Speaking as a programmer myself I would have to say many of the programmers have left the adult community and moved on to greener pastures. Expectations are such that clients expect the highest quality programmers at the lowest outsourced prices. While it is natural to want to pay the least amount as possible there is something to the saying "you get what you pay for". When there is too much of a skew in 1 direction there will be a shift in the supply/demand. In the case of adult, less favorable pay means programmers go elsewhere.

I would estimate less than 5% of the opportunities I am presented with in the adult industry are on any terms that I can realistically accept. Other sectors and communities offer much more favorable work.

The best programmers and in demand and will go after the low hanging fruit first (best pay with most favorable working conditions).

Unlike an auto mechanic, programmer's code can be multiplied exponentially to increase productivity. However, this is not something taught in schools or books. It is something that is learned with experience.

This usually involves a high degree of meta-programming and even creating new programming languages specific to the task at hand. PHP is horrible at expressing intent and for this reason the more talented programmers avoid it at all costs. Anyone who says all programming languages are equal is ignorant and knows nothing about programming. They should be avoided at all costs. You wouldn't say a horse, car, and plane are all equal because they are all transportation vehicles would you? The adult industry is stuck in PHP and so that is another reason why top talent is hard to find in adult.

"The best programmers can write better programmers than they can hire".

Interviews from CEOs of some of the top tech companies (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs) have placed the higher programmer productivity difference around 100 to 1.

If it costs you $100/hr and that programmer can work 100x more effectively than a $10/hr outsourced programmer then the $100/hr programmer is 10x cheaper (and a lot less hassle to deal with).

The problem is how can you tell if someone is 100:1 or 1:1? You can't... unless you know enough programming yourself. That means you are likely to get ripped off. The only thing left is to go by are the recommendations of people you trust.

If a programmer knows he can get 100x more work done than an $8/hr outsourced programmer, but he can only get 5x the pay on average he is naturally going to see working for himself as a better option of making money than working for others.

The other issue you must solve if you want to find competent programmers is to know what you want and be able to express it succinctly. This means having detailed specs, screenshot mockups, detailed list of features, example user scenarios.

Larger companies often are much more detailed about the specifics of what they need done and so they are much easier to work with.

Too often when starting to talk to a potential client I speak with them for over an hour and I still don't know what it is they want. I've learned that if they don't already have the specs documented it isn't worth talking to them.

As a result of all of this I have teamed up with others and am pursuing larger corporate clients as well as developing my own projects.

I am still open to opportunities if they make sense but I have given up actively trying to find programming work in adult.

I know this guy very well. Very honest strait up guy.

I have to strongly disagree here. When you are a good programmer, you pick the best tool available for the task; in some cases, that is PHP. You weigh practicality, scalability and other aspects when making such a decision - the best tool "period" is not always the best tool for that task.

To use your own analogy, if you are planning a trip into the mountains, you may prefer the horse. Driving a few blocks to pickup some drinks? I doubt you are going to use your private jet. Planning to head to Europe from California? I don't think you'll be driving...each fits their own situation.

Saying the best programmers avoid PHP like the plague, or that PHP is a reason adult companies have trouble finding the right talent, is ridiculous :2 cents:

I should have emphasized "expressing intent" more as a qualifier to that statement. I agree with the gist of what you are saying. It is important to note the separation of programming concern and business concern. I was referring more to a matter of psychology when it comes to attracting and finding programmers not what is the best business case.

Surely there are requirements for a job and PHP would be the "correct" choice in certain situations. For example, PHP is a popular language so it is easy to find other PHP programmers. Or if all you have is a Godaddy shared hosting account, PHP is the only option. Or maybe if you just want to grab a bunch of scripts that already exist and tweak them.

As far as expressing intent though, a better analogy might be doing long division with Roman numerals instead of the Arabic decimal system we are used to.

Trying to convince a programmer that has a diverse background of programming languages to use PHP would be like trying to convince someone that they should be doing arithmetic with Roman numerals instead of decimal. Barring any kind of constraints that dictate I must use Roman numerals, I can think of no case where I would choose to use them over decimal.

The reasons to avoid Roman numerals would be because they are more prone to human error, and longer in length, require more calculations in your head that could be used for the task at hand, and are harder to read and write. Try imagining an Excel spreadsheet full of Roman numerals everywhere and you will begin to understand the pain. It is the same situation with PHP. When talking purely about programming, not business cases, PHP is near the bottom of the list in practically every criteria (expressiveness, meta-programming, code size, execution speed, architectural flexibility & soundness, conceptual paradigms, run-time environment). It is however strong in many business cases (sufficient number of programmers, easy to find programmers, portability, standard server configurations, lots of existing code already).

So, a programmer may suck it up and accept it if he needs to put food on his table, and that is the only job available, but he isn't going to like it and it will be a last resort.

A programmer that is in high demand is not going to choose a job that forces him to use Roman numerals when there are still jobs that allow him to use something more expressive like decimal.

That was the point I was trying to make.

I'm with Brandon... fuck PHP... I do all my code from here on out in BASIC.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

OFFICIAL NOTICE OF THREAD JACK

<BEGIN>
Brandon have you played with compiled php yet... (hiphop)? Thoughts, rants, raves, complaints?
</END>

Hiphop is Facebook's attempt to speed up PHP. It is successful to some degree but I think for the most part it is not the best way to go about it if you have the choice. If you have lots of legacy PHP it might be a good way to go about it though. In Facebook's case it makes a lot of sense for them. Although they are switching to other languages. For example, they use Erlang for their chat architecture.

Hiphop is good in cases of legacy PHP code and in situations that are CPU intensive like data mining or machine learning.

Another thing to note, it's not actually compiled PHP. It converts PHP source code to C++ source code. When going from a high level to a low level there are going to be inefficiencies that you don't get the full benefit of the lower level language. A good example would be having an automatic with a slap stick shift (forget what they are called). You get some gain, but not having a clutch prevents you from certain niche situations like blipping the throttle, changing the rotational speed of the flywheel, or skipping gears.

Caching is probably the best way to start. There is something called APC cache. What it does is it takes the PHP source code and compiles it to the PHP bytecode used by the PHP virtual machine. Next time the page comes around it can just execute the code instead of needing to compile it again. It is still running interpreted bytecode but it skips the compilation phase.

Even better is to cache the contents, ideally the whole page, but if not you can also cache fragments and store then in APC cache or something like memcache.

Nginx and pound can be used to cache transparently as well. Actually nginx is much much faster and uses less memory than Apache. Direct I/O is something to look into as well if you are serving lots of content. If you have any kind of internal communication going on use local unix domain sockets instead of TCP. They have less overhead.

If that fails then you can look into using a faster language / environment to handle just the parts that need it.

Java is actually decently fast (only 2-3x slower than C) compared to PHP (50x slower than C). But if you need raw speed nothing beats C or assembly.

People who can optimize assembly now are pretty rare though. Most programmers don't know the relative speeds of accessing something from magnetic disk, SSD, memory, L2/L1 cache, memory lines, and registers. To give an idea of how extreme it is: Accessing registers is like grabbing a piece of paper on the top of your desk. L1 cache is like opening a drawing and pulling out a paper. Memory (RAM) is like going to an office in another department and asking someone else for the document. Accessing a hard drive is like booking a flight and flying to another country and back to get the document.

What that means is most of the bottleneck (especially with lots of static file content like in adult) is going to come from your hard drive.

I know a guy that needed to serve a particular file in high volume so he wrote a custom web server. He knew that if the client was connecting they should only be asking for 1 file (because it is the only one they put on that domain). So the custom web server sent raw bytes from memory as soon as the connection was opened. It didn't even bother parsing the request because he already knew what they wanted. It was also stored in shared memory so it didn't have the normal double buffering problem of having to copy to a kernel buffer first.

If you build your architecture right you should still be able to use PHP. As long as you are not doing anything really CPU intensive your bottlenecks will be your hard drive and how fast the network card can write. Upgrading memory and switching to solid state drives typically has the most improvement for the least amount of effort.

perl -le 'print pack(c5,(8**2+3**2),42-10,sqrt(3600),oct(63),(unpack(c, "&")-6)),pack(c9, (87,111,114,100,80,114,101,115,115))'

Murphy rule for chix could also be used for coders
"all the good ones are already taken/booked" :)

What kind of an idiot would pay $75+/hour for a programmer? $75/hour = $12000/month full-time. Programmers are a dime a dozen, even skilled ones. Although it helps to be a programmer yourself to find a skilled one easy enough. You should be able to hire a full-time programmer for $3000/month even from a first world country. If not full-time, you'll pay more per hour perhaps.

I'm all ears.

If they can do the quality work, have good communication skills, and can map out what is needed easily than it's worth it to pay for more if they make my life easier.

Sadly, many are not people person's, so right there you will get some aggravations. Many play a lot of videos games, and would prefer to do that over work. Than you get into a lot of the programmer/designer classics.... granny, disappearing acts, and the rest.

Most companies, myself included, have no issue paying a premium for QUALITY.. well organized... CONSISTENT... make my life easier.... programmer. However, they are few and far between unfortunately.
:2 cents:

there's a huge difference between employing someone full time and taking someone on a per-project, per hour basis. That is where the difference in price comes from - if you are prepared to commit a salary position to a programmer, month in month out, then your per hour rate will be a lot lot less.

The same goes for every walk of business life.

for $3k you will get someone who read the first 2 chapters of "php for dummies", you certainly will not get a skilled programmer for that price... :2 cents:

75 is the minimum i charge.

You are to a big fanof c#. Be open minded, pick the best software for the job. For websites and specially adult, php does the job well. If speed is your issue, spend a $500 more on your server.

2 and 3 hour projects ?

ofcourse you get shitty ones, no real programmer does 2 or 3 hour projects

Good post, I need programmers too so I add my job offer here, who knows.

Of course it happens you can find the good $8 an hour indian who do good program using PHP language, not as rare event as win lottery, but to find and manage the good indian (or other cheap country) programmer, it takes so much time of yours (the employer), let's say 3 hour a day for a month, that who is paid $1 per hour is the employer really, not the programmer.
And is required that the employer is nearly a programmer himself, to manage - plus the cheap one, if really so good, soon will emigrate to work at Microsoft or Oracle and you have to search a new one, let's say once every 1-2 years you have to search the new kid, and this is an effort.
But as someone pointed out, in adult (except maybe the cams and billers and some movie producer) the budget is so small that there's no other choice than hire cheap and spend 100 hours of your own time to search and manage the cheap guys.
Ah one note - several indians will refuse to work in adult as it's illegal in India, so always specify is for adult site and if this is ok, I see 30% will decline offer due to own company policy or simply they fear the law.

I am into cams and I usually pay $50 or more per hour, it is true that in a few months this make $10,000's, but usually you buy from a group of programmers (a company), this is useful for long term. I have some sites up and runinng from 1996 (non adult) and same tech guys manage them today, so if I launch a site with a new team, my plan is they will manage it for 10+ years and I even forget this site exists.
I find working with a single guy, even if wizard or cheap, to be a little risky - instead if you buy hours from a company (or team of guys) and one of the wizard kids disappear, is company's duty (and not your one) to have other wizard kids to continue the maintenance - imagine the mess if your genius cheap kid disappear and need months to find other kid who will understand old source code and update it - I seen companies suspend work for 6+ months because the only developer gone nuts, and if we talk of company with a revenue, this loss can be well more then the $10,000's we talked about. Is the same as run the site saving $20/mo for a backup system. Some developers /or dev companies) are theft too, which is say to change color of a link it requires 15 hours, I seen that.

So I hereby ask if anyone is able and interested, or knowsn who may be, to handle for a new site (not our existing ones, for this we keep same developer from 2004) a mix of Wowza Media Server v2 + PHP + Actionscript v3, text chats using jscript/ajax (Flash I want use for video stream rectangle only, not for texts). It may be needed to edit some indian code but what matter is availability to manage updates and scaling to multiple servers in following months and years, sort of manage (in our place) that the site do not crash. Email portfolios or skillsets to info AT ChatGF dot com .

So how do I get my small maintenence type jobs done? Pay 40 hours instead?

These are the 2 minor tweaks prior to getting started on a new site, point is, still not done.

You should have made a deal with the guys whole installed the software in the first place. No decent programmer will waste his time on small projects like this, unless they are just being nice guys.

I used to code quite some stuff but i stopped doing it 3 years ago because the adult bizz pays really bad, mainstream i charged about $90 for adult only $30 and i made alot more as an affiliate.

anyway, good luck finding one

Not sure if my posts were not clear but I have a ton of stuff and to start gave 4 projects to get quotes on. Problem is they are not getting done. Hence this post, any programmers out there looking for work who are competent and complete jobs in a timely fashion?

Social media applications working with phpFox is a plus.
Have some knowledge of putting mathmatical formulas to use on websites.
Have a phone number.

Half completed projects do me no good.

I had something written but then I remembered that you think I ask too many questions so I wiped it out and posted this instead.

:2 cents:

i actually use one on a regular basis that knows his stuff very well, and doesnt break the bank at the same time.

:thumbsup

we have extra programmer you can use. 1200$ a month and he is yours full time time. He made www.3DwowMovies.com

ok... i'll try. My ICQ is 360151609 or aol email at mjmj00

Yes, one of them.

Most of the good programmers cost money. I have worked with konrad on three projects thus far and his rate is effectively 3x more than any other programmer I worked with in the past but it was money well spent because the scripts I ordered worked right away as I had ordered them, no time wasting post install thinkering bs.

konrad is good, hes done some work for me.

there you go, you get what you pay for

Hi,
Could you specify what exactly you need done? Maybe we can assist you.

Make some posts saying you want to hire a programmer long-term and as a trial task make them do that job for free. :1orglaugh

hit me up, lets chat sometime!

Masterut did some code clean up on my site and addea quite a few features. To say he actually programmed the entire site would be far from the truth. Nonetheless, pretty good guy to work with.

Can't wait to release my lastest version of MrPinks. Getting antsy.

That's beacuse you live in expensive country.

i have done projects all over the world also in India (i charged more there :thumbsup )

Ok... here is the information and contacts I have gathered and my response.

My ICQ is 360151609 and my email to use is mjmj00 at the aol

Will76 - Has some programmers used in past and they may be able to help me out
Response: I am interested in who they are and would like to discuss.

Sarettah - Likes to ask a ton of questions
Response: No thanks

Slutboat - Lots of experience hiring and firing
Response: Does me no good, what to hire 1 person to rely on

HomerSimpson - we talked on ICQ already

bl4h - made comment about needing to be a programmer to know a programmer and in philly.
Response: Are you a programmer and are you looking for work?

sheken - does some php programming work
Response: I have a project in mind that involves dedication and ability to follow through... what else can you do and can you follow through?

myneid - programmer, owns your own company
Response: $5000 retainer monthly is just way to high for not absolute 100% dedication to projects. $2500 retainer just simply doesn't get the job done with 20 hours alloted up to 40 and then employees start saying "well I can do that but will take another hour" kinda thing

masterut - we talked on ICQ and you did some updates for MrPink
Response: I need a portfolio

camperjohn64 - totally booked right now and I gues freelance programs
Response: bodydot.com in your sig has "no content here" as a site

brandonstills - a programmer and seems to be fed up looking for clients who pay in adult
Response: would like to talk

various - no idea if you take on programming jobs
Response: would like to talk

borked - programmer as well
Response: we talked a couple times on ICQ and you always were so booked, also from recollection 100 euros per hour

grumpy - minimum to charge is $75
Response - No thanks, not intersted in hearing how much money you made in India ;)

peace - knows somebody
Response - contacted you 3 times and no response to the $1200 available programmer

bluevision - does the whole shabang
Response - Do you have some references and do you outsource your programming?

At this point I would be interested in hearing from....

will76
bl4h
brandonstills
various
peace
bluevision

So that is what I have gotten out of this thread and I am looking for a reliable, ongoing programmer for many projects.

Email is best, top of post. thanks

You brag about finding cheap programmers and then complain that they suck.

:helpme:helpme:helpme

At this time and for the foreseeable future, I am not taking on any work as I am involved in partnerships and projects which require long-term exclusivity :)

For the record, I hate asking lots of questions. However, I have found that estimating a task requires an understanding of the task that goes deeper than most people think.

My way has worked for me for the past 35 years or so, but what do I know?

Like I said in the previous thread, Good Luck with that :thumbsup

I don't believe I've ever spoken to you and I certainly don't charge ?100/hr for programming - specialised services yes, but not programming. Please don't spread false information about me. :2 cents:

My take on things: some programmers take on jobs they do not like and end up regretting it.

I specialize in perl+POE doing the following; using multiple ips to get around throttles, scraping, and more.

I use HTML::TreeParser for parsing.

I know my best parser I've ever built is related to google scraping. I've got so many paths down, I can isolate anything...

Now, if you need scraping, lemme know... If your job is something else... All the best.
Jeff.

Location: Calgary, Canada.

qft

Also, @brandonstills

Don't be knocking PHP up in here... I guarantee I can write an app that will out perform any other language when run in the correct, optimized environment for virtually any task. (Notice I said virtually any task :))

First off, if you think any scripting language these days is a blocking factor to code running fast and/or efficiently... you're going to lose a LOT of credibility in my eyes.

If anything, code wise, it's some of these frameworks that show poor performance. Even Rails... I love RoR syntactically but it is a slow ass bitch when compared to other frameworks/languages! It is, IMO, the most elegant syntax on the planet and I love Ruby for it's pure OO driven syntax however... it's slooooow. RoR heads will argue that caching allows RoR apps to stay on par... sure but that doesn't leave any room to catch up with other languages when they use caching as well!

Right now the largest limiting factor is storage, specifically, relational storage. That's why NoSQL is so hot right now... When you start to take into account large scalability + social features (which require much more responsive times and larger data sets) it's no wonder everything is moving towards NoSQL!

PHP is a fantastic language and anyone that says otherwise is just ridding the elitist short bus. I am proficient in a LOT of different languages yet still prefer to write _most_ web apps in PHP for a variety of different reasons. Not the least of which is speed...

I will say though that your posts about the best developers being able to cherry pick the best and most profitable opportunities are absolutely correct! You definitely have a firm grasp on where most of the top developers sit as well as a variety of other topics, I just had a bone to pick with the whole ripping on PHP thing :)

Oh @carzygirls... didn't mean to troll your thread, best of luck in the search! I'd add my name to that list but I no longer take freelance work that isn't a huge project ($50k+). Not trying to sound elitist at all. I just have my own projects and to pull me off my passion, you've gotta rip my attention away and give me a new focus for a number of months :D

lawked whats your contact info?

just hit you up on icq

I've emailed borked a few times and never a response, guess my money is just no good :-(

icq: 127303334