Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 2014)

I'm the creator of xtopdf, a PDF creation toolkit for Python. xtopdf is used by Packt Publishing, the Software Freedom Law Center, ESRI.nl and others.

xtopdf can create both business reports and ebooks, and currently has support for the following input formats (more are always in the pipeline): text, DBF, CSV, TSV/TDV, XLS, XLSX, DOCX, ODBC, SQLAlchemy, MongoDB, Berkeley DB, SQLite, standard input, XML.

Also:

http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/02/create-pdf-calendars-with-... :-)

An online presentation that gives a good overview of xtopdf:

http://slid.es/vasudevram/xtopdf (the words in light blue in the presentation are links to more information; there are many of them)

xtopdf source code on Bitbucket:

https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram/xtopdf

An article about xtopdf for Packt Publishing:

http://www.packtpub.com/article/Using_xtopdf

http://google.com/search?q=xtopdf

Have been an independent developer for the last several years, with many years of experience in many technical areas. Have contracted/consulted to multiple startups based in USA and India. Earlier worked for large well-known US software product and Indian software services companies.

Skills: Python, C, Linux, UNIX, many open source technologies, many databases, XML-RPC, PDF programming (both PDF generation and PDF text extraction), file and data format conversion, data munging, command-line utility development, Flask, MongoDB, Bottle, various others.

Worked on Ruby, Rails and Java earlier. Was server lead / senior engineer for two commercial Rails-based dot-com products earlier, by US companies. One of them was TaskBin - http://taskbin.com .

Databases worked on: Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, SQLite, MS SQL Server. Used databases in most of the projects I've worked on in my career.

Worked on a best-selling retail banking product (earlier, in C with proprietary DB and UI libs). Was team leader for a database middleware product (in C) that was widely used in client projects by a top software services company.

Did a lot of UNIX support and successful troubleshooting for years (some years earlier), still have some of those skills, which are often useful in development too. Had many times recovered clients' data from corrupted file systems or crashed machines (with no backups :), using various tricks of the trade learnt on the job, and solved various other software problems, often involving various interacting software components (from OS level through language compilers to application programs and databases). Wrote lots of utilities in C and UNIX shell tools (sed, awk, grep and friends) to automate various tasks (for both users and developers), convert data between various formats from one platform to another, etc.

Relevant links:

My Bitbucket account with my open source projects:

https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram

Biz site: http://www.dancingbison.com (see Home, Products, Services, About pages there)

http://www.binpress.com/profile/vasudev-ram/3425

Posts about Python:

http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/python

Posts about xtopdf:

http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf

Blog: http://jugad2.blogspot.com

Article by me about "Developing a Linux command-line utility" (in C) was published on IBM developerWorks and translated by IBM into Chinese and Japanese for those versions of their site. Some organizations have developed production command line tools using that article as a guide.

Contact info: http://dancingbison.com/contact.html (email, Skype). Twitter: @vasudevram

Developer and designer (4+ years), work out of my own shop, Heta (http://heta.co). Primarily develop, design, and customize WordPress themes, or convert PSD designs or HTML/CSS/jQuery to WordPress. I'm also building an app and run my own server as a hobby.

I've worked on complex sites for digital agencies (30+ templates, 25+ plugins), as well as on smaller sites for small businesses/individuals (10 templates, 10 plugins). Soon I will begin selling my commercial themes directly to the public.

Technologies I use: PHP, HTML, CSS/LESS/SASS, jQuery, CodeIgniter, WordPress, mySQL, ZURB Foundation (3/4/5), Bootstrap, SVN or Git for version control, Fogbugz or Sifter for issue tracking, HipChat to stay in touch. Self-taught and resourceful.

Reach out to me at: hn [at] heta [dot] co (not com). I can send you links to live sites I've developed, sites I've converted to WP, etc.

I'm a JavaScript & Frontend Developer with a strong interest in data-visualization, product management, and mathematics. I'm currently looking for the next interesting client project. Throughout my 6+ years of industry experience I've created a couple of popular software projects ( heatmap.js [0], nude.js [1], many more), launched several web products, and consulted companies with their web strategies.

I love to work on anything web-related with interesting challenges and aspects that haven't been done.

say hello at hn-contact@w-labs.at

[0] https://github.com/pa7/heatmap.js [1] https://github.com/pa7/nude.js

Soon-to-graduate (May) physician (MD) seeking to provide affordable consultation to startups in the healthcare/biotech arenas. Skilled in searching, extracting, analyzing, and presenting data from the medical and scientific literatures. Talent for translating complex medical information into easily understood content.

User side proficiency with a majority of the leading electronic medical records. Expert in simulation training in medical education.

Maintains high level contacts with multiple regional health care corporations and emergency medical service providers in the southwest, as well as prominent clinicians and research scientists in fields of emergency medicine, critical care, pediatrics, and general medical education.

Contact: cdameffmd@gmail.com

Portland, OR or New York, NY

Hey guys... We got a great response on this back in January and now we are expanding.... So here is an updated version now that we are a team of two hiring.

Hey, HN. One of you is perfect for this idea.

We are two serial entrepreneurs currently trapped in the professions of being a freelance contractor. We have relatively stable 40 hour a week projects, and incoming projects as well that I generally can't take due to lack of resources (time, the most precious one)

So here's the idea. You. Are interesting and have some experience in coding (webapps, mobile, whatever) would be a coding apprentice. I would give you a guaranteed 20 hour a week gig for now, and flex additional work as it comes in and you are available. (also now looking for 40 hours)

You would work on entrepreneurial ideas and contracts and get paid for doing so. If something took off the ground we could negotiate revenue/equity, but no matter what you will be getting paid.

Here is what you get. Money Freedom and Flexibility (need the day off to deal with a hangover because you are in college and its friday?) Real World Education Ability to become a killer coder and whatever else. we are pretty flexible

Languages? Python/Ruby Obj-C Javascript(Node) You name it. If you can show competency in some language we currently do, then we can work together and you can get paid to learn and become an expert at any other languages as required.

About us, your 'bosses'. Boss #1 (Portland Office) Early 30s. Built several large-scale enterprise applications used by Fortune 500 companies. Lead engineering and product for a VC-funded healthcare startup. Last company built infrastructure that stored over 1 billion objects and transferred hundreds thousand objects per day.

Currently living in PDX (Inner SE) and renting a space at a co-working facility. Open to having you work here, or at my house. I prefer day hours, 10-6pm PST, but I am flexible.

Boss #2 (New York Office) Late 20s. Been in and out of various startups. Started ideas from scratch. Reasonably connected in the 'valley'. No stranger to a term sheet. I have done hiring for a YC company. Been on both the business and engineering side of places.

Currently living in NYC (manhattan) with enough room for you to come clock hours, but you can be remote as well, or both. I have been travelling a lot because it means that working 9-5 EST is a much more reasonable 12-8 or even sometimes 9pm - 5am.

I like tinkering with OSS and hardware too, obsessed with gadgets.

============== tl;dr Long story short, you will get paid to learn how to code in the real world, become an entrepreneur or freelancer (or both) and then hopefully be able to repeat this process.

You'll get hands on attention and code reviews without some PM breathing down your neck. (unless you are working on a project that requires it).

We'll figure out a good hourly rate, and when you are working on a project that is paid, probably double it. And then fall back to the normal rate when we are working on whatever random ideas I want to incubate.

email hn0314@boun.cr with a little bit about yourself, a resume if you have it, and most importantly either a github or code sample.