dadro

Looks great. Image/file > Base64 and the inverse could be a useful addition.

I grew up in rural Maine and always called 10-pin bowling "TV bowling" because I had never actually seen one of the large bowling balls. I didn't play my first non-candlepin round until my mid 20's. I still prefer candlepin. Luckily Boston has "Southie Bowl" where I can get my annual fix!

I live in New England and am an avid fisherman. Due to our industrial past, I believe just about every single river in the state I reside is polluted either by PCB's or lead to the point you cannot safely consume fish regularly. It is frustrating/depressing that the ecosystems may be permanently tainted and future generations may not be able to experience the joy of (safely) preparing a fresh fish they caught.

Yes, I make considerably more than I did as a IC engineer but I have significantly more stress/risk.

I had about 15 years professional experience as a developer.

Every scenario is going to be different, I took the plunge as a software consultant and can provide some datapoints.

I was laid off from my job as a software engineer about 5 years ago. I had previously worked in software consulting and knew the operating model and had a handful of potential clients. I had some savings and my wife works full time so I decided to give it a go for 6 months to see how it would go. I partnered with a colleague who was also laid off and had same appetite for risk as I did.

  * The first year was a grind, especially doing the non-technical tasks like networking/business development/invoicing/etc. 
  * We ended up being profitable on year 1, I made less than my previous gig as a lead engineer. We grew from 2 of us to having 1 FTE and 3-4 dev contractors in year 1. 
  * Keep in touch with engineers you liked working with, hiring is WAY harder than I expected. If you decide to grow, you will need a team for larger contracts. 
  * Business development is largely a numbers game, you have to get out of your comfort zone and talk to a lot of people/companies and get on their radar. 
  * One of our first non-technical hires was business development. We did this when we hit $1mm/yr rev. 
  * Being in a niche can be helpful if you are able to explain your value prop AND to differentiate yourself.
  * Don't view other consulting firms as competition. We've formed some great relationships with other companies that align with our engineering process and refer work when we have too much and get work when they have too much.

Over the last 5 years we grew from 2 "founders" (along with some former colleagues as contractors) to about ~40 employees (80% FTE's/20% contractors) all remote, US based. In hindsight, I think my favorite size was when we were ~8 people. It was big enough to take on 1-2 large-ish contracts, but less stress in keeping pipeline full. The risk tolerance for having a 6 figure payroll every 2 weeks is not for everyone!

(edit formatting)

There is no substance to this post, it is clickbait. Most of the listed languages wouldn't even be considered. Most of the other "languages" are irrelevant in terms of building a platform. Ex: SQL, Bash, Powershell, Matlab.

I combined a series of state collected freshwater bio/fisheries data into a web app that maps it out per lake. I use it for discovering and targeting specific fish species within a given area (town/county). I used it with much success during ice fishing season and have started using it for canoe trips to target bucket list species I want to catch.

I've been working on a side project that aggregates state gov't survey data on lakes/ponds (currently just one state) that includes water quality, depth, size, fish species, invasive plants, etc and allows me to search it and see it on a map. I use it to find good remote fishing spots for species I want to target. So far it has worked great and I've only shared it with a few fellow anglers.

Thank you for stopping at Bangor, parts of Maine south of there are Northern Massachusetts!

I've been pretty happy with MikroTik routers. I have an extra HapAC2, if you cover shipping it is all yours (I'm based in US).

The optics of the site currently being down does not instill much confidence in wanting to use this in production.