Yeah, i figured! It felt weird when he said that. Both the CEO and only dev for the startup, where trying to rationalize and egg me to agree that this was a reasonable deal all around.

>"yeah, this is a simple page, make it look like that all in react (though we only want it static) shouldnt take more than a day. This is the contract to hire were talking about"

"So you guys want me to freelance for this one page"
-"What? No, youll be contract to hire, you know? We just want to see how well you do this, just no contracts signed"

When someone says "less than one day," they likely have no clue what they are talking about, and if it takes more than one day, they are going to figure out a way to not pay you. <- generalization, but no one hires people for a 1/2 day work. That makes no sense.

Everything has to be signed and dotted. Never ever forget to CYA.

Doesnt resolve/reject only happen on response.status === 200?

It can't reject on actual errors. Unless I'm misreading something?

That's a major problem with it, but not the only one. And again I don't know JS but I feel confident the right way to do this should be like 5 lines, tops

I think you're right Craggoo.

His company may work like mine. Some of the backend devs return successful response with errors if there are any instead of just an error response with messages. To them, they think "did the response succeed?". Yes. "Did it actually do what it was supposed to?". Yes -> no errors. No -> errors. The status code is always 200.

A simple example of the above...

I make an api call but am missing one of the required parameters. Some of the backend devs would return a 200 with a list of error(s).

I make an api call with all the required parameters. It succeeds -> no errors. It fails -> errors (still 200 in both cases)

the webserver on the other end does not have complete control over the error codes the client will receive.

Also, ew, although we've all been there.

There were a couple times where the person doing the backend logic would come to me on a project we're tagteaming and ask me why I'm not showing errors. It was those cases where they were returning a 200 with errors instead of an actual error response. Awesome!

Speaking of APIs, it looks like we're gonna start using json-server as a pseudo API to help us prototype frontend work faster. I took on building it out today and had our endpoints mimicked really quick.

It seems like a nice tool to use.

He's calling reject() on errors too. I left that part out (hence the ... and no closing brackets). I was trying to condense down to the heart of the ****up.

The big problem is he's returning metadataObj from the resolve and reject methods, because he thinks that's doing something, even though those returns are going nowhere.

Good example of **** no one talks about or takes seriously until you're deep into development. Consistent error handling from the beginning is one of my biggest bugaboos. I annoy the **** out of people with it.

On my side project the dev I always got into it with hardcoded 404 as a status code for all errors. He said it would take a week to make them customizable. So to this day the API returns 404 and I would think the end point is wrong, then eventually remember to check the JSON payload and there's some system error in there.

So annoying. I begged him to fix that 10 times. He just doesn't care. And because he and the boss have known each other since 8th grade, I'm the problem, and eventually let go which I'm pretty happy about (unless they somehow find a greater fool and sell something for $millions).

I'm on an unlucky streak of working with ****tards.

It might be time to start your own company, so you can make the hiring decisions, etc. Dead serious btw. Why the hell not?

Consultancies are pretty painful. Getting clients is hard, devs are expensive and flaky, clients are fickle. You're never going to break the bank.

Otherwise I need an idea for a business.

Maybe building and running your own business is stupid difficult, incredibly time consuming, and a super unstable to uh... "make a living" for the first 5 years?

I did a consulting business with a partner for a few years. Started it on on side and it was never my full time job. There were things I liked but many many things I hated. I actually still host a few clients from those days, more than 10 years later.

Bottom line is I'm really not that much of a self-starter. I will work my ass off for a team. But for myself I struggle to get things going. Spending 2 weeks on my open-source project is about my limit. At least since the early days when I was hungry to start a career. Now I need deadlines and people counting on me. A partner could be enough I guess.

Also why I never did much with comedy. I didn't have the hustle. I wanted someone to discover me and make all that other stuff happen.

I did teach myself poker, make coach/mentor relationships on 2p2 and study a ton on my own. For some reason I was pretty self-motivated on that. Maybe I just need the right subject.

I struggle to motivate myself to process images and learn more photoshop tricks. I still loving taking pictures, but processing is not as fun for me anymore, and I know it's very unlikely I will make a living out of it.

There is a difference between the constant pressure of getting a new client every day and the incidental phone call from the grapevine, especially when there is no parachute.

How will you go about starting your own company? I suspect that you have some ideas for products and will be seeking VC money which is of course different than being an independent consultant. Not trying to get you to disclose your product ideas just wondering if that is the direction you are heading in.

Personally my mindset is definitely more like what suzzer described in his post.

I am studying C/C++ for the next couple years, then I'll get into AI. Lots of books to read atm.

Back in the late 90s, I worked at the Improv and got to meet quite a few comedians, a few who are on TV today.

A common thread with all of them is they are mostly broke and sometimes homeless. Felt like half of them committed suicide, though the real number is probably closer to 25%.

Like, no one got discovered within 10 years of being on stage, and that would be pretty quick, actually.

I feel like comedy has to be the hardest possible profession to do well in. Those guys and gals on stage really really want it.

It's the same as most things. Easy to do it casually or occasionally but what separates out those at the top is more often a ridiculous work ethic than talent. That and being in the right place at the right time.

Yep work ethic is key. You have to be super self-motivated and driven. I think I might have done well if I got into a group of young up-and-coming comedians trying to out-compete each other.

Also you have to decide if you want to move to NY or LA to really try to make it big, or maybe transition into writing or something - or settle for a rough living on the midwestern circuit.

I think it comes from a surprising place as well. If you ever get a chance, check out the free comedy shows they do on Thanksgiving on Sunset Blvd. I think it's the Laugh Factory?

I went once, years back, and they gave a pretty decent show. Some comedians were on stage, others were ushering, others brought food or whatever.

During the whole show, they were picking on homeless, poor people, junkies, and so on. At the final part, they pulled up the 30 or so comedians (many you've seen on TV), and they said: "Look, I know were were making fun on all of your behalf, but the reason we do this is year in and year out is that each and every one of us standing on stage slept in a cardboard box."

I think that goes with business or any odd venture. Few will do anything until they have nothing left to lose, which is why I claim I never met a business person who actually wanted to start their own business. In many ways, comedians are similar. They either continue being homeless or keep pressing to get on tour.

On the other hand, many "upcoming" comedians and actors in LA are on SSI, taking crazy pills for a monthly check. There are a few people who did well working the midwest circuit before the mayhem of LA, for sure. At least with YouTube, Los Angeles isn't really a requirement these days.

Anyone know a request to make an Express server 500?

I'm writing some test scripts for a pseudo server and making it 500 is not obvious, and googling gets me a million people asking how to fix a 500.

Can you just write a stub thingy that returns a 500 when called on the server? Otherwise look at stuff running on the server and find something it can't handle, maybe test cases for stuff already running on the server would help. Apologize if none of that applies to express servers, I'm putting off writing test cases...