DragonI

Between the Wires: An interview with Vue.js creator Evan You

I interviewed Evan You, the creator of vuejs.org which is a popular progressive JavaScript framework. Evan works on Vue full time with the…

medium.freecodecamp.org|Vivian Cromwell

I’m creating value for these people, so theoretically if I can somehow collect these values in a financial form, then I should be able to sustain myself.

I thought, would crowdfunding work? I just wanted to try this idea on Patreon. Actually Dan Abramov, the creator of React-Hot-Loader and Redux, also did a small campaign on Patreon before.

Another aspect of it is Patreon rewards. If companies are willing to sponsor us, then I could put their logo up on a sponsor page on vuejs.org. It raises the awareness of the community. Half the Patreon funds are coming from individuals and one of them sponsored $2000 a month. I had no idea if it would work out when I tried it, but it turns out it’s kind of working. I think I made the full-time jump when I had $4000 a month on Patreon, and now it’s grown to over $9800 a month.

My job at Google involved a lot of prototyping in the browser. We had this idea and we wanted to get something tangible as fast as possible. Some of the projects used Angular at that time. 

I figured, what if I could just extract the part that I really liked about Angular and build something really lightweight without all the extra concepts involved? I was also curious as to how its internal implementation worked. I started this experiment just trying to replicate this minimal feature set, like declarative data binding. That was basically how Vue started.

In February 2014, that was how I first released it as an actual project. I put it out on Github and sent a link to Hacker News, and it actually got voted to the front page. It stayed there for a few hours. Later, I wrote an article to share the first week usage data and what I learned.

I think, in terms of all the frameworks out there, Vue is probably the most similar to React, but on a broader sense, among all the frameworks, the term that I coined myself is a progressive framework.

The idea is that Vue is made up of this core which is just data binding and components, similar to React. It solves a very focused, limited set of problems. Compared to React, Vue puts a bit more focus on approachability. Making sure people who know basics such as: HTML, JavaScript, and CSS can pick it up as fast as possible.

“There is not going to be this one true framework that just makes everyone happy. The more important part is, make it better for the people who actually enjoy your framework. Focus on what you believe is the most valuable thing in your framework and just make sure you’re doing a great job, rather than worrying about how you compare to others.”

Why an Ex-Google Coder Makes Twice as Much Freelancing

With a talent war raging, companies from Airbnb to Pfizer are paying top dollar for the services of independent programmers

www.bloomberg.com

James Knight recently made an unorthodox career move for a 27-year-old coder: quitting a well-paid gig writing software for Google to go freelance. No more catered lunches, gold-plated benefits or million-dollar views from the search giant’s Manhattan office.

Knight is willing to sacrifice those perks because as an independent he’s pulling down about twice as much as he did at Google. Plus, he has more freedom. In March, Knight and his wife plan to travel to Spain and hopscotch across Europe—all the while writing code for a dating app and a self-portrait app, among others.

"I’d rather control my own destiny and take on the risk and forgo the benefits of nap pods and food," Knight says.

Amid an accelerating war for tech talent, big companies and startups alike are paying top dollar—as much as $1,000 a hour, according to a person who gets coders gigs—for freelancers with the right combination of skills. While companies still recruit many of the best minds, they're turning to independent software developers to get a stalled project moving or to gain a competitive edge. In some cases, the right person can be the difference between a failed and successful product.

...

Independent software developers like Knight represent an elite echelon of the so-called Gig Economy—a 53-million-strong army of freelancers who now account for one in three workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

...

With the tagline "genius on demand," 10x Management typically represents about 100 software developers, though the New York-based agency receives thousands of applications every year. Co-founder (and former entertainment manager) Rishon Blumberg likens his clients to movie stars: "The demand for Tom Cruise is very large," he says, "but the supply is very small."

Martin Langhoff, 39, typifies the elite freelance coder. Having taught himself programming at the age of nine, Langhoff went on to become chief technology officer at the non-profit One Laptop Per Child program, where he managed a software and hardware team, industrial design, manufacturing and prototypes. Burned out and wanting to spend more time with his son, he joined 10x, which he says is akin to qualifying for the Olympics.