• Work with very clever people or alone, from home
• Work with good development tools, i.e., Git, Mercurial, Emacs etc.
• Work with good programming languages, i.e., Scheme (first choice), Haskell, Common Lisp or Lua

These goals are intended to guarantee my long term happiness and stress-free high productivity. I mean a rewarding professional life. So far I could not attain any of them. Here in Brazil the chance of getting a regular job with these traits is nil. I began then to look for freelancing work, but I could only find worthless Java/PHP/ASP/VB/etc. projects. Unfortunately, here, those are the “high-tech” jobs.

As seen in my previous post, it is possible to use Scheme to develop for the iPhone and for the iPod Touch. Developing for the App Store has the potential of fulfilling my goals. Of course it is an already crowded market, but so far it seems to be the only way out. So I paid Apple and registered as an iPhone developer. Let’s see what I can come up with.

From time to time I read another Paul Graham essay, usually when they are cited in some Reddit or Slashdot thread. He really writes well, and although I do not agree with everything he says, I must say I agree with most of it. “Beating the averages” was very influential on some important decisions I have made, and for a lot of other people as well.

Today I found an essay called “Six Principles for Making New Things“, in which he describes his modus operandi:

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

I agree 100% with him here. There are a lot of overlooked problems out there, in search of solutions, that just seem “simple” enough. But they need to be solved and, when someone does it, everybody else wish they had thought of it. But they were there, all the time. Moreover, the initial solution does not need to be perfect, as long as it solves an immediate need well enough and the solution can be iterated rapidly, which is a very, very important point. When someone creates a market, there is soon afterwards a rush of new competitors. Coming up with a simple solution which does not evolve quickly is the recipe to lose to another faster, more dynamic, more focused team.

I already had something like Graham’s Six Principles in the back of my mind for a while. It was good to see them written by someone who has made millions of dollars selling (Lisp!) software.

We don’t really care about the title but we want someone good (who doesn’t?). We need someone able to model and code well (No architect who never codes). The ability to communicate well with a team is also a big plus. You don’t need to speak French (we are in France) but a reasonably good English is mandatory.

If You:
• like coding 4+ hours straight
• like to solve a coding problem elegantly (and are bothered if can’t)
• like and read real CS books (SICP, EGB, TAOCP, etc…)
• code in Haskell, Python and C++
• are a gamer (this one is optional)
• are interested in computer graphics (optional too)

What we offer:
• interesting problems and creative freedom
• quality of life (no overtime, sunny countryside, French food and low rent)
• a pay in Euros
• comfortable workplace, etc…
• coding in Haskell, Python

The boss really codes. He likes Haskell, Python, Reddit, and wants the team to be there for the long run (i.e. happy). He also modestly wrote and posted this jobs offer.

So let me see: Haskell, games, and Computer Graphics. How sweet. Also, note the emphasis on how the boss and “architects” still code. In underdeveloped places, coding is just for drones, and bosses and “architects” can’t do it to save their lives.

Today I found an interesting post about getting work using non-mainstream languages.

Well, unlike Java jobs or C# jobs or VB jobs, where one can scan the newspaper or go to dice.com, these magical jobs are not the ones I get when recruiters solicit me (three times a day). No, they appear between the cracks of the sky when it rends in two. All but one contract (that did come from dice.com) came from the company CEO pulling me aside or phoning me out of the blue from the materials I had published inside the company where I was employed, or from my web-sites on programming languages.

This basically means you must be a reference. You must blog a lot or, better yet, write even a book. When your name is said in a company meeting, somebody of the team must already have heard of you. Needless to say, this is not easy at all.

Usually and because of the exclusivity of the work it takes anywhere from at least 3 months to 2 years to secure these kinds of contracts, so the adage “Don’t quit your day job” is an appropriate one here. When I do get these contracts, however, they usually last longer (3 years) than the Java/C++/XML/web-services-code-grinder ones (that usually last around 6 months), and the peer group is much more intelligent, genteel and just plain more interesting than the code-grinding crowd. Is is harder to find these magical contracts? Yes, they are rarified air. But are they worth preparing for and then finding? Definitely.

Here we see that even after all this work, it is still very hard to find these dream jobs. You can wait as long as two years to get one, simply because in most companies the management employ Java/C#/VB drones anyway, as they are cheaper and easier to find. Only when they face really hard problems they start thinking of alternatives.

This post only reinforces what was already in the back of my mind for a while: The least hard way to earn money and be happy at the same time is to start an own business. Now if I could only move my lazy ass…