The field of information technology is in many ways perfectly suited for entrepreneurship. Many highly successful enterprises started with a lone IT professional venturing out on their own and starting up their own company. If you have computer science skills and want to explore alternative options outside the corporate arena you should seriously consider going into business for yourself. Businesses may be more willing to hire you as a contractor rather than as a full-time worker. There are certain IT jobs that are perfect for individuals who want to be self-employed, they include:

• Working as a Consultant
Large IT departments are not as necessary for corporations as they were at the start of the internet era; this is partly due to the trend towards cloud computing. Consultants are often brought in to handle the need for tech expertise when companies downsize or eliminate their IT departments. A consultant may work for several different clients at the same time, be on call for various disciplines or be commissioned for specific projects.

• Web Entrepreneurship
The ease of building a website and the fact that web hosting is relatively affordable means that it does not take a lot of know-how to start your own online empire. You can sell products or services, or start your own online community. Another option is to start selling goods via auction sites or on sites that sell advertising space. You will need an understanding of marketing and of search engine optimization so that you can draw visitors to your site.

• Programming Apps for Mobile Devices
The future of the Internet is in mobile devices. Statistics show that much of the world will be using mobile devices and smart phones to handle their surfing needs in the near future. If you have the skills to program the apps used on these devices, you could be among those riding the wave of this trend.

It is not impossible to start an Information Technology company with very little startup capital. Getting it off the ground in terms of online visibility will require focus to detail, knowing your target market, a consistent campaign to build a client list and a solid reputation.

Visual Studio .NET is one of many tools available at your disposal for web development. But where some programs may focus on HTML coding or graphics, Visual Studio .NET is a complete tool set that can be used to not only create XML web services and ASP web applications, but desktop and mobile applications as well. So what are some features that are included in the latest release?

·         Visual J#. This is most well-known by developers who are well-versed in the language of Java. It is best used when building services via the .NET framework, or when building applications.

·         Smart Device Applications. This enables you to generate, repair, and install applications that can be used on smart phones, PDAs, and other devices.

·         ASP.NET Mobile Design. Allows for building web applications for not only PDAs and mobile phones, but pagers as well. This also allows a designer to manipulate the mobile Web form of an application.

The consulting industry is fiercely competitive and nets between $130B and $150B a year. In fact, professional consultants earn more money than many lawyers, doctors and other professionals. 

Offering free consultations is a common way for a software consultant to seize new accounts. But is there a red flag where a consultant may be giving away too many services for free? The worst scenario for a professional software consultant is to offer free services to the client and then never hear from them again once they no longer need their help. 

Although having the best intentions, many people will waste a consultant's time (i.e., client ignores or rejects any suggested approaches or solutions given by the consultant and seek the services of someone who will do it cheaper or will attempt to do it themselves). Small business owners especially can be challenging to work with. Some clients have a tendency to jump into projects before having adequate resources to finish what they have started, decide to go in a different direction midstream, while others simply don't want to spend any money when getting professional services. It's hard to believe, but some clients actually expect to receive free services for life. To counteract this notion, a software consultant can draw the line by offering free services within a promotional time frame and then begin charging a fee for services rendered after that time.

A good indicator of what a client's true intentions are is to monitor their activity within a specified period to see if their consultation activity bears fruit in the form of a contract. One big red flag is non-commitment on the part of the client. If they seem indecisive or vague about what they want it may be time to move on. Although there are times when a free consultation results in a paying client years later, who can wait that long? 

Less of Your Time is Wasted When You're Upfront

After being burned, some professional software consultants no longer give free consulting. They find that clients are much more willing to follow their advice when they have paid something. In order to close an account, a happy medium can be agreed upon by both parties involved as a way to build a long term relationship with highly qualified prospects. 

A software consultant's work, knowledge, skills and time are valuable. They can offer a potential client general solutions instead of addressing specific challenges. If a specific topic of discussion, troubleshooting session or other issue needs to be addressed, the consultant can inform the client of any upfront costs to receive a particular service if they need further assistance. Really, a free software consultation (if one is given) should be presented in a very similar way someone would hand out samples of a product at a grocery store. A professional consultant ideally wants clients to see how they can benefit using their services on a trial basis with a pitch leading to more extensive services which would only be available if they sign a contract with their firm. 

 Red Flags

Studying a functional programming language is a good way to discover new approaches to problems and different ways of thinking. Although functional programming has much in common with logic and imperative programming, it uses unique abstractions and a different toolset for solving problems. Likewise, many current mainstream languages are beginning to pick up and integrate various techniques and features from functional programming.

Many authorities feel that Haskell is a great introductory language for learning functional programming. However, there are various other possibilities, including Scheme, F#, Scala, Clojure, Erlang and others.

Haskell is widely recognized as a beautiful, concise and high-performing programming language. It is statically typed and supports various cool features that augment language expressivity, including currying and pattern matching. In addition to monads, the language support a type-class system based on methods; this enables higher encapsulation and abstraction. Advanced Haskell will require learning about combinators, lambda calculus and category theory. Haskell allows programmers to create extremely elegant solutions.

Scheme is another good learning language -- it has an extensive history in academia and a vast body of instructional documents. Based on the oldest functional language -- Lisp -- Scheme is actually very small and elegant. Studying Scheme will allow the programmer to master iteration and recursion, lambda functions and first-class functions, closures, and bottom-up design.

Supported by Microsoft and growing in popularity, F# is a multi-paradigm, functional-first programming language that derives from ML and incorporates features from numerous languages, including OCaml, Scala, Haskell and Erlang. F# is described as a functional language that also supports object-oriented and imperative techniques. It is a .NET family member. F# allows the programmer to create succinct, type-safe, expressive and efficient solutions. It excels at parallel I/O and parallel CPU programming, data-oriented programming, and algorithmic development.

Scala is a general-purpose programming and scripting language that is both functional and object-oriented. It has strong static types and supports numerous functional language techniques such as pattern matching, lazy evaluation, currying, algebraic types, immutability and tail recursion. Scala -- from "scalable language" -- enables coders to write extremely concise source code. The code is compiled into Java bytecode and executes on the ubiquitous JVM (Java virtual machine).

Like Scala, Clojure also runs on the Java virtual machine. Because it is based on Lisp, it treats code like data and supports macros. Clojure's immutability features and time-progression constructs enable the creation of robust multithreaded programs.

Erlang is a highly concurrent language and runtime. Initially created by Ericsson to enable real-time, fault-tolerant, distributed applications, Erlang code can be altered without halting the system. The language has a functional subset with single assignment, dynamic typing, and eager evaluation. Erlang has powerful explicit support for concurrent processes.

Computer Programming as a Career?

What little habits make you a better software engineer?