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I have written a pretty extensive webapp and it is going to go live in the next fews weeks and before I really publicize it I want to get some professionals to review it for optimization and best practices. How can I find software engineers who would be willing to do this?

Just to give some specifics that may be helpful, my site is on Google App Engine and written in Python and it is tough to find someone with extensive experience in that area.

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Would help to know what specific customer market your webapp is targeting. Does this answer help? answers.onstartups.com/a/44767/2380 – jimg Dec 4 '12 at 21:50
What kind of review to you need? It may be about UX, about your code quality, your server configuration, given that you can optimize and have best practices about all of these. – Ulflander Dec 4 '12 at 22:22
primarily I need someone to look into optimizing my database reads/writes and then making sure that the site is secure – clifgray Dec 5 '12 at 1:24
@jimg that definitely helps in the big picture but not here so much because I am talking about specifics of the software and not the user side – clifgray Dec 5 '12 at 1:25
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Okay - then a walk through the python consulting page brings a few names up. OR do some searching - found this article written by a capable person who has a link (disclaimer - I know nothing about them). Research the links, their projects, etc. and determine whether there is a fit. – jimg Dec 5 '12 at 4:07

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Given your comment, if you need to optimize your DB queries, and secure your server on the other hand, you probably need two people.

First about the server security: most of coders will not have skills/knowledge for truly securing a whole server (well configured firewall, file rights, uninstall of unwanted packages/apps, compilation of last versions of used packages, ssh access limitations, and many more depending on what your app do).

Concerning your DB queries, it depends on how big is your app, but it would have been better to think about optimizations at the beginning, because optimizing the queries may require code rewriting. Anyway, as you're here now, try to get a freelancer specialized in such tasks.

In fact I think you don't need a code review, but a system administrator and a database engineer. That's not the same at all.

So I would answer as @Kekito, adding odesk.com to the list of freelancers sites. Be very aware of who you hire: I had myself the best and the worst experiences using freelancers using this sites. Be sure to fully understand what you ask to them, in order to check in detail their work, given the fact you won't know them at the beginning.

In my opinion, for such things it would be better to hire people not too far from you, in order to work with them and follow carefully what they do - to control first, but above all to keep full control on your server/code once they're gone.

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thanks for the good input. I actually know the systems very well and have had these things in mind since the beginning but I just want someone to check over to make sure I haven't missed anything. At least that is what I am hoping because right now this is just a bootstrapped one man show. – clifgray Dec 5 '12 at 5:30
Good to know! You seems to have a good tech level, so don't worry too much then, you won't have sudden big attacks on your server and/or a huge load at the beginning. I suggest you check out these things during the first weeks of life of your product, because logs and perf reports will tell you which action to engage to optimize your system/product. – Ulflander Dec 5 '12 at 15:32

I'd consider using Freelancer or Elance. There is a wide variety of quality of work that you can get there so you are better off picking someone more expensive with a great reputation. It should still be far cheaper than hiring a good person in the U.S.

For example, you could probably hire someone to give you feedback for $20/hour so for $200 you could get a lot of good advice.

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You probably only need to worry about the "low hanging fruit" for now, getting a consultant for this might be overkill.

Unless you are hugely successful on launch, performance probably isn't going to be a big deal. I would say security in a similar boat, but you do need to be more cautious on that side.

I would suggest just finding some articles online about "common mistakes" or a basic guide that will let you tidy things up yourself.

I don't know much about Python but this looks like it might be handy for security:

http://www.pythonsecurity.org/

Here is one for performance:

http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonSpeed/PerformanceTips

I don't know the details of your situation, but make sure you aren't worrying too much about solving problems you don't have yet. If you are getting close to launch I am sure you have plenty of good things to worry about, focus your attention there.

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great resources thanks for the links! haha and very true I just want to try and prevent any big problems that I can down the road that I can prevent for a few hundred dollars right now – clifgray Dec 6 '12 at 16:18
For a few hundred dollars you probably won't get anything you don't know already. – Joel Friedlaender Dec 9 '12 at 6:24

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