Best Language for Freelance in 2024?

hey guys how you doing uncle Steph here so a question I get put to me all the time if I want to freelance what is the best programming language for freelancing in 2024 2025 most likely I'm going to tell you what it is but I'm also going to give you the why the why is perhaps more important than the what so conditions will change over time and what might be popular for freelancing today in four years it may be totally different so today in 24 as you're recording this if you want to get into freelance as a developer or coder your Top Choice is still the web stack so it's HTML 5 css3 a little bit of JavaScript PHP and WordPress why is that the case why am I saying this why isn't it C++ why isn't it Java why isn't it C why isn't it python even I'll tell you why well first and foremost when you are doing freelance you're going to be working for small businesses small businesses will use Freelancers not huge businesses typically typically a small business and what are small businesses what do small businesses need they need to get their websites uh built or updated they need to imple implement e-commerce very rarely do they need a native mobile app that's why you don't hear me saying learns iOS Swift development or cotlin for Android development because most small businesses will not be building native mobile applications they'll be building a responsive website maybe a pwa that's the reason I choose the web stack is because small businesses will be hiring Freelancers and most Freelancers and most small businesses need some sort of web- based work done so you're three languages of course HTML and CSS are not programming languages but they're languages they're coding languages and that's the foundation then I say uh PHP well because so many small businesses again so small business they leverage PHP it's just the Legacy does it mean that PHP is the best thing ever no it's not nearly as bad as Ruby but it's actually pretty good okay that was a joke so no PHP again choose my Technologies not necessarily just because I think that they are the best technically you always have to look at Market forces so again small businesses for good or for bad depending on how you look at it I don't think it's such a bad thing personally but for good or for bad PHP dominates that space and WordPress bazillions and bazillions bazillions as an exact number of websites use WordPress as their content management system uh whether it be just for their articles or it could be for their whole website very common so understanding the WordPress eego system again for freelance is a big thing is a big thing second to that in terms of content Management Systems I would say probably droow there are others out there people say craft CMS is the best somebody in my mentor program loves craft CMS that's fine there are some jobs out there for craft CMS and for Drew pal another person in my mentoring program he has his job is basically working on a Drupal Dr P drow infrastructure so he has to know his PHP and his HTML and CSS and his JavaScript you know so anyhow if you're going to be doing freelance it's all about the web it's all about WordPress PHP how much JavaScript do you need in that regard a little bit now my second choice for freelance as a g general rule would be of course looking at more at JavaScript and JavaScript Frameworks and so on but again it's not going to be react it's not going to be angular that's for sure angular react it's more for medium large businesses um it's probably going to be just vanilla JavaScript boot bootstrap lots of bootstrap in the freelance space as well when you're thinking specifically about freelance and if you want to pull out away from the coding end of things in terms of maximizing your profitability being able to bring the big picture to the client will be hugely advantageous to you so what's the big picture choosing good domain names and registering domain names getting different hosting options which would be best for your client based on their needs uh being able to manage the clients and their expectations the job understand how to integrate with uh thirdparty tools like zapier if you want if the client needs automations to br into their uh workflows how to integrate with third party uh processing like stripe or PayPal um being able to integrate with social media um with social media sites like you know X Twitter or YouTube or Instagram Etc just having a general knowledge about okay this is the type of business I'm working with what is the best social media platforms for them so for example if it was a coffee shop Twitter wouldn't be a very good platform Twitter's about news and screaming yelling at each other but for a coffee shop you're doing Google my business and you're doing um Instagram because it's visual lots of photos of coffee and so on right YouTube not so much so it really depends on your target market if I was a real estate agent if you're doing a site for a real estate agent and now when I say do the site you build the site you get their blog in place you get their social media plan going for Real Estate would be Instagram of course photos Instagram it would be maybe Google my business maybe even YouTube because you could do video walkthroughs of houses and stuff so your job as a consultant freelance web professional that's the term I like to use web professional you having these broad set of skills this knowledge is going to put you ahead in the marketplace so there you go remember as a freelancer your primary client are going to be small to maybe medium-sized businesses big companies will not work with you they don't work with Freelancers they'll occasionally work with contractors but not Freelancers and small business is dominated by the webstock WordPress uh to lesser extent droel and other cms's and knowing PHP will be very valuable to you because WordPress is built with PHP so why don't you understand PHP for you to work with WordPress ecosystem the themes and the plugins will be much easier for you anyway I hope that's useful to you if you guys have any ideas anything you want to add anything you disagree with put it in the comments below also I should mention AI Integrations everybody now should be looking at Ai and how it could be uh integrated into your workflows as a freelancer what AI services and tools you can bring uh to your prospective clients to give you Advantage how to use AI to speed up what you do very important we talk about that a lot in my mentoring program so AI is something definitely I would add to that mix as well for 2024 the thing about AI some people were scared of it don't be it's there's nothing to be afraid about it's going to help speed up some of the processes it's going to help replace some of the dredger work that we had to do now or just like you know a year or two ago and it will help with quite a bit and it will allow you to offer new services to your prospective clients which is kind of cool right offering new Services uh you know AI Integrations ai workflows ai is not uh easy it's not trivial even just being a user there's so many options out there there is a sea of options and I've been looking at it been talking of friends who have companies who Implement Ai and I still don't have my head wrapped around the possibilities out there partly because it's changing all the time so you think the typical business owner the typical suit is going to know what what they can do with the AI and what AI use no so you as a freelancer as a web professional uh you can provide that service as well that consultation saying okay what do you need to do uh this AI here will help you with what you want to do here or this AI there will help you what you want to do there that's uh it's very relevant and very pertinent so don't let the AI scare you it's just some it's just an extra tool in your tool belt and in fact it once you learn it you gradually learn more and more about that ecosystem the AI ecosystem which just give you an advantage in fact I'm doing more and more of that for my mentor program because I know it's so important before I would learn especially in freelancing space before I would learn react or angular or some new backend web framework I would be learning about the AI tools that are out there but you have to have your base though you still need to know your fundamentals of development of web development so before you can maximally leverage Ai and just remember the web is the uh The Hub if you will the foundation of Technology deployments whether it be AI or whatnot so it's going to be relevant for many years to come all right I hope you found this useful we'll talk soon cheers I'm unle Steph

Channel: Stefan Mischook

Views: 10,996

Keywords: developervlogs, developermentoring, freelance, freelancing

Id: poEyv2y5la4

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024