kayman

HL7 has matured even more now. The linear evolution from HL7 v2 to HL7 v3 did not win the day. Most are now moving to https://www.hl7.org/fhir/

Main issue is with HL7 is not technical. From a business point of view, the incentive to cooperate with other systems via HL7 means another reason for a department to adopt a system other than yours.

What language or framework do you know well right now? Use that.

I find the tone of the article a bit confronting, but I agree with the points.

Most of the time, raises in your company do not outpace the market pay. Also moving early and often keeps you sharp, learning new skills and focus on delivering value.

The only thing I'd add is "don't be rude" and "don't be an ahole".

Leave a company as if you're a senior member...with class, grace and minimal interruption to the team. Leave a trail of good will, not burned bridges.

I had the same issue and here's what worked for me:

Stop trying to force yourself to code at home. Look at it like music creation, spend your time trying to find inspiration, problems to solve.

Don't follow major development rules like you do at work which are designed for coordination and management amongst groups.

Be okay with crappy incomplete code.

Feel free to abandon it and return to it later...months later.

As PG says...don't code. Hack. It's way more fun.

I haven't gotten over my fear of shipping. My first product I posted on Hackernews, I got ripped to pieces. (password emailed to user in plain text, no terms and conditions).

It was harsh. But it wasn't the end of the world. Manage your expectations. See it as a process.

How do you create good stuff? By creating lots of stuff, enjoying the process and some of it will turn out ok, some good, some bad. Like a musician. Just focus on getting better. Your workflows for launching etc. See it as feedback not a definition or critique of you.

Get a client willing to pay you. Forget everything else. Contracts and all that you'll learn as you go along. Don't be afraid to mess up.

Examples of past work. Passion. Can they build things themselves or did they ride the coattails of a large team.

Regardless, hold your developers accountable to results. Manage by output not man hours.

If within 6 months you don't feel they're a good fit, move on.

I echo the sentiment expressed here: Learn the building blocks not frameworks.

It's the long way but the investment will pay off. New frameworks come along, you'll pick them easier because you'll already know which building blocks are used.

Block out your calendar to learn a specific task.

Don't overthink. Just do it.

And after a few months of trying and reading the process will get better automatically.

Key is to just start and be regular.

I had the same confusion when I watched this video:

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytoc...

It's key to differentiate between watching the news and being informed.

I haven't watched the news in over a decade (except for when I'm over at someone's house being polite) and my life has been better because of it.

Instead, I pay for NYTimes, Wall St Journal and read Hacker news which I find keeps me more informed than the average joe watching news stories on "what's trending on social media" type journalism.

Proximity is always valued over remote.

There is something human about being able to see the person who is doing some work for you. To be able to say hello without agenda. Ask how it's going.

Yes you can do it with Slack and Skype but nothing beats walking over to someone.

In large companies, working remote made me feel disposable. Small companies, if you can get stuff done, you feel valuable while being autonomous.

Moved out to college after highschool, never lived home since.

Not everyone who lives at home with their parents are the same and in some cases it does make sense,

but from my observations of people who live at home:

- No skills on managing self: relies on parents to manage

- No financial management skills: using all your money for play money and not contributing to the household.

- Can't take a date home: unless you want to introduce your parents right away

- ManChild Syndrome: grown kids playing video games and watching tv.

- No drive: as long as you have parents, why try. Everything is already provided for you.

I also love IDEs. Java without IDE - forget it.

But let me point you to the classic article by Steve Yeggie who inspired my commitment to emacs.

https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs

Respond to requests right away.

A lot of the time, when a client has a request, they are thinking out loud in the moment. Even if I can't pick up the phone, I'll send a short email straight away to let them know that

1. I got the message 2. Timeframe when I can action

I really like this analogy. I'll use it. When people find I'm a software engineer during casual chats in social situations, they immediately tell me their billion dollar idea. When they ask me about costs, I can now respond with a car analogy.

To clarify: Did you put that you were looking for work? And someone contacted you off it?

1. Ignore the critics. Unless they have something useful to say, don't listen to them. We live in an age of critiquing. Only listen to critics who are also producers themselves. Consumers - either they consume your product or not. Just measure it and try to get better at the metric each time.

2. Focus on creating things. Be a maker. Find joy in it. Regardless of how it comes out, if you enjoy the process, you'll repeat and get better at it.

3. Get in the habit of sharing. Accept that 90% of your work will be average and that's okay.

Finally, what you're feeling is normal. It's all part of the journey. Both professionals and amateurs face this fear in their own way.

I'm interested to find out if anyone has actually gotten work through HN's posts of "freelancer? Seeking Freelancer?"

I see a lot of "I'm looking for work" in these type of posts.

What not to do: - Hang a shingle and wait for them to come to you.

What to do: - Approach potential clients - Reach out to people, start getting used to it. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, get in the habit.

- Reach out to old colleagues for no reason than catching up. - End goal: Build relationships. Build Trust.

As far as where to get your first clients, I've had real world success with the following methods:

- Mailing lists A lot of times people ask on mailing lists when they need help with something. Every once in a while, you'll get an email from someone with some work they need done. If you've been part of the mailing list a long time, you can approach them as: Hey, I'm xyz. I've been part of mailing-A for long time. I am (insert why you're suited to help) Ask to move the discussion offline to a phone call.

- Meetups Meeting someone here already shows you care/know the topic at hand. You can see them face to face. Socialize without agenda. Towards the end and beginning, listen for announcements for work/jobs. Approach them after the meeting.

- Recruitment agencies. Yes, I know you said freelancing but these agencies are hubs of work to be done. It's just a matter of how you position your relationship with client and recruitment agency. It's a good way to expand your network circle. Best time to make a sale is when you don't need to make a sale.

  It will be easier to approach potential clients in similar industries with 
  "Hey I work for client-a in your industry. I see you do great at X. I'd like to 
   reach out and pick your brain if possible."
 
  This will open the conversation.

I'd approach freelancing with the mindset of: "Hey I'm good at ABC. I can help you with XYZ. Are we a fit? Is it worth us having a conversation to find out?"

My background/experience: I have more work than I can handle at the moment. (that's with only a handful of clients as I'm a 1man band.) Had to figure out the business parts myself through trial and error.

Any stack. Pick one and build something. Ship it. Remember, real artists ship.

When I came out of college, some real life examples of people who do not seem to care at all which shocked me:

- CTO of a company I worked for (brother in law of the company director) typed with 2 fingers. No Joke

- Senior Software developer to nullify a list, he just creates a "new list" instead of setting it to "null" End result from practical point of view is the same. But the lack of computer science insight baffled me.

- Team lead implements lines of code as a tool to measure productivity. Being a new kid out of school, I felt too young to call bullshit but intuitively, I felt the metric was flawed.

Very good points. Liability is an issue that has not been played out yet in any meaningful way.

I think driving cars will happen soon simple because the ROI is too great to ignore.

It doesn't have to happen on a grand scale. It could start with small things like pizza delivery or package delivery.

As your project matures, you'll notice Django has more things out of the box to use than most other existing python frameworks.

If you're using Python and don't use Django (I've tried it as an exercise for one of my pet projects), you have 2 options.

Create your own framework - writing http headers etc from scratch which will take you forever or Use a lightweight framework like Flask or Web.py.

Either way, you'll end up creating your own ways to query the database and creating patterns to communicate with frontend. As you write more code, you'll abstract your code to reusable methods.

About a month into the project, you'll realize that you're slowly rolling out your own framework which has grown organically.

Soon you'll realize you're better off using a polished framework like Django which has abstracted many of the details so you can focus on delivering value instead of clobbering together your own framework which will become a burden to maintain alongside your app.

Python was one of the first languages I've tried I actually enjoyed programming in.

I hope to continue leveraging my investment in learning python by using it for a long time. So far I haven't been forced to use Python 3. I've tried a few times but always found it easier to just go back to python (2.7).

I figure eventually I have to use Python 3 but at this point, my life has been fine without upgrading to python3.

I suggest leveraging the meditative process driving has on the brain.

I went through a process where I was trying to be extremely productive every minute of every day. That meant filling every minute with productive tasks including commute time with Podcasts and educational material.

But you get into this productivity loop without any real productivity.

In the end I found the best use of my drive time is just relax and let your brain run. Enjoy the sights and smells, the air coming through the window. Observe your brain how it notices cars and avoid potential disaster.

If you play it right, you'll have 2 hours per day to just do nothing. Let your brain work freeform while focusing on something simple like deep breaths.

This is the basis of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). Rewrite the negative loops of thought with constructive ones.

It'd be great to hear more on how PG built the community from scratch. Hacker news is definitely a daily read for me.

I know it's not a secret site, but my reading consists of paid subscriptions: - NY Times - Wall Street Journal - Hacker News for tech related news

A lot of people are against paying for news - they feel it is free elsewhere or they can google the title of the article.

For me I noticed that reading the NYTimes and Wall Street Journal provides me curated news with the in-depth high quality coverage I like and leaves me feeling informed.

I avoid reddit as I find myself spending a lot of time on it, similar to facebook.

Newsletters like http://allthesmallthings.co/ is great has also given me some info on design which I find interesting.