I’m not going to insult your intelligence by suggesting that I have anything to say that hasn’t been said, by somone, someplace. However, I have been quietly making a successful living designing and building software for clients for almost a quarter century. I’m not your typical God-on-a-pedestal globe-trotting dynamic public speaker. I am a published author — if my two Inside FoxPro books from 1993, and a smattering of articles from the same time frame, still count.
Most people don’t realize that to make money authoring tech books you have to work the conference / seminar circuit and other book promo opportunities — after initial publication (called “front listing”), marketing is entirely the responsibility of the author. And what I discovered back then, was that while I was capable of doing it, and doing it well, I positively hated it — the hotels, hotel food, travel, and being “on” to “perform” on someone else’s schedule. It just wasn’t my bag.
What I did love, aside from crafting software, was communicating through writing — that has basically laid fallow for around 10 years. So here I am, turning up like a bad penny, to provide hopefully useful ideas, thoughts, technqiues, and insight into what it is to find fun and profit as an independent software developer. I hope that you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.
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Bob is right on all counts. I’ve known Bob since 1980/81 time frame (geeze that is dating us both) when I was working with him on several major projects.
Bob and I split up many years ago when he decided to move on to another field of endeavor and I chose to stay in the consulting business with a very successful organization that I was building. Alas, history has a way of changing when the future arrives and I eventually moved on to more exciting avenues in 2001.
Good to see Bob continuing his writing. He is very eloquent with words, phrases, and the like. You won’t find any spaghetti code from his pen/or keyboard.