Important tips for IT contracting

Anyone who is planning to do IT contracting should do a little bit of research. This site gives some basic tips and tricks about IT contracting in UK
http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/contractors/index.shtml

How much you can realistically charge as your contract rate?
http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/contractors/contractor-guides/it-contractor-market-rates.shtml

Information about IT Contract Rates can be found from these resources:
ITJobswatch:This is a handy site which provides high level data for key roles (such as Analysts, Developers) as well as specific skill sets (e.g. Oracle, UNIX, Java, .NET)
Jobstats: Jobstats has provided data extracted from the major job search engines for many years now. This site paints a general picture of the state of the IT Contracting market - including average market rates.

In addition, the following sites also provide data on pay rates in the IT arena:
E-Skills - Skills site, also provides training and salary information.
Contract Eye - This one is a dedicated IT Contractor site, with a dedicated channel on IT contractor rates


Next task is to write a good and to the point CV. This one explains it best http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/contractors/contractor-guides/it-contractors-cv.shtml

            

Branching with Eclise and CVS

This article give some basic information about cutting a CVS branch using Eclipse

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-BranchingWithEclipseAndCVS/article1.html

Java concepts

This post contains the compilation of some of the most popular java design questions that every java developer should be aware of.

• ThreadLocal explained in Detail.

This is a very well written article that explains the use of ThreadLocal with example

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-threads3.html

• Why multiple inheritance is not for java?

This question come to any developer's mind who has worked in C++. This is a very nice article that explains exactly this.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaqa/2002-07/02-qa-0719-multinheritance.html

• Diamond shape problem solved.

How multiple inheritance is achieved in java with the help of interfaces.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-1998/jw-12-techniques.html

• What is the difference b/w weak and soft references?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/299659/what-is-the-difference-between-a-soft-reference-and-a-weak-reference-in-java

• Weak References explained in detail

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp11225/

• Soft References explained in detail

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp01246.html

• Static Factory pattern example: class instance which is created at the time of Static member initialization. This Factory always returns this instance.

http://alexmcferron.com/staticFactory.html

• Static method Pattern example: This pattern is just a style of decoupling object initialization from the client code. It always returns a new class instance.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javaqa/2001-05/02-qa-0511-factory.html