Sterling Rose Design Blog

I get asked this question a lot: How do you write a proposal for a freelance contract development job?

First, it’s important to understand that freelancing is a different animal from working for a larger development firm (or, as I lovingly think of them, a Dev-in-a-Box). We have some considerations as independents that they don’t, and vice versa, so I don’t presume to know how best to bid jobs if you’re the Thoughtbots or Hashrockets of the world.

But if you’re an independent developer, then these tips may be useful for you.

1) Never, ever, ever bid flat-rate. Nobody is that good at estimating the time it takes to develop an application, and you will almost surely be wildly over or wildly under the amount of hours it takes you. Also, the client who knows you aren’t going over $X will tack on as many new features to the spec as you will allow them to, since they know it can’t cost them any more. Someone ...

I am a martial artist, and try to train either body or mind every day.

Today I was reading a page from Bow to Life: 365 Secrets From the Martial Arts for Daily Life and the lesson really struck home for me in terms of my work with RailsBridge.

(Beginners are) your opportunity to participate and bring more goodness into life. Beginners let you empty your cup while filling theirs. They are life’s way of vaulting you to higher consciousness and better living.
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Look for opportunities to share your expertise with others. Treat each opportunity as a learning experience for yourself. Ask yourself why life has sent you this particular person at this special time. What aspect of sharing your expertise is connected to your o...

RailsConf was inspiring on so many levels, it would be almost impossible to try to cram it all into one blog entry, so I won’t even try. So for this entry, I want to talk about what I took away from the event in terms of being a female developer in an industry that is overwhelmingly male in its constituency.

Before about three weeks ago, I didn’t really think about it much. I was a “coder who was female”, not a “female coder.” The “girl” part was at best incidental. I mean, sure, I knew that I was in the minority in the #rubyonrails IRC channel, but it was a non-issue for the most part. Now, I’m more conscious.

There were about 40 female and about 1100 male attendees at RailsConf 09. That’s a ratio of about 3.6%. I saw and heard (via the #railsconf IRC channel) plenty of guys call it a “sausage-fest.” And it was. Now I’m not abou...