (not really a deep neural work) to unconver vulnerabilities in C code. Btw, maybe a submition to /r/MachineLearning could be better to start such specific discussion.

[1] [https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot11/vulnerability- extra...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot11/vulnerability- extrapolation-assisted-discovery-vulnerabilities-using-machine)</comment>


Will Rails be the new PHP - <AUTHOR> http://roytomeij.com/2012/will-rails-be-the-new-php.html <comment><USER2> As someone who started life a PHP dev and is now a Rails dev I'm gonna go ahead and say no.

Rails pretty much forces you into using good practices, where as PHP (without a framework) allows you to do all kinds of stupid shit.

If anything, new devs going straight to Ruby on Rails will actually give us less shitty developers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dont think so. Having migrated to Ruby and Rails from PHP there are a number of compelling differences that will avert the gloom and doom the author seems to mention:

* Rails is driven/maintained by really high quality developers who adhere to best practices

* The project is well-organized, opinionated and focused, developers tend to follow the one right way of doing things.

* The Rails Ecosystem of gems and plugins has whole gamut of solutions to various engineering problems. These gems vary from excellent to horrible, with the excellent ones floating to the top and become standard for use.

* Rails encompasses best practices that were learned from years of making mistakes with PHP and Java development. It is that much more evolved as a result.

In general, I would say the main difference is Rails seems more top down in the direction of ideas and best practices. People tend to mold themselves and their code to fit with the best practices displayed by core or by seasoned Ruby developers.

PHP on the other hand seems more like a free for all, with little top down influence at all.

<comment><USER4> Find/Replace "rails" with "Symfony" and you'll have the PHP equivalent. Also, "bundles" instead of "gems". This is why PHP negativity has been increasingly misguided for the past 2 years.

<comment><USER5> most of the PHP devs i know write raw PHP. they do not use a framework. one team built their own (4 years back). And NONE of them wrote tests. Actually i have never seen or heard any php dev writing and evangelizing tests

In ruby, mostly everyone i know, uses rails and mostly everyone writes some test. either TDD or after writing the code.

It is not as bad as PHP but personally even for me, i should write better rails code

<comment><USER4> That's exactly the point I was making. Symfony developers are similar batch of developers like you see with Rails - writes tests, utilizes frameworks/components, very active in open-source.

Any developer, PHP or otherwise, that knowingly ignores contributions within the community is dangerous :)

No matter what language you use, you can always write better code, even with PHP!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this article makes a really really bad comparison. With both Ruby and PHP, there are many ways to write something terrible (especially with Ruby's more than one way to do one thing Perl philosophy). However with Rails being an opinionated framework, there is typically one really publicized opinionated way to do one thing (ala Python style). With the opinion coming from good developers, I don't see quality going down anytime soon if newbies just follow it. To add to this, a lot of good ruby coders tend to do educational blog posts, which really helps out the community. Compared to the other language communities I've experienced (python, java, perl, and php), I think Ruby does the best on the education front. For now, it's what gives the language its edge.

<comment><USER7> _However with Rails being an opinionated framework, there is typically one really publicized opinionated way to do one thing (ala Python style)._

Perhaps so, but as with Python _that way changes over time_.

<comment><USER6> Staying on subject - does it matter, as long as that evolved way remains a reasonable and good way to develop?

I started with Rails 2.x, and I did find it painful to transition to Rails 3.x after a few years of not using it. In the end though, I find myself really liking the decisions made for Rails 3.x. It's helped my productivity a lot.

<comment><USER8> >Does it matter . . .

To you, no; to me? No.

The same thing happened to me: Rails 3 came along. My web applications weren't so large that the port would be unreasonable, so I gritted my teeth and came out feeling like I had gained something. (Knowledge, experience, productivity.)

\---

For every "you", however, there is someone with a non-trivial Rails 2.x codebase that simply won't invest the time or energy to port it. So they'll keep using it; keep developing libraries for it, keep patching it, etc.

Continue this trend, and I'd imagine you end up with something like the Python2/3 schism.

For an example of what this leads to, look at Rust.

Arch Linux uses Python 3 as the default for /usr/bin/python, Rust (0.3 and it looks like 0.4) fails to compile because LLVM can't stand Python 3. [This is described in the Rust 0.4 release notes. Of course the fix is a simple symlink and an EXPORT= away once you install Python2.]

So you end up with _new and exciting projects_ that require you to install and maintain old tools and libraries. Why? Because eventually _a non-negligible_ number of library maintainers stop trying to hit a moving target.

I'm not saying Rails will _necessarily_ go down that road; but Python has already been there, and the Python 2/3 schism isn't pretty. It's a possibility worth entertaining, anyways.

<comment><USER6> You have good and valid points that I agree with, I was just arguing was from the standpoint of "Rails / Ruby becoming another PHP"

> I'm not saying Rails will _necessarily_ go down that road; but Python has > already been there, and the Python 2/3 schism isn't pretty. It's a > possibility worth entertaining, anyways.

I feel the Ruby community is different from Python's. I think people who work with Ruby and/or Rails like new toys and they are willing to adapt in order to keep playing. If anything I feel the bigger danger is for Ruby devs migrating to nice shiny toys that node.js has to offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you consider the majority of new web projects are being made in Rails rather than PHP, I think the comparison applies.

I think the panorama is more diverse nowadays though. Back in the day, you basically had PHP or ASP (with Windows hosting being more expensive), and only higher-end hosting had the option for CGI. Now it's more like an equal split between PHP, .NET, Java (all frameworks), Rails, Python, et all.

</comment><comment><USER10> Will $framework be the new $language? Fairly apple and pears comparison and somewhat pointless.

<comment><USER11> PHP is somewhat unusual in the extent to which things normally reserved for frameworks are included in the language. For example, PHP comes with a template language. It isn't so unreasonable to compare these facilities to analogous ones provided by frameworks.

<comment><USER12> PHP has a large number of frameworks that serve the same purpose as Rails. I'm fond of both Rails and CakePHP, and while there are differences between the two, talking about how "Ruby" avoids messy code by forcing MVC onto people but "PHP" doesn't is silly.

<comment><USER11> The existence of (say) CakePHP does not affect my point, which is that core PHP includes a lot of facilities that in other languages are part of a framework written by a third party, such as a template language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One very small example of why I don't see a correlation:

[https://github.com/oscardelben/words-about- code/blob/master/...](https://github.com/oscardelben/words-about- code/blob/master/2012/04/rails-internals-inside-attribute-methods.md)

</comment><comment><USER14> Original article has a question mark at the end of the title, making it easier to ignore.

<comment><USER15> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>

<comment><USER16> really, do we have to beat this horse to death every single time?

<comment><USER17> seems that everytime that there is a comparison between Ruby and PHP, it turns to a personal fight

<comment><USER16> I agree, but I really meant that there's no need for a link to Betteridge's Law in every single post involving a question mark, it is tiresome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are bad coders in ever language/platform....and coupled with that, we all have days when we write bad code. The size of the community has very little to do with it I think.

</comment><comment><USER19> Previous discussion <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4592865>

</comment><comment><USER20> The follow ups and updates and TL;DR are beginning to rival the article in word count.

I'm not sure what this is a sign of, but I find it hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER17> Everybody knows that PHP is infected with bad programmers 'cause is an easy to run language. You have a mac? Just make a .php and you can kill some baby seals with you lame code.

<comment><USER21> You are making yourself sound like a Rails fanboy with little to no real knowledge of PHP.

<comment><USER17> I'm a PHP developer (damn, this sounds like I only use PHP, but it's my favorite one). I really like PHP, it's easy to learn, easy to deploy, probably one of the most documented language. But let's be honest, all this easy stuff brings people with poor or no knowledge. Probably if ruby or python were easy as PHP to deploy, we probably would see lame ruby and python code too</comment></comment></comment>