Im a Java developer with mostly core/frontend experience and Im planning to take a 6month-indefinite sabbatical in the end of the year with my wife to travel, see the world, and gather great memories before I settle down for good. I generated a good amount of savings and no debt but I still would like to use my skills while abroad to generate some extra income every now and then.
What are usefull skills for short-term telecommuting/freelancing projects that I can possibly take on remotely from anywhere in the world and be able to stand out from crowds and crowds of developers from the cheaper labor countries. This most likely means web development using rails, django, python, etc. Any input would be appreciated

rails is a nightmare to deploy. Sure it's easy to learn and some might even call it fun, but 90% of your time is getting the damn app online!

I DO recommend learning a web framework, whether it's erly web (http://www.erlyweb.org) (erlang), Django (http://www.djangoproject.com/)(python), or a few from my favorite language, Perl, Jifty (http://www.jifty.org) (there are a lot of comparisons to Ruby on Rails with this one, but a lot of people including me find it kind of quirky especially when it comes to deployment, one app server to one application?! Mark up and code seem to be mixed in during development, unless you really read through the docs as to how to do this "differently".), my all time favorite, Catalyst (http://catalyst.perl.org) (kind of a mixture of every existing framework, a lot like Rails, but much better, very intuitive and fairly easy to deploy compared to the others.)

If you're looking for small things to work on, people need maintenance stuff done. It's not always pretty, and I know I've had to walk away from a few projects because the "seller" didn't give me the whole schpiel on what needed to be done.

Anyway, I find most small jobs are involving database clean up or fixing a broken (shudder) php script. It depends on where you are looking. Keep in touch with your clients, once you get something BIG done, it's always going to need maintenance, and you can always charge consultation fees to upgrade/debug.

Good luck!

Thanks for your response.
I do have a server maintenance contract going but im afraid that maintenance requires greater availability that i would be able to provide while traveling.
I am looking into several frameworks, including Django and Symphony , which languages do you think have greater use nowadays? php, python, etc?

Anyway, what do you mean settle down for good? Having kids?
I believe you should go with PHP.
But for the terms you are talking, globally freelancing, small projects, you are
competing for very low prices, especially for php since there are a lot of programmers and more jobs for it. So in the 6 months, it might not be worth it.
Better get some rest and stay out of jobs, i would do that.

rails is a nightmare to deploy. Sure it's easy to learn and some might even call it fun, but 90% of your time is getting the damn app online!


Huh?

Maybe back in the FCGI days a few years ago but it is a lot easier now to deploy not only Ruby on Rails, but many other Ruby-based web frameworks that use Rack (Sinatra, Ramaze, Waves, etc etc).

Options now a days:
1) mod_rails for Apache 2 (Can deploy any Rack based app)
2) Balancer (nginx, pound, pen, apache) + Mongrel Cluster
3) Thin
4) Switchpipe
5) Deprec + a VPS

(and probably a few more)

Huh?

Maybe back in the FCGI days a few years ago but it is a lot easier now to deploy not only Ruby on Rails, but many other Ruby-based web frameworks that use Rack (Sinatra, Ramaze, Waves, etc etc).

Options now a days:
1) mod_rails for Apache 2 (Can deploy any Rack based app)
2) Balancer (nginx, pound, pen, apache) + Mongrel Cluster
3) Thin
4) Switchpipe
5) Deprec + a VPS

(and probably a few more)

That's my experience. Rails is a quirky beast in my opinion, maybe you could even help me out by giving me some advice on deployment. I've found Capistrano is only useful if you've got a dedicated/virtual private server, and the svn pass and shell pass having to be the same seemed to be a security hole to me. BUT, once again, I digress, I may not be up to date on this.

Thanks for your response.
I do have a server maintenance contract going but im afraid that maintenance requires greater availability that i would be able to provide while traveling.
I am looking into several frameworks, including Django and Symphony , which languages do you think have greater use nowadays? php, python, etc?

Greater use? Probably, and sadly in my opinion, PHP. Although PEAR has sort of been a saving grace. Just make sure you stay away from CakePHP...

That's my experience. Rails is a quirky beast in my opinion, maybe you could even help me out by giving me some advice on deployment. I've found Capistrano is only useful if you've got a dedicated/virtual private server, and the svn pass and shell pass having to be the same seemed to be a security hole to me. BUT, once again, I digress, I may not be up to date on this.

Capistrano has made a number of improvements as well. It's able to deploy from local files (and not a repo), which makes it handy for deploying PHP apps as well.

mod_rails makes it dead simple to deploy any Ruby framework that uses Rack to interface to the server. No configuration in Apache (other than loading the module). Just follow their conventions (config.ru for Racking Up, public/ for ruby files) and it 'just works'.

Well i think you need to learn more backend things (plus website config, and at least some basic php AND asp) - as a freelancer (from when i used to do it), people expect that you can handle whole projects for them - and the larger skillset you have the more you can earn.

Since you will not be available all the time you can get some non critical website management/maintenance jobs (that allow you a few days of turnaround) or you can deploy a site/service and try to have income from ads (recurring revenue).

Marketing and sales - getting the work will likely occupy as much time as doing the work itself, and the better you are at getting people to call you up with offers, the more free you are to refuse bad and/or low paying gigs.

Take it easy,

David Berube

Marketing and sales - getting the work will likely occupy as much time as doing the work itself, and the better you are at getting people to call you up with offers, the more free you are to refuse bad and/or low paying gigs.

Take it easy,

David Berube

Agreed. If I may extend that, David, networking seems to be key?

Not in the hypey method so often promoted, but maintaining good contacts and producing solid work to build future referrals.

-mike

Hello

I thnk you can get an overall view of the use of Ruby on Rails nowadays.I have seen some guys who having Ruby exp , but I think it is used rarely for web.I think its a good one like python ,perl and PHP.