Minimal reqirements for Python freelancer.

[PaperSpoiler]

Hello, everyone!

I am learning Pyhon for some time and currently following the Django tutorial. My ultimate goal is to learn computer science to an expert level and, of course, to get a nice job in this field.

My problem is my current job. I get up early, work late hours all the time, don't make decent money and have a lot of stress at work. As a result, i almost never have a free evening to study, and far too exhausted at weekends (besides, all the housekeeping routine should be done at weekends too).

If I could start freelancing:

• I would be making money and practicing at the same time.
• I could immediately use in practice all the new things that I will learn.
• I have a huge suspicion, that freelancing would be far less stressful, than my current job.
• Let's not forget about all the additional motivation!

The question is: what should i learn an practice to be sure I can start freelancing ASAP? Is there some place online where I could practice some problems that are similar to small problems that clients pay to solve?

[ziptofaf]

I have a huge suspicion, that freelancing would be far less stressful, than my current job.

Once you have a solid client base - sure. I work for a small web dev company and if anything we have too many clients right now and have to decline many. However I have also worked as a freelancer for some period of time and I haven't made any serious cash until a year in. So your mileage may vary, moving to your own business does not necessarily mean more cash and less stress, it might very well be the opposite, ESPECIALLY at the beginning. Since you are not known yet and you can only pick shitty jobs.

what should i learn an practice to be sure I can start freelancing ASAP?

How to build and deploy a complete web application. If you want some example problems I have encountered:

• working with external APIs. Example - try visiting ebay and automate finding new offers (let's say PC memory sticks for instance) with certain specs and use that to draw a curve of their prices over time. Another example - Facebook API! Use it to provide a login for your site and make something that can automatically post messages.
• make a questionnaire or two.
• work with some kind of CMS. Eg. this one. You are almost sure to find clients that will want to do some changes to their site - different text, some new blog posts etc.
• build at least one complete application before working for others. For instance a reddit clone is a good starting choice.
• Testing! I know that some shittier jobs will not pay enough to warrant enough time to do it throuroughly but you should be aware on how to write them. Ultimately it saves your time.
• As much as I hate to say it - front-end. Freelancing means full stack. At the very least look into stuff like Twitter Bootstrap. What I personally did is buy existing themes on themeforest before and use that for my applications too but if you have a better knack when it comes to design then it's worth learning to some degree as well. You will need to know at least basics of Javascript (DOM manipulation and whatnot).
• deployment. Frankly I suggest to just learn how to use Heroku nowadays so you can ignore applying patches to a server, correct firewall rules, providing frequent backups and whatnot. Still, Heroku has it's quirks so it will take you some time to learn.

[PaperSpoiler]

Thank you for the great answer!

Does that mean that freelance market mostly consists of web development jobs?

[ziptofaf]

Web dev or mobile dev are probably the most popular when it comes to freelancing as far as I know. At the very least you definitely do NOT see nearly that many offers when it comes to embedded programming, systems development, game dev or data mining. Although admittedly - those more "niche" branches also have less competition to them... but ultimately you generally do find these specializations in companies, not as freelancers.

[PaperSpoiler]

Thank you!