Forem: Fabio Zammit

4 reasons why to start freelancing 👇

Fabio Zammit — Thu, 02 May 2024 19:25:58 +0000

One thing leads to another

The first business I had was building computers for friends, this gave me the knowledge and experience to move onto being a freelance software engineer.

I met some great software engineers, that thought me a lot

Not just the tech and how to be a better software engineer but also what it takes to service clients and deliver quality.

Travel & meet clients from all around the world

The older I get the more I realise how it's the experiences that make my life more "rich" and there is nothing better than travelling and meeting new clients.

New opportunities to set-up new businesses

Along the way I met individuals that have expressed interest in setting up a new business and opens new doors for you to experience.

I share more about my story on a podcast I was on recently where we discussed the following topics:

Starting your own freelance business
Remote work
Getting your first client
What does it take to run a software company
Burn out and how to "avoid" it
How we need to do more to inspire future solopreneur

Link in the comments

I hope it inspires you to reach for the skies (cheesy i know, but its true 😄)

P.s. It's been a while Dev.to community, keep coding, keep nerding!

Freelancing Live Q&A - How to get started

Fabio Zammit — Tue, 05 May 2020 11:01:18 +0000

TLDR: I am organising a live Q&A about freelancing, targeted at developers who wish to start in the coming weeks. Should this have a positive response, I will organise a series of webinars in the coming weeks.

Completely free, no selling of courses, no get rich quick schemes, just pure value.

If this is of any interest please register your interest here https://forms.gle/Ts2JMs1CoNp2CoUr5.

The why

For the past few months, I have been pondering of ways I can add value to the overall dev community and after posting this article, back in 2018 (https://dev.to/fzammit/10-lessons-from-a-software-engineer--freelancer-1fho) I decided it is high time I get to share my experience as a freelancer, 15 years of it (Gawd, time flies).

I always loved the idea of a community as it brings a certain energy to the place. In the past, I used to organise meet-ups with friends and we used to have over 200 attendees, from different backgrounds (freelancers, creatives, architects, designers, developers etc) https://business.facebook.com/heydayofficial/ and now I want to create something similar for freelancers, specifically developers.

Experiment

This is an experiment as I have no idea what the response will be like....but the idea is to organise a series of webinars split into recommended strategies (40% of the time) and questions and answers (60% of the time). I want to hear about your successes, struggles, why maybe you haven't started and what might be holding you back.

The target audience is for anyone starting off or might have 1 or 2 clients.

If you are asking whether this is the right time? There is never a right time and from my experience during the recession in 2009, this can work. More on this in the webinar...

Register

This webinar is completely free, no selling of courses, no get rich quick schemes, just pure value and if this is of any interest please register your interest here https://forms.gle/Ts2JMs1CoNp2CoUr5.

Questions

Any questions you have, feel free to DM me on Twitter, https://twitter.com/fzammit.

Looking forward to seeing you at the webinar :) and I would highly appreciate if you would share this with any of your friends.

Thank you!

6 tips on getting a computer science degree or flying solo

Fabio Zammit — Sat, 25 May 2019 15:52:38 +0000

Hello fellow devs!

It has definitely been a while since my last post and even though I wanted to write a new post, I hate writing just for the sake of doing so, I like adding value to my articles.

Enjoy 😊

The debate of having a CS degree

There is this stigma and hot debate on whether a developer with a degree is “better” than one without.

Quick moment to point out that I have a degree but did it really make me a better developer?

———-

Here is my opinion based on my experience and some others who are in the industry:

A degree is only step 1

Getting a degree gives you a basic framework of how to think as a programmer but was it the entire recipe for who I am today?

I wouldn’t say so as technology is constantly evolving and certain principles thought within a specific course may not be valid in a decade.

Its fair to say that this doesn’t apply to all aspects e.g data structures but does one need to go through the process of a degree to truly understand these concepts?

A degree is a requirement for most tech roles

In Europe, a degree is generally one of the basic requirements when applying for a tech role and therefore it is quite important to have one.

However a shift has been taking place where a degree is no longer a requirement. https://www.google.com.mt/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/top-companies-are-hiring-more-candidates-without-a-4-year-degree-2019-4

Will other companies follow suit?

Work experience is more important

Throughout the years of working as a dev I had the amazing experience of working with some knowledgeable individuals and one thing that I learnt is you can have all the degrees you like, but without work experience you are as good as a sitting duck. 🦆

Some of the best devs I met had no fancy degree to show for their experience and knowledge but they surely worked their ass off to get to where they are today.

A degree will not prepare you for the real world

This might not apply to all however some courses do not prepare you for the real world and I see it kind of natural as there is so much you can fit in one course.

Only through work experience will you learn about migrations, issues on scalability in a real world scenario, proper debugging, how to effectively work with other teams etc.

It is not the only path

The more time passes the more I realise how there are a ton of ways of achieving something and with all of the resources available to us, I can say that one does not need a degree to learn how to code. I am a classic example, I learnt HTML, CSS and JavaScript before joining university.

What one needs is guidance, guidance on how learning a programming language is not enough and how logical and critical thinking helps one write better software.

Shit, did I waste my time at university or college?

This post is in no way trying to bash universities or colleges as I do not regret getting one and if you have the chance, do go get one but remember its not the beyond and all and does not necessarily mean it will make you a better developer.

In my eyes, a piece of paper will never define someone but it is the personality, your critical thinking and methods of approaching an issue that will make you a great dev :)

Do not wait

My final advice is whether you choose to get a degree solely depends on you and your financial situation (for some countries) but one thing for sure, do not wait to get a degree to start coding as I didn’t and all I can say it paid off!

——-

Hope you enjoyed this article and found some value in it.

How was your experience with choosing to get a degree? Love to hear from you on Twitter or in the comments below!

Keep well and stay hungry 🙃

10 lessons from a software engineer & freelancer

Fabio Zammit — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 17:18:38 +0000

In recent weeks, I wanted to share some of the lessons I learnt throughout my career as a software engineer, freelancer and now running a software company.

Also, sharing is caring and if anyone can learn from some of my mistakes and observations, that would be awesome!

Onto the article...

Lesson 1: Marketing is your best friend

Learning the basics of marketing is handy and this does not mean understanding how to launch a full blown campaign on national TV. What I mean is:

Build a portfolio
Showcase EVERYTHING
Tell everyone (friends, family, your LinkedIn network) about what you do

In 15 years most of my clients were referrals so do not underestimate the power of word of mouth.

Lesson 2: Go easy on the jargon

When dealing with clients/stakeholders/project managers, you want to have a good sense of communication, whereby you can both understand each other so as for you to deliver a product (software) that is about their goals.

Therefore, using phrases such as "The requests are slow, we should opt for in-memory dbs", may not be entirely appreciated. Bare in mind that not everyone understands technology the same way you do and it is important to respect it, especially when running your own show.

Learn how to use plain English (or whatever language you use) when communicating with non-technical stakeholders

Lesson 3: Programming languages are important but....

Whilst going through my Twitter feed, I see how individuals are obsessed on knowing the "best" languages or frameworks, which is definitely important BUT the "correct" approach for a project, is not just about the language or framework.

Languages are the tool to write the instructions, the art is in knowing the basics (Data structures, search algorithms, OOP, design patterns, test driven development etc) well so as to give you a proper understanding how to architect your software.

Moreover, different languages have different strengths and some might be more appropriate than others for that specific task.

Lesson 4: Ego, ego, ego

In my view, being a confident individual is somewhat important as it gives you that sense of re-assurance when making certain choices. However, as a software engineer I like to keep my feet on the ground. If you are asking why, here are the reasons:

Everyone f*cks up, even the most experienced ones, so get off your pretty high horse :) I once by mistake executed sudo rm -rvf *, on a Linux dev machine where I was in the root folder of the file system. Oops! - luckily did no serious damage as I stopped it super quickly.
It helps you become a better developer as you tend to question yourself from time to time.
People appreciate you more as you are truly capable of looking for the 'right' solution rather than the one that suits your ego.

Lesson 5: Be transparent

Before starting any project, always be clear about what you plan on delivering and be transparent with the client or stakeholder. This gives the product owner, the re-assurance that you are putting your money where your mouth is and that you are professional.

Don't be afraid to say no, if you feel a task is going to derail your entire project plan.

Lesson 6: Project planning is key

When running your own show and things start to pick up, you will start to have more and more projects which is fantastic. However without any proper planning you risk disappointing clients, which is not the ideal situation.

We adopt these processes and tools to stay organised:

Gantt charts for project planning, thus giving us an idea of how long a project will take, the sequence of tasks and allocation of resources
We use Kanban (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)) within Trello to scope out all the tasks and this give us a good indication of current progress and what everyone is up to
We organise daily stand-ups with the team so as to discuss issues and progress for each individual

If you ask, how does this apply to smaller teams, e.g. 1 or 2 people, I still suggest using Gantt charts + Kanban. Stay organised no matter how small you are!

Lesson 7: Have an understanding about UX

This applies mainly to anyone doing front-end work. Even though as developers, we are not required to know how to design proper UX. Experience showed me that it is good to have an understanding of what is a good user experience.

This will help you make better recommendations and build a piece of software that the end-user really enjoys using.

You can approach this in 2 ways:

Team up with a good UX designer, if budgets are tight then opt for option 2
Read up as much as you can e.g. https://amzn.to/2RqpM3q

Lesson 8: Don't be a know it all

This kind of ties in with one's ego, but it deserves it's own lesson. As devs, we do sometimes feel this mighty power that we are like the Greek gods. This may be attributed to the fact that we are solving some real challenging issues and without diminishing anyone's achievement, we need to bare in mind that the dev team is not the beyond and all of a business.

There are other important business functions like marketing, SEO etc that have their own feature requests. In my experience I have sometimes seen these features being dismissed and claiming that they are not important.

This poor sense of judgement led to conflict between the departments, simply because of a lack of empathy or one not putting themselves into the other persons' shoes. From experience, I can tell that a basic change for the SEO department, could be a real winner for the business.

Bottom line, have respect for other requests and do your homework properly.

Lesson 9: Stay current

You never know enough, even after 15, 20, 30 years in the industry. Especially, when running your own thing, you need to make that extra effort to stay current as you don't always have the luxury of asking your colleague about what is the best approach.

So stay in touch with communities like this one and never stop learning.

Lesson 10: Build long lasting relationships

Building relationships is not only important in business but even when working in an organisation as you will learn from one another. More importantly you never know where life will take you and your own colleague or boss could be one of your first clients or future business partner.

The End

Hope you enjoyed reading and got some value out of this. Well done if you have made it to the bottom :D

Feel free to put forward any suggestions you may have. Stay hungry and feel free to reach out, happy to help out.

3 reasons why devs don’t contribute to open source. Discuss!

Fabio Zammit — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 17:57:41 +0000

Overview

I came across this survey from Digital Ocean that takes a deep dive into understanding what devs think about contributing to open source.

In the survey we can say the list of open source projects sorted by popularity and it is no surprise that projects like React and Linux are some of the most favorable.

Google was found to be the most supportive when it comes to open source.

——

Contributing to open source

There was 1 part which took me by surprise where a large percentage find it a challenge to contribute to open source.

The article states:

Two of the most prominent barriers preventing developers from getting involved in open source are not knowing where to begin, and doubting they have the right skills.

In my opinion some projects like Dev.to are very well documented on Github. Even though I may not be very knowledgeable with Ruby I am sure anyone can get their head around it as ultimately its the basic programming principles that count.

Having said that, there are a number of projects that should follow the same standards. This is where I have to admit that more needs to be done to encourage developers to contribute.

What is your take on this? Do you agree that these barriers exist? What could be improved? Let me know in the comments below.

Reason No. 3

The third reason which doesn’t surprise me at all:

Companies not giving their employees time to contribute is also a large factor.

It is maybe high time that more companies allocate a day a week where devs can spend X amount of time on open source projects or just learning something new.

This is something we do at Root Codex where we encourage our devs to contribute and take time every week to work on some form of pet project.

Did you have or are currently facing such barriers when it comes to contributing your code?

Do you contribute to open source? And if so which project?

Is there something, as a community that we can do to help others overcome these barriers?

Looking forward to hearing from you! 🙂

Full survey may be found at:

https://www.digitalocean.com/currents/october-2018/?utm_source=dev.to

WordPress penetration testing

Fabio Zammit — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 15:44:52 +0000

Even though I believe that security experts should be the ones to carry out penetration tests, it is always important for us developers to understand how make our web applications more secure.

An article how to test your blog or WordPress installation using Kali Linux.

https://deliciousbrains.com/wordpress-penetration-testing/

There are some tools which are not WordPress focused therefore it is worth reading even if you are not into WP.

Using rel=noopener in an anchor tag

Fabio Zammit — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 09:40:53 +0000

I come across quite a few websites that do not use rel="noopener" and therefore wanted to share an article that explains the importance of having this attribute when creating an anchor tag that links to an external source.

https://mathiasbynens.github.io/rel-noopener/

HTTPS on static websites?

Fabio Zammit — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 08:39:58 +0000

Do we require an HTTPS certificate for static sites?

There is this misconception that an HTTPS certificate is required only when collecting sensitive information like credit card data and personal information.

However Troy Hunt highlights in his demo how this could be far from the truth.

Also, if your idea is that this does not affect you in any way I strongly suggest you have a look at the demo.

https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-needs-https/