This post is aimed at those programmers who are just starting out and don’t want to really look for a job with some programming house or company, but rather want to try going it alone as perhaps a freelancer or via your own start-up. It’s also for those who might be employed full-time as a developer somewhere and are perhaps losing a lot of passion for what can otherwise be a seriously rewarding field being called upon to do repetitive tasks that are synonymous with the typical formal employment environment.
I mean otherwise everybody knows that if you’re skilled enough as a programmer you will have no problems finding a job, particularly those programmers who have some or other formal qualification. If you don’t have a formal qualification, various online skills tests which come with the type of “certification” which basically validates your skills will also prove to be enough for someone who might be looking to hire to take you on board, but again, with this particular post it’s all about breaking away from those circles and forging your own way.
So naturally what you’ll want is to be able to demonstrate your skills, many of which may not be accessible to you to use as a reference since most programming and development projects completed as part of a formal corporate structure come with a non-disclosure agreement of sorts. So it’s often a case of the programmer going out on their own in a sense having to start a brand new portfolio from scratch.
Your first port of call would be to create a digital portfolio, even if in the beginning it will be empty. So something like a blog will do on which you discuss some ideas, projects and even notable events in a manner which clearly demonstrates your skills and expertise.
The best industry to look at in that regard is indeed the casino industry, with a great example being something like just discussing what exactly is likely to go into the building of a gaming interface. Use a real online casino as an example, perhaps even isolating a specific feature, such as the Casumo free spins feature of that particular online gambling platform.
Just off the top of my head I can already think of a few programmatic elements which one would deploy as a developer to build a free spins feature into an online casino, such as a back-end randomiser which interfaces with what would naturally be a very intuitive database records-storing system without altering those main records, you know, since it would be for the free spins.
Unless of course those free spins resulted in a win of some sort, in which case the records would then have to be altered normally.
I apologise for getting a bit technical, but I guess fundamentally anybody who has even the slightest bit of interest in programming would understand what I just said perfectly because it’s all about using the lucrative online casino industry to demonstrate your skills and expertise.
