willhallonline

I think it is more an effort to be able to quantise value when others suggest that "We need DevOps" or "DevOps is driving improvement/innovation" but trying to understand how and where you can use resources to better improve ROI.

Episode Summary

On this episode of if/else, host Mayuko Inoue looks at two software development version control platforms: GitHub and GitLab.

While both platforms offer Git repository hosting, issue tracking, and integrations, there are important differences in cost, popularity, security, and philosophy.

The episode begins with a quick backgrounder on these two platforms, and then you’ll hear from several software developers about their experiences with each.

You’ll also meet Tim Skaggs. Tim is a VP of Engineering at the hiring management software company ApolloFactor. His team currently uses GitHub, but Tim is considering a move to GitLab to save money and streamline certain processes around continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). But is this the right move? Will it solve some of the team’s challenges, or will they regret the move?

To help Tim make the best choice for his company, we’ve enlisted the help of two experts to debate the pros and cons of each option.

Phil Haack is the proprietor of Haacked LLC. He was a director of engineering at GitHub and helped make GitHub friendly to developers on the Microsoft platform.

Will Hall is a DevOps Consultant at HeleCloud, and a GitLab Hero with a passion for open source software.

Phil and Will join Mayuko to try to surface the most important information that Tim should consider, and to game out the best scenarios for Tim’s team.

Web Browser: Brave (Chromium)

Terminal: Terminal (with oh-my-zsh)

IDE: VS Code

Basic Text Editor: VS Code

PDF Reader: Brave (Chromium)

Office Suite: Google Docs/Sheets etc

Calendar: Google Calendar

Video Player: VLC

Music Player: mplayer

Image manipulation: GIMP

The main things I always add are GIMP, Brave, oh-my-zsh and VLC. Getting a good/working browser does most work for me.

As someone who has been a freelancer and ran a web development company for a time (now I work in DevOps), I would suggest that the market for web development as a freelancer is limited. Honestly, I think that you would spend most of your time picking up clients, who regularly will not want to pay the rates that would cover your costs, let alone allow you to make a profit.

However, contracting seems as strong as it ever has done, especially in areas like Javascript and Python development. I would opt for contracting rather than freelancing, especially if you are able to get remote contracts.

I know lots of people who do make a living from web development, but they are largely within medium sized companies that have a marketing/sales budget and are able to cope with multiple large contracts simultaneously.

I have used this with a large company before to suggest that switching off servers when not in use was not only more cost-efficient but also helped with sustainability targets (especially if we could track it).