Updating software skills

[VectraMan]

Disagree about side projects, if you do them well. Or take time off and do it well, which is what I did. I got my next contract off the experience gained. Gotta put the effort in.

Did you put the time off to learn something on your cv or leave a gap?

I think that's more likely to work if it's something new. If it's something established agents/clients tend to ask "how many years experience do you have in X", and then aren't interested if you can't say you were doing it for 3 years. But I can only speak from my experience.

Previous client started a big project in WPF/C# but ultimately ditched it, complaining it was too slow, and then looked for someone to do it in C++/QT instead.

[oliverson]

That's exactly what is happening. People do WPF, just probably at a smaller scale. Plus WPF always was linked with RX, TDD, reactiveUI, MVVM....

Personally I'm longing for the day when WebAssembly goes mainstream and managed frameworks like .NET can compile to it. Then we won't be tied to the appalling mess that is JavaScript. Come back C#, come back XAML, come back all the stuff we've enjoyed for 20+ years such as world-class debugging and intellisense. Come back PRODUCTIVITY. What I would give for a folder called 'lib' that has a handful of 3rd party DLL's, compared to the mess that is 100Mb of node_modules or even Nuget packages. What I'd give for a nicely controlled and documented framework again compared to the mess of unsupported, undocumented npm packages. So much for progress eh?

[woohoo]

Did you put the time off to learn something on your cv or leave a gap?

I think that's more likely to work if it's something new. If it's something established agents/clients tend to ask "how many years experience do you have in X", and then aren't interested if you can't say you were doing it for 3 years. But I can only speak from my experience.

I put it down on my CV as founder of startup, with the time it took - treated it as I would a client. But good point, I was learning relatively new tech at the time, so unlikely that anyone would have asked for say 3 years experience. So I concede to your logic spock.

[northernladuk]

So you spending work (contractual) hours on you personal needs? It does look like misleading client.

Am glad you are so sure of that based on zero knowledge of my situation but if it makes you happy go with it.

[SueEllen]

So you spending work (contractual) hours on you personal needs? It does look like misleading client.

You are aware that clients work out the number of hours you are likely to do productive work per day?

That includes smoking breaks if you are a smoker, going to the loo, moving your eyes of a screen every 10 mins to comply with H&S, getting drinks etc.

Also once you are more senior they pay on output not how many hours you sit there.

[billybiro]

Erm. Nope.

You know, my old dad used to say, "You can be one of those people earning a fortune by having blagged his way into a juicy role, or you can be one of those people complaining about people earning a fortune by having blagged their way into a juicy role".

Which would you rather be?

[northernladuk]

You know, my old dad used to say, "You can be one of those people earning a fortune by having blagged his way into a juicy role, or you can be one of those people complaining about people earning a fortune by having blagged their way into a juicy role".

Which would you rather be?

Wise words indeed lol.