DEV Community: Lesly Villalobos

The definition and path to becoming a freelancer

Lesly Villalobos — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 14:39:16 +0000

Hi everyone, today I would like to talk about a topic you can relate to, which is the freelancer's journey. Let's start with the following question

Is being a freelancer a lifestyle and at what point do you stop being a freelancer?

If we look up the definition of freelancer, it tells us that it is a person who works on his or her own account to provide services and get paid for it. . Under that definition I have this couple of questions that come to my mind

How profitable is it to be a freelancer all your life?
What is the motivation that drives you to become a freelancer?

Many colleagues have the vision of the freelancer as the person who travels the world programming, others simply don´t want to have a boss who is giving them orders and others just want to earn more because they don´t have a company that takes a percentage of their profit, the reasons can be endless.

I personally know people who have high earnings as freelancers, but I also know others who earn on average, the same as they would earn in a company, being this group the largest.

What is the biggest disadvantage of being a freelancer?

I think the main disadvantage of being a freelancer is that by depending on yourself, if something happens to you, you stop producing money, that is, you don´t have a backup team to support you and that sometimes tends to become a burden especially when there are people who depend on you economically. That would explain why most freelancers (statistically) are young and single people. So the question is

Is being a freelancer a lifestyle or is it just a stepping stone to building your own business?

I think it depends a lot on the perspective, motivation, and situation of each programmer, maybe there are some who would not change their freelancer status for more money or who look for a way to produce a lot of money, and there are others who dare to take that step to the next level by forming a working group or company, which leads to more management responsibility and less code.

What about you? Has your experience been different?
Let me know.

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜

The best advice for software developers

Lesly Villalobos — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 00:10:36 +0000

Read the documentation!

How to compete with low market prices?

Lesly Villalobos — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 18:34:45 +0000

Hi! Lately I have been reviewing freelancer work platforms and I could observe that the prices offered by freelancers from countries with fractured economies are very low, much lower than the average, which makes it difficult for other programmers to compete . It's nothing new, I know but the idea of this post is to learn more about the topic.

I understand the free market and that everyone sets the price they consider fair for their work, but doesn't it end up being unfair? How do you compete with those prices? Even for the same programmers who offer those low prices.

What would be the solutions to this problem? For example, for me it would be, that the platforms establish a minimum price for technology, that is, depending on the technology there should be a minimum price to offer in this way if someone charges the minimum would be charging the fair.

For the freelancers who work on these platforms...

-What has been your experience?
-How do you compete with such low prices?
-Are there any platforms that set minimum prices?
-What would be your solution?

I'm waiting for your opinion.

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜

Laravel Vue Router - Tutorial

Lesly Villalobos — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 14:35:16 +0000

Vue Router is the official router for Vue.js to make building Single Page Applications by allowing you to link URLs to specific components.

Features include:

Nested route/view mapping
Modular, component-based router configuration
Route params, query, wildcards
View transition effects powered by Vue.js' transition system
Fine-grained navigation control
Links with automatic active CSS classes
HTML5 history mode or hash mode, with auto-fallback in IE9
Customizable Scroll Behavior

We are going to use vue-router to assign each menu element to the component we want to show. Let's get started!

Setup

Open your terminal and run these commands below:

Install the Laravel application (In this case the project's name is "catgallery" You can choose the name that you want):

Enter to the new directory with the command:

Install Vue:

Install npm:

Install Vue Router:

App.js

Go to the main JavaScript file resources/assets/js/app.js and update with the code below:

Import vue-router:

Next we tell Vue to use the vue-router plugin:

Set up the routes (We'll create the components later):

Create the router instance and pass the routes option:

To get rid of the hash, we can use the router's history mode, which leverages the history.pushState API to achieve URL navigation without a page reload:

Create and mount the root instance:

resources/js/app.js

Components

Create the vue.js components

resources/js/components/WelcomeComponent.vue

resources/js/components/KittenOne.vue

resources/js/components/KittenTwo.vue

resources/js/components/KittenThree.vue

View

Update welcome.blade.php

Add style css

Add id

Add router-link component for navigation

Add router-view tag. The router use this tag as a container for rendering the different components tied to the different routes.

Add js

resources/views/welcome.blade.php

Styles

Now add some style public/css/mystyle.css

Final Steps

npm run dev

Start the app with the command below:

It's done =)

I hope this example will be of help to you. 🐈
Be creative and have fun along the way.

Song while I was writing the post ☺️ https://open.spotify.com/track/4as4XEOR03oGm1STUKl6pa?si=DwWg9bE7Sdmur8OTQ-7ijA

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜

Start achieving your goals! Stop procrastinating

Lesly Villalobos — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 14:05:45 +0000

Have you had those days when you have a lot of goals in your head?
Are there projects you'd like to do but haven't started yet?
Your thoughts are from one idea to another?
Are you in those moments when you're thinking so much until you get a headache and end up in your bed watching Netflix, playing or just doing something that has nothing to do with meeting your goals? xD
When we are in these situations we tend to get so stressed out thinking that our mind rejects everything that produces stress and so we end up procrastinating.

What to do when we are in these situations?

First of all, breathe.
Then, have a good breakfast, find a place where you feel comfortable and start writing a list with everything you want to do, list all the activities, projects and goals you have in mind. When you finish the list, start classifying them into short term and long term benefits, for example, you want to develop a project for a client or a specific target but you also want to study a new language that catches your attention. The first one would take several weeks but would bring immediate benefits (short-term benefit) and the second would take less of you but the benefits would not be seen now since you don't currently have a specific project (long-term benefit).

Once you have the list in two blocks, keep the list that will benefit you in the short term, that doesn't mean you're not going to do the other thing, just for now, you will focus all your attention on activities that will benefit you in the short term.

Having these goals in mind, start to write a list of daily activities to achieve these goals. It is important to write them down because this way you will feel more motivated and committed and each time you complete an activity you will be able to cross it off your list and continue with the next one. That feeling of accomplishing an activity will make you feel good and will keep you motivated.

✔️ Put your ideas in order and be clear about what you want to do.
✔️ Do it preferably at the beginning of the day after a good breakfast.
✔️ Write down a list of goals and objectives you want to achieve.
✔️ Classify those goals into short and long term benefits.
✔️ Keep short-term goals.
✔️ Make a list of daily activities (you can include schedules) to meet each goal.
✔️ Begin to perform each activity and give your best effort.

There are many ways to achieve goals, I only share the method that worked for me when I was overwhelmed with a lot of things to do. I hope these tips will help you 🌻

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜

Take a few minutes for yourself

Lesly Villalobos — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 16:00:12 +0000

Are you in those days when you've slept very little because you've stayed up late coding? Or maybe you have days or weeks that you haven't seen your friends? Or you're just on autopilot. Whatever your case, stop, stop for a moment, breathe and put your ideas in order before going on.

We all have very different goals in life, but if we are on this platform is because we have this in common and sometimes it tends to consume us, sometimes we get to a point where we lose the course and we forget why the goal is.

Take a few minutes a day each morning for yourself, clear your mind and then ask yourself the necessary questions to know your goals in life, evaluate if the choices you are taking are the right one for you, and if it is not the case don't be afraid to go back and change course.

You are capable of achieving everything you set out to achieve as long as it is what you want because, in the long run, it's what's going to make you happy and that what really matters.

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜

How using React in a Laravel application - Tutorial

Lesly Villalobos — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 14:25:18 +0000

Reactive applications are a big part of the web world, that's why it is necessary to use the latest technologies to deploy. Laravel had integrated a Scaffolding to deploy React JS since version 5.5. In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to integrate React and Laravel.

Actually, it is really simple so let's start it!

Installing Laravel

To create a new project in Laravel, the first thing we've to do is download the Laravel installer using Composer:

$ composer global require laravel/installer

If you don't have composer installed please go to: https://dev.to/lvtdeveloper/installing-virtual-environment-with-laravel-homestead-tutorial-4p32
In this article I explain how to do it so check it out.

The first command to create our project is "laravel new" followed by the name we want to assign to the project. For instance, "laravel new dutylist" will create a directory named dutylist that contains a new Laravel installation with all of dependencies already installed.

$ laravel new dutylist

Once that’s is done enter to the new directory with the command:

$cd dutylist

Using React in a Laravel

By default, Laravel applications contain an ExampleComponent.vue Vue component located in the resources/js/components directory. The ExampleComponent.vue file is an example of a single file Vue component which defines its JavaScript and HTML template in the same file. Single file components provide a very convenient approach to building JavaScript driven applications. The example component is registered in your app.js file:

We need to change the default Vue.js scaffolding to React.js with the following command:

Now you can see that Laravel create a react component in the file Example.js located in the resources/js/components directory:

Run the command "npm install" to install all the javascript packages necessary for our project.

When we install a dependency with npm install, a node_modules directory is automatically generated where the installed packages are saved. Also it is generate a package-lock.json file who is responsible for keeping track of the changes made within node_modules or when changes are made to the file package.json

And now we start the app with the command:

Open the browser in the path "http://localhost:8000" and you can see the default view by Laravel

Let's change this view for a view using react.

Create an index.js file inside the resources/js/components directory

Copy all the content from the Example.js file to the index.js and make some changes:

Inside the app.js we add the new component

In order to render any element into the Browser DOM, we need to have a container or root DOM element. In this case will be

and everything inside it will be managed by React DOM. This change will be inside the welcome.blade.php located in the resources/views

To show a view through React JS, we need to compile JavaScript files using Laravel Mix with the "npm run dev" command:

And now we have a Laravel app using react.js

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜

Installing Virtual Environment with Laravel Homestead - Tutorial

Lesly Villalobos — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 18:29:11 +0000

Using a virtual environment it is very common when you're working in development area, since there are so many reasons for its use, for example, if you need to work on a different operating system, maybe you want to use Linux on top of Windows, even if you are working on the same operating system, but the application doesn't support the latest version, you can run it on an old version on a virtual machine.

This is a list of some benefits of using virtual machines:

• We can run different operating systems on different virtual machines in the same physical machine at the same time.
• We can have test environments before moving to a production environment.
• Better use of shared resources.
• Reduce the costs of data centers by reducing your physical infrastructure.
• We can work with the same virtual machine configuration on different hardware.

The use of virtual machine also has disadvantages like they are less efficient than real machines because they access the hardware indirectly. Running software on top of the host operating system means that it will have to request access to the hardware from the host. That will slow the usability, but even with that, it's worth its use.

Installing a virtual machine may seem difficult but it is not, so let's start with the tutorial!

Installing VirtualBox

Virtual Box is virtualization software that allows us to install operating systems within it, it is open-source software and it´s executed in the mains operating systems like Linux, Windows, and Mac. Because of that, it's the perfect option for this tutorial.

First, we need to go to:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Choose a VirtualBox for your platform and install it. Make sure that you download the correct version for your operating system.
For Linux https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
If you’re using Windows, double click the .exe setup file to install VirtualBox.

If you’re using Mac, simply open the VirtualBox .dmg file and click on the .pkg file to install.

Installing Vagrant

Vagrant is the software that will be between our virtual machine provider and us. It allows us to create virtual machines declaratively since it automates everything through a tool through a configuration file. In this file, we declare how we want our virtual machine. Vagrant is also portable since those configuration files can be stored in repositories and shared so that everyone has the same environment.

The next step is to install Vagrant.
Vagrant works on Mac, Linux, Windows.
Please go to: http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
and choose the option for your operating system.

Install Homestead

Homestead is a pre-packaged Vagrant package that provides a good development environment without the need to install PHP. You can install Homestead just by cloning the Homestead Repository. You will need to install Git first if you don’t have it on your system.

Please go to: https://git-scm.com/downloads

After installing the above-mentioned softwares, you need to add the laravel/homestead box to your Vagrant installation. To do so, run the below command:

$ vagrant box add laravel/homestead

After loading metadata, you will be prompted to select your choice for Hyperv, Parallels, Virtualbox or vmware_desktop, enter 3 and hit Enter.

Now, open Git Bash in your desired directory and clone the Homestead Repository by running the command:

$ git clone https://github.com/laravel/homestead.git Homestead

Once downloaded, go to the Homestead directory and run this command:

$ bash init.sh

That will create the Homestead.yaml file. The Homestead.yaml file will be placed in your ∼/.homestead directory.

Please note that the ∼/.homestead directory is hidden by default, make sure that you can see hidden files.

Configuring Homestead.yaml File

Open your Homestead.yml file which is inside Homestead directory.

As you can see, we can configure the IP address, memory, cpus and provider of our VM. Here you can distribute your resources as you like.

We need to generate an SSH key for Homestead to authenticate the user and connect to the virtual machine. If you’re working with Git, you may have an SSH key already. If you don’t have it, simply run this command to generate it:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C your_email@example.com
The command will generate an SSH key for you and put it in the ∼/.ssh directory automatically, you don’t need to do anything else.

We use folders section to specify the directory that we want to share with our Homestead environment. If we add, edit or change any files on our local machine, the files will be updated automatically on our Homestead virtual machine.

This section allows us to map a domain to a folder on our VM. For example, we can map homestead.app to the public folder of our Laravel project, and then we can easily access our Laravel app via this address: "http://homestead.app".

Remember that, when we add any domain, we must edit the hosts file on our local machine to redirect requests to our Homestead environment.

On OS X and Linux it’s in /etc/host

On Windows, you can find the hosts file at C:WindowsSystem32\drivers\etc\hosts.

After opening the file, you need to add this line at the end of the file:

192.168.10.10 homestead.app

We have finisehd with the basic configuration to our Homestead.yam file.

Once we have edited Homestead.yaml file, cd to the Homestead directory, run this command to boot our virtual machine:

$ vagrant up

You also can use SSH inside your virtual machine with the following command:

$ vagrant ssh

Installing Laravel

Laravel is the most useful framework on a regular basis because is the right choice for projects with complex backend requirements. Before using Laravel, make sure you have Composer installed on your machine.

https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md

Once you have installed Composer go to your project's folder that you configured in Homestead.yaml file and create a new project by issuing this command in your terminal:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel myproject

Done! Now you can build your app inside.

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day, coders💜