Just came over a video of a guy getting roasted for not being a "real developer", and a key point was him not having a public repo of code.

I just wonder, why is that even a point? I don't expect a window cleaner to post videos of him doing window cleaning on his spare time. Neither a truck driver.

Why does there seem to be an expectation for developers to always do something on their spare time, that contributes to their work?

Hi! I don’t post here often, but I wanted to share something that’s been bugging me. I’m a junior frontend dev who started a new job recently, and I only work with one other dev on our app.

He calls himself a senior dev, but he didn’t even know what a .env file is. Instead, he hardcoded his credentials directly into the sign-in screen, then pushed them to the repo. When I suggested using ENV variables so each dev could use their own credentials, he flat-out refused.

The rest of the team warned me he’s difficult, and it shows: he only works on what he wants, ignores priorities, and his code is half well thought-out, half a mess. I eventually set up an env file myself, but now whenever we merge, he just goes back and hardcodes his credentials again.

Maybe he’s not the worst teammate ever, but it’s frustrating. Has anyone else dealt with something like this?

I’m 32 (M) and worked a little over 10 years in software development as a full-stack programmer. About six months ago I completely burned out and stepped back. Since then I’ve been rebuilding myself and realized I might want to finally quit this career but not sure what to get into.

If you have quit software development and pivoted, what did you go into afterwards? What did you do?

Nowadays I often see projects where I would have been super impressed a year ago what the developer has achieved.

Today, I am still convinced that many of those projects are really useful, but I immediately start to think “yeah whatever, it’s all AI generated”.

Do some of you experience the same or how do you keep your excitement for other people’s work up? (And/or your own projects when you code with AI)

I use Claude at work, I give it a Jira ticket and let it do the work. It asks some questions, I aswer, it starts doing it’s thing, after some minute it comes up with a draft, I let it iterate bla bla bla. 30min later of interaction between me and agent the work is done.

I hear so much around me “i run 5 agents in different terminals, different tasks. I start one before I leave for work” and I just don’t understand this. Why do you feel the need to do this? Doing those 5 tasks sequential required way less or no context switching? Why do some engineers suddenly feel like they need to be always working. Running an agent on the subway. Don’t you get overwhelmed by never being able to switch off work ?

I’m a Senior Software Engineer with a masters degree in Computer Science. I majored i Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning more than 10 years ago. We dabbled with both symbolic ai and statistics and subsymbolic ai like generative algorithms and neural networks, but it was mostly theoretic and there were no optimism and hype, just theory and science. Among other things we built simple speach recognition and data vision systems.

So far in my career I have been building software using what I now see my peers refer to as «classical full-stack development». I did not pursue working with «AI» since there disnt seem to be that much going on in the industry arround here and not that many jobs in that «field» when I graduated. The «advances» I saw early on were «data warehouse BI type of people» rebranding themselves to «data scientists» which didn’t appeal to me.

My point is that I’we been burried in full-stack development for 10+ years and almost never touched what I learned in uni. I have never built a recommendation system or classification algorithm, nor have I trained a neural network. I’we seen some companies do it and It’s been the data scientist guys using some product to do it, or maybe some python on top of a framework that does everything for you.

Now everyone is screaming that I need to pick up «AI» or I’ll be replaced or die or something. But I mostly see sales people talking about LLMs, Model Context Protocol and «Agents». I don’t understand what I’m supposed to look at or learn to stay relevant in the job market. To me it sounds like someone stole all the existing definitions of the field «AI» by rebranding natural language processing and friends into AI.

Right now im thinking that i should just start using GitHub Copilot or whatever to «stay productive», but is that seriously all there is to it? Generate some plumbing code?

What have you been looking at when learning something new in «AI» recently?

I've been searching for a job in my field for over a year and a half now with no luck but all I find is AI this and AI that. I've tried to get into it but it's just soooo boring to me. I'm just not interested in coding for that. I like making cool things for end users and although AI is cool for end users it's just not the same. I don't know why I can't get into it maybe it's a lack of understanding. Maybe it's because I enjoy the aesthetic side of things like making visual pieces that are useful for users. I'm just wondering if I'm the only developer that's just not interested in moving into AI. Don't get me wrong I enjoy using it as the end user but just as a learning tool and maybe an aide for some stuff.

So am I a "one off" or are there others that feel the same way?

Why is visual studio not becoming popular ?

I was thinking about it for a while now, people have been using AI for all sorts of things - heck I even use AI for writing mails. As a result, real content (human content) is decreasing. Even my reels are 30% AI generated content. Now, I understand there already is plenty of data on the internet, but with increasing AI usage to generate content (code, articles, etc etc) we are also introducing errors/hallucinations which in turn will tune down the model if it is using such data for training. AI might even stop the generation of new idea, new technologies. Remember the time we used to search up on google and browse through articles where we were provided with a variety of opinions, but now through the increasing use of these general purpose AI chatbots, we are limiting ourselves somehow. I was recently reading somewhere the possibility of integration "ads" smartly within AI responses, so well that it feels natural

People say “throw a stone in the air and it’ll hit a software engineer in India.” Maybe that’s true. But it’ll probably hit someone with a degree, not someone who can actually build anything.

I’ve been hunting for a reliable team to build a mobile app. It’s been a full month on Upwork, Fiverr, random Google searches, and every “top 10 app developers in India” list you can imagine. And honestly, the amount of fake stuff out there is insane.

Most of these companies list huge brands in their portfolio, but when you dig even a little, it’s all made-up. Fake projects, fake awards, fake “top agency” badges. One company in Delhi (not naming names) claims to be one of the biggest in the city with 500+ five-star reviews. Sounds great until you click the rating… and it just opens another web page they’ve created themselves, filled with “testimonials” from random names. Not actual reviews. Just a website made to look like one.

The deeper I look, the more I realize how many agencies are just propping up a fake reputation. Finding an actually skilled team feels harder than ever.

People keep saying this is the “AI era” and becoming a software engineer is easier than ever. If that’s true, why is it impossible to find someone who can actually build a legit app? Basic apps are easy to find. I’m not looking for someone to make a to-do list app. I’m trying to build something at least close to Uber Eats quality. Clean architecture, real backend, proper user flows… not patchy MVPs held together by duct tape.

If anyone here has worked with a solid, genuinely reputable Indian software company (not the massive ones like TCS/Infosys, but not the shady ones either), please drop names. I’m at the point where I just want real work, real portfolio, real engineers. Not glossy websites with manufactured credibility.

I really don’t understand this. Big companies and even large corporations often release software that’s messy, bloated, and full of bugs. Yet, there are GitHub projects maintained by a single developer — sometimes done as a hobby or for free — that are cleaner, more efficient, and more useful.

For example, Qidi (a 3D printer manufacturer) made a fork of Klipper, and it’s full of bugs. Meanwhile, a single developer started “Freedi,” a vanilla Klipper fork, and it’s way better than the stock one. It’s helped countless people who had issues with Qidi printers.

Why does this happen? Why can one person sometimes outdo a company with far more resources?

I’ve been watching the agent hype, and honestly, half of these "autonomous" setups just loop forever or hallucinate. Meanwhile, a simple 10-line Python script with a direct API call does the exact same job reliably.

Am I missing something? When is an "agent" actually better than just writing a deterministic script?

Genuinely curious, not trying to hate.

ive been building my thing with an ai agent for like a year now. and yeah it spits out 500 lines in a minute, thats real, im not complaining about that part.

but now my whole day is just reading code i didnt write. and ngl reading is way slower for me then writing. when i write it myself i already know why every line is there. when the agent does it i have to figure all that out after, and if i dont, then 3 weeks later theres a bug in a file i have literally never opened.

so on github it looks like im shipping like 5x. doesnt feel like 5x at all. some weeks it feels slower fr.

and yeah i know someone will say just dont read it bro. thats how u get a codebase u cant fix. already did that once, lost a whole week.

so how do u guys do it. read everything, just yolo it, or is there smth in between im missing

Hey everyone, I want to know who is the best programmer you've ever seen (YouTuber or Streamer), regardless of their nationality or niche.

All the software's quality has gone down the drain
Everything we use has gotten so bad now
Even Apple, which was known for pixel-perfect stuff, has released software full of bugs. And most other daily services are breaking too

I've been working in software since around 2019, never in my life have I seen this level of crap except when LLMs came out…

And they call it LLMs increases productivity 🤷‍♂️

I have a application set-up I am working on in my work machine. I sometimes connect to remote database. I accidentally wiped out dev/testing databases and I am freaking out right now. I don't have admin rights or recovery snapshots.

I was connected to both local and remote database. I thought I was looking at local and deleted it but it was actually remote.

Fortunately it was not production.

*hacking experience very limited

So i recently ordered spotify's "Car thing" which is a their new control system designed for older cars with no display to control music. Here's a reference video on the device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6nbRfOaFUI

Any who, i find the device quite pointless as i still have to connect my phone via aux cord and the big button that looks like a volume rocker DOESNT CONTROL VOLUME but acts as a wheel to navigate through playlists, and the way i have it mounted, it is blocking my cars volume rocker. Overall i don't exactly like the device but i think it as any potential. Which i want to take into my own hands.

I would love to somehow install a gps or just hack this thing to get more use out of it. Would anyone know where to start in terms of installing a gps app on this thing or any other cool ideas for this little device?

Would appreciate some weigh in from the pro's out here. Thank you!

as a person who worked in this industry for 5 years, I can say that all the AI hype is just a hot garbage so the investors will funnel money even more.

compared to 2020, LLMs just became dumber. look at Claude for example. it was the most capable AI I've used for coding. what we have now?

"Sorry I can't help with that". and then sudden bans with no reason provided or prior warning. or chatGPT. being the best general purpose from my perspective and now, it can't even write a simple JavaScript code.

I found myself spending more time trying to correct the stupid AI than actually doing something. fck that.

going through the web and asking in stackoverflow, and waiting for answer is much more efficient than doing such thing.

I don't understand.

why AI instead of learning and improving is just became worst of itself. missing context. cutting conversation in the half of it and not wanting to continue, giving not working code, hallucinating.

it is just a mess.

Sometimes I think AI has removed the joy from programming. Time was when making a TODO application felt like real work (as beginners). Now there's no feeling of achievement after completing projects. For example I'm working on a PID controller for my custom drone firmware. I programmed like 13 C files and I used AI to review it & it started over engineering & hallucinating only to result in an over engineered unreliable non working product. So I tried my own code & it worked without modifications. Has anyone experienced this as well?

I’m poor and I live in a third world country, I worked my ass of so I could buy my first laptop.
I worked for 3 consecutive years, trying every month to just keep some of my income so I could afford a laptop.

Today, 08/24/2026 I got robbed, some guys just robbed my backpack and with it they took my Laptop, my wallet and my hope.

Always saw you guys making a lot of money, studying and working for some big techs and that was my dream… I was studying, literally giving my life to it and now it’s over.

I know a lot of you might say: “Just work hard and get your things back” and I know that’s what I’m supposed to do but it’s hella difficult to study, work, pay my bills and buy new things where I live.

For context: I don’t work a minimum wage job but where I live, a good laptop can cost 3/4 salaries. To be more specific about my country, I live in Brazil and we pay almost double for every item.

Anyways, I’m feeling kinda depressed right now, just want to share it… all my work and all my dreams gone in just a few seconds…

Thank you guys, I used to be here under another account that no longer exists and a lot of you guys of the dev community actually helped and inspired me in this journey.

Someday I’ll be here again!

Most of us who worked or are working in game development already know the tension between passion and being pragmatic. My naive dream when I started out, of course, was to have a fully in-house team of artists and animators all working side by side and sharing the same energy that got us all into this business in the first place. In a perfect world, perhaps.

In today’s landscape, that floaty idea feels increasingly out of reach if not simply impossible. Budgets are tighter than ever across the board in the industry, and sometimes it feels like having to outsource game development is simply necessary to stay afloat and not drown in these pretty dire times. The studio Virtuos (a large co-development studio) announced in July this year that it was laying off around 7% of its workforce, some roughly 270-300 people. So despite working on stuff such as  the Oblivion remaster, they cited “lower occupancy and slower demand due to structural shifts in the industry” as reasons for the cuts.

Obviously, there’s a cost to this shift. Outsourcing often fragments communication and creative ownership. That sense of shared vision that comes with everyone being in on everything all the time. There’s also the boogeyman in the room with broader industry concerns, and by this I mean how it’s affecting job openings, decreasing labour value in countries from which the dev work is outsourced and so.

At the same time, I’m not sure it’s wholly fair to paint outsourcing as the problem in and of itself, as a business model in isolation. The reality is that many studios wouldn’t survive or make good games on time without outsourcing some of the work, more so if it’s aspects that others could do better than them (and if it’s at less cost too… too good of a deal to pass on in most cases, disregarding any principles you may or may not have). And some external teams – especially those with experience - deliver solid work that helps projects in the long run.

I still feel divided on the issue, since it’s an objective fact that as a model, it’s here to stay (for the meanwhile anyway) but on the other, it’s also a fact that jobs are being lost or rather dispersed which is probably just a general product of globalization of tech/development workforces in whatever industry.

What do you think of all this though - how is it affecting your developer careers and/or how are you adjusting to it?

I have been working on dot net since 16 years, but recently my company assigned me to SRE ROLE, i have been working on that from last 1 year. Now it seems that i am losing grasp to my coding skills. And also feeling this is not good for my profile. What should i do?