I think the difference is an entrepreneur has orchestrated the whole process and isn't just a sales person. They are a dreamer building their dreams in to reality. Anything that reflects the achievement is massive. If you love carpentry, then seeing somebody love your table will be the same. Selling tables at Ikea will probably not be.
I don't have a portfolio site, but was successfully freelancing on the basis of referral for four years or so. I wouldn't take a random client on, because bad clients cost money. Reach out to anybody who trusts you to "get the job done" and get them to reach out. Networking and trust are essential.
Another idea getting your foot in the door as a freelancer at an agency. About 1/4 of my work (and best paid work) came that way. Gives you a client base to build from (though not your clients, it will give you demonstrable experience)
As a C programmer, this is flattering, but I also know it isn't true. I wrestled with Erlang for a good while before I got the hang of it. Going from C up the tree of C-like programming languages has its disadvantages.
Knowing both C and Javascript, and loving them both ... I would go with Python+Flask as the sensible choice. However, Go is a cracking language but not all that mature. Javascript is great if you use a decent framework too.
As a C programmer though, I read http://startupitis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/golang-its-amazing... and had to write some Go and didn't regret it. Not sure about its fit for web development, but good fun anyway. You may find yourself writing boilerplate with Go though.
Just play with them and see which you enjoy most. Enjoyment pays you back in productivity/motivation.
It used to be annoying that the food looks so different, but after that video ... I feel better ... and hungry. Some good communication there from the McMarketing Department
An article against ego that tries to encourage perspective, written by an author with such a big ego and lack of perspective he writes things like:
"Maybe, you think that because you avoid all the abstractions of higher level languages, you are somehow better and “purer.” Because you do pointer arithmetic and bit shifting, you really understand what is going on in a computer. No, you don’t. You understand C programming"
I'm sure somewhere in there is a heart-felt message though ... somewhere. I think he needs to meet more programmers.
"That's just your lizard brain freaking out." True. All sounds like sane advice to me! This thread has been a much needed re-balancing of my freaking out on the whole!
Nope, I don't feel like we have lost! But it is a critical point in the road and easy to lose perspective. so trying to get as much input as possible. You make some really good points :)