@Muchacho: I agree that the best contracts are the ones where you can dictate the choices of technology.


I'm doing a project in Rails at the moment for a client and this is a case where I had total technology freedom since I'm also providing the hosting (well it's provided by DreamHost but I still get to pick!).



Unfortunately, a lot of companies want to host their applications on their servers (or their website provider's server) which usually only supports PHP and plain HTML.

I think everybody is talking about Outsourcing and not Freelancing?.


The Outsourcing impose to you which technology to use because already there is a design, plan and schedule or contract for a project so if is that the case maybe the more popular as the last commenter said asp.net or php is better but I think a freelancer is like a own small business offering services to customers so doesn't matter what technology you use it is just to get the job done and marketed or sale your services as professional.



that's my 2c, Regards.

ASP.NET and PHP, dominating the freelancing websites , Java won't help you :(

I'm a freelancer, I'm using Java and Python and I got already 3 medium size customers and they are happy with my work and it is enough for my needs and I work in my home/office.( It is not true that Java hosting is expensive try eApps and a VPN with Tomcat and Root access just for 20 bucks everymonth).


The users or customers doesn't care what you use they just want the job done and on time. You can use Java, Rails, Python, PHP or anything is best for you but you have to get the job done and also you have to be flexible.



There is a market as a freelancer, very big market actually there is for everybody and now I think is better than ever you just have to find the right spot.



The economy in USA is getting bad for the big corporations but there is getting lots of freelance jobs for the Freelancers in all the world.



If you will outsource from home that is another story if that is the case yes you need a recruitment agency but for freelance you just have to go out and knock the doors and offer your services.



Good Luck.

Hi Pierre-Olivier how are you ?


What a surprised to find your article on Dzone ?



AFAIK, in France many freelancers have to pass through agencies (with big fees) and finally earn no more than before making the switch.



Hope to see you the next time you come in Paris.

Hmmm... I'm not sure what kind of job opportunities are available in Montreal, but it seems like good employers give their coders an office, nice equipment, and flexible time management.


You might take one more look around, you might be surprised. I know I was and now I really love my job.



Just my 2 cents :)

OK, I guess I have many other points to share, so it's worth using an account this time.


I do not think any good environment to software development (by "good", I mean, one ready to make money out of high coding performance) should necessarily have freelancers. But I strongly believe that being freelancer-friendly means the process is mature enough.



If specification is clear, no one needs to explain it to you verbally. They are in the version control and you just know what to do. If the modules are correctly built, you know how to call them from the time you open your IDE and can read the javadocs.



I agree that open source is clearly an evidence to support the idea that this coding style works.



I already worked as a Java freelancer and already designed a project prepared to freelancers. I would recommend anyone to try and believe this solves many issues and it can be even understood as a way to keep your process on track.



What I don't know, as I already said, is whether the corporate culture is ready for that. Also, as you already stated, traditional companies sometimes just don't have this culture. Some are too slow to change their minds.



Some decision makers even insist to see programmers as typists.



I heard IBM was hiring people to work from home, but I believe they were contracted as normal employees. So big companies are already understanding this trend.



As for which technology to offer as a freelancer, some RAD is good for small projects but I would pick something more consolidated for larger projects. Memory and general hardware can be an issue in some projects, but for massive transactions, for example, I believe companies are willing to spend on hardware. So nowadays buying more memory can be easier and cheaper than to pay someone to debug code. That's why people use C instead of assembly, Java instead of C, Rails instead of Java, and even CMS instead of Rails. LOL. It all depends on which problem you are solving.



So again you have to create your own strategy now that you are by yourself. I wish you all the luck! The more freelancers we have, the more the companies will understand this is a model to follow.



ps.: Freelancer hiring is even more ecologic since it wastes less fossil fuel on transportation.

@Anomymous:I totally agree. The more your language lets your modularize your code in a way that reduces the coupling, the easier it gets to work independently on your segments of code and simply share those public interfaces.


I guess the main barrier is corporate culture. But open source software is proving that great software can be made by people cooperating from different geographic locations. There's hopefully something to learn from that!

Sorry for the anonymous comment, but I just don't want to create yet another profile. As for your topic, I believe Java, as opposing to PHP just like you mentioned, is a good choice for freelancing.


The more support you have to create abstractions and control visibility in a language, the easier will be for the team to work in cooperation while not staying physically together.



I am not sure, thou, if companies are ready to think in a different way and have the kind of control needed to allow for their developers to work from home. You have to find those companies that have a methodology mature enough to have continuous integration servers, SVN, and all the things low performance development people find useless.



I guess the point is whether the market is ready for your style or not.

thato99 : There's lots of recruiting agencies in Montreal but unfortunately their clients are mostly big banks and insurance companies that requires you to work from the office. (And besides those projects are boring most of the time!)


delponte: I'm also at a point where I think I'll either try to find contracts where I'm free to choose the technology or start my own web application that I could then sell as a service.



casper: Thanks for the encouragement. I also think working from home is getting some momentum even for employees. But it's still pretty marginal where I live.

Congrats on that step. While I'm no freelancer, I would just like to point out that many permanent positions do allow you to work, if not 100% from home, then a lot from home.


Hook up a VPN connection and a Cisco phone and let Jira, Confluence, email, IM and SVN prove their worth. I think this is a growing trend (except perhaps at Google).



Indecently I'm in Montreal these days, even though my VPN endpoint lies in Europe.

I've been considering freelancing for the past few months, and have been slowly moving in that direction. I've also found that Java freelance opportunities are at a minimum. So far, the only opportunities I've been offered are PHP, Drupal, and standard HTML/CSS. I'm hoping to get a project that doesn't dictate the technology... I'd probably choose Groovy/Grails. I think the reason there aren't many Java freelancing gigs is because it's too damn expensive to host Java applications... they are pretty memory hungry. Good luck to you!

Finding freelance opps are hard if you're not going through a recruitment pimp. I suggest you look at various agencies to find you Java roles. It's assuming dealing with these kinds of people.