I’m a competentwebprogrammer, but I’ve always shied away from the idea of doing it professionally. There are reasons for this, but I can’t tell if they’re actually the reasons I don’t want to do it or if I’m just afraid of failure/success/hard work and making excuses.
Reasons include: I don’t want to design webpages as much as I like making them work, and it’s hard to find small jobs that don’t involve both; I’m not familiar with any of the common frameworks/libraries/CMS, just basic PHP (not even OOP very much), and jobs seem to tend to want multiple skillsets; other peoples’ ideas are sometimes boring but I’d have to do it anyway if I were getting paid to; I’m worried that if it were a job it wouldn’t be fun any more; sometimes it’s not fun even when it’s not a job.
There’s also a sense that I’m just not good enough at it to work at the professional level, which is hard to convince people of, because by definition I can only show them projects I had the skills to finish.
I guess I’m posting this in the hopes that someone will talk me either into or out of taking it more seriously. Am I wasting a perfectly good marketable skill, or is my aversion valid?
Do you know Randall Munroe well enough that you could convince him to hang out on LW? I want xkcd comics about timeless decision theory so much now that I have thought of the possibility.
We’ve actually talked about it before, but it would take more interest than I think he has for him to take up a new way of spending time on the internet right now. For a guy who draws stick figures for a living, he’s surprisingly busy.
ETA: … besides, lots of people could draw comics about TDT! In most places, the easy part would be finding someone who can draw and is funny, and the hard part would be finding someone who knows anything about TDT; on LW it’s probably the other way around.
I’m a competent web programmer, but I’ve always shied away from the idea of doing it professionally. There are reasons for this, but I can’t tell if they’re actually the reasons I don’t want to do it or if I’m just afraid of failure/success/hard work and making excuses.
Reasons include: I don’t want to design webpages as much as I like making them work, and it’s hard to find small jobs that don’t involve both; I’m not familiar with any of the common frameworks/libraries/CMS, just basic PHP (not even OOP very much), and jobs seem to tend to want multiple skillsets; other peoples’ ideas are sometimes boring but I’d have to do it anyway if I were getting paid to; I’m worried that if it were a job it wouldn’t be fun any more; sometimes it’s not fun even when it’s not a job.
There’s also a sense that I’m just not good enough at it to work at the professional level, which is hard to convince people of, because by definition I can only show them projects I had the skills to finish.
I guess I’m posting this in the hopes that someone will talk me either into or out of taking it more seriously. Am I wasting a perfectly good marketable skill, or is my aversion valid?
Aaah! I knew your username was familiar but couldn’t figure out how—I read it in the xkcd blag!
Haha. Yup, that’s me. I’ve actually showed up around there a couple of times, but more often by name than by nick.
Do you know Randall Munroe well enough that you could convince him to hang out on LW? I want xkcd comics about timeless decision theory so much now that I have thought of the possibility.
We’ve actually talked about it before, but it would take more interest than I think he has for him to take up a new way of spending time on the internet right now. For a guy who draws stick figures for a living, he’s surprisingly busy.
ETA: … besides, lots of people could draw comics about TDT! In most places, the easy part would be finding someone who can draw and is funny, and the hard part would be finding someone who knows anything about TDT; on LW it’s probably the other way around.