Manuel Salinardi's blog
Dev Retro 2022: My journey as a freelance developer

Dev Retro 2022: My journey as a freelance developer

I've been programming for about 7 years and this is my first article writing, and hopefully the first of a long series.

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Manuel Salinardi
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4 min read

Table of contents

Hello devs! 👋

I am a freelance full stack developer and I have been collaborating full time for years for an Italian company: Icona, of which I am part of the development team of one of their products: Acty, an amazing app for remote technical assistance.

Luckily Acty is an innovative product and during my working days it allows me to work with exciting technologies such as:

  1. Javascript

  2. Typescript

  3. React

  4. WebRTC

  5. WebSocket with Socket.io

  6. Webdriver.io

  7. Node.js

  8. Express

  9. Fastify

  10. Swagger

  11. MongoDB

  12. Redis

  13. Augmented reality

  14. and more...

In this article I won't talk about what I've accomplished in this working year 2022 for Icona, also because I would need a whole book, but about my activities outside the working day.

♦️ Web 3.0

My year 2022 began by studying and deepening everything related to the so-called Web 3.0, in particular, I studied:

  • Blockchain

  • Ethereum ecosystem

  • Smart contracts

  • Solidity

  • NFT

I started by taking these 2 courses on Udemy:

Then read this book: Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and Dapps.

Both the courses and the book have been excellent resources, many times it is not easy to find good material, but this time I was lucky.

NFT

After that I felt the need to put into practice the concepts learned on a real project, fate has it that a childhood friend called me and told me that he had to create an NFT project on behalf of one of his clients.

I took the opportunity and created the project, with interesting features such as:

  • Smart contract upgradable

  • Metadata revealing

  • Addresses in the white list with different price

  • Minting web app

  • Max 4 NFT per wallet

  • Block public mint

  • Drops NFT

The project was deployed on the Ethereum main net and the collection is visible on the major Marketplaces such as Opensea: CryptoMadonne, for information about the project: https://cryptomadonne.com

♦️ TopTal

To look for some extra projects I started exploring the various platforms for freelancers such as:

Doing some research, I concluded that the best for me was TopTal. The difference between TopTal and the other platforms is that TopTal has a high barrier to entry, i.e. to join TopTal you must pass a 4-step Screening Process, but then to continue being part of it you must continue to excel. They claim that only 3% of applicants make it through all steps, more info here: https://www.toptal.com/top-3-percent

This could discourage many, but for me, it is a great advantage because, in the other platforms where everyone can enter even without skills, you would find yourself competing with people with little or no experience who obviously can afford to make much lower prices than yours.

So I applied, went through all stages and I passed 🎉

I can confirm that the standards are very high.

The final step was a project to be done in a week. Afterward, during a call with a TopTal expert, the project is evaluated and he makes sure that the project has all the requested features, but also that the code is secure and scalable and that all edge cases are managed correctly.

Now I'm working on my first project with TopTal and for now, I'm really satisfied!

This is my TopTal profile: https://www.toptal.com/resume/manuel-salinardi

♦️ Node.js Certification

I feel that a great way to study a programming language, or framework/library is by getting its official certification, because many times during normal use of it, for example within a project, all its potential is not explored.

Node.js has 2 official certifications:

  1. OpenJS Node.js Application Developer (JSNAD)

  2. OpenJS Node.js Services Developer (JSNSD)

The first is with a focus on knowledge of Node.js core APIs, which I had taken in 2021.

In 2022 I took the second 🎉 with a focus on knowledge of RESTful Node.js Servers and Services.

In this link, there is my Credly profile with the certifications I have obtained: https://www.credly.com/users/manuel-salinardi/badges

♦️ Blogging

And we have reached the end of this 2022 and the desire to write coding tutorials are starting to grow in me, for various reasons, for example:

  • Improving my writing

  • Improving my communication

  • Learn to write programs with graphs and charts

  • Learning by teaching and explaining concepts

  • Start building an online presence

For my new adventure, I have to thank Hashnode, which allows me to start writing articles like this one, only focuses on writing, without dealing with technical stuff, and also encourages me to do it with initiatives like #DevRetro2022

This new blogging challenge bet will be the hardest because I have never written articles or books, and I'm better at coding than I am at English 🤓.

I've always been a big content customer. Content creation is definitely more complex, I hope I can make it and don't give up! 👊

♦️ Goals for 2023

  • Blogging

  • The 2 official MongoDB certifications

  • Study PostgreSQL

  • Study Web Audio API

  • Study WebGL

  • Study WebXR with a focus on AR

#DevRetro2022journeyFreelancing