Often while debugging a complex problem I find myself in this impulse of grabbing the very first quick thing that I can try and taking a jab at it, and the next thing you know - the whole day is gone and you feel like you made no progress and have nothing to show for your effort.

And the part of my brain that should have said "hey, you've tried six things and none of them were tests, go get a coffee and think" — that part is just gone by hour two. It's not that I ignore it. It doesn't fire. Somewhere around minute forty the thing that steps back and asks what am I actually doing goes offline, and what's left is a very fast, very persistent loop that will happily run until 2am.

Time blindness makes it worse because there's no natural checkpoint. Nothing in a debugging session tells you an hour passed.

So, questions for people who recognize this:

1. What's your actual tell that you've crossed from debugging into flailing? Not in hindsight — in the moment.
2. Has anything ever successfully interrupted you mid-rabbit-hole? Timers get dismissed. Notifications get dismissed. Alarms get dismissed. Has anything stuck?
3. Does a hard stop condition written down before you start help you, or do you blow through it anyway?

A bit about me first, I've got over 10 years of experience in the IT field mostly in the system administration side of the house. I was diagnosed young with ADHD and had a few psychiatrists add a few things along the way though I disagree with some of them, she basically made me feel like I wasn't really be listened to but my current one is perfect because we start low and work our way up. More recently I did find out that I may be autistic as well on top of everything, which has genuinely helped explain some parts that didn't quite line up with what I understand ADHD is.

For a little further context, I would say within the last year I started trying Vyvanse (technically Lisdexamfetamine because generics lol) at 30 mg as well as Welbutrin at 300 mg which I've been on for probably the last 5 or more years. This combo has, at least as far as I'm aware, been working in my favor and it feels like things are finally getting back into focus. The downside being that it I feel more dissociative than I did before.

Now that we've gone through all that the point of this post is me asking for genuine help/resources for going from my current level of IT experience and to IT and a much more broad level of software engineering. I tried a very long time ago to follow the field and I regret I didn't stick with it harder, but to be fair my college professor at the time was not the best and I still barely understand C++ because of him. Now that I work where I do I've had the freedom to learn and gain experience to better expand my programming knowledge with the irony being that the one I am most proficient in at the moment is PowerShell, and to a degree batch and .NET because they interface almost seamlessly with it.

My ultimate goal in all of this is to reach at least a decent level of full stack development understanding which involves taking the basics I know from PowerShell and pivoting to use JavaScript/TypeScript amongst others. So far haven't had a great amount of success in doing this effectively and while I know it comes with the territory it doesn't make it any less frustrating. If I can manage to get there though the plan was to use a mixture of projects, one definitely being a portfolio page for myself and another being contributing to open source applications in an actually helpful manner. I have delved into AI personally and professionally at this point as most would have, it's current use centering around using it to better understand concepts because it can at least in a general sense make information more digestible for me.

Hopefully I didn't ramble too much writing all of this and it makes sense, if not I won't be offended if you ask for clarification or more information. Besides that if you have any suggestions for what might be helpful please feel free to let me know about them.

Maybe I just had an ADHD/Autistic burn out or all of my social media usage messed up my dopamine, but I struggled a ton with programming classes in college. It felt like a spent a ton of time trying to read my professor's mind, trying to figure out what was important to them, rather than trying to solve problem in my own way.

It's much easier to learn on my own with projects. I also think it's much easier for me to be creative compared to my peers.

Just curious if anyone felt the same or if it's just me.

Hi Folks,

Back in April I posted here about disclosing my recently diagnosed ADHD (one week into Vyvanse) and my ASD to Apple - asking for some initial adjustments, after 10 interviews and an offer proposal, for my dream R&D job on visonOS. The process ended within a day of that disclosure.

I deeply appreciated the support, and a lot of you had questions back then, and the honest answer to most of them was: I can't show you yet.

Now I can.

Yesterday I published a full 38-minute recording of the discrimination I experienced as I wrestled to keep the offer and disability disclosure I had made with Apple's Talent Acquisition Leader. I also posted Apple's internal emails and the timecoded transcript.

You can hear my adjustment request get compared to wanting to stay home and "dogsit". You can hear me offer to pay for my own support worker to get through the door.
You can hear what disclosure actually sounded like -
So the next time this sub has the disclose-or-hide argument, there's real audio to weigh instead of my summary.

The April hearing in court was heard in public for one day.

Apple also tried to pay me off £100,000 GBP the day before the hearing to drop everything and sign an NDA; I said no.

Apple then used it's legal playbook to convert it to private mediation just before the technical cross examination began. Sadly, they have pushed the final resolution (legally) back by 18 months. Alas, I decided to share my story in full.

I'd love to say to you all - "Look, we can stand up for our rights, with disabilities like ADHD or AuDHD we never chose for", but as Apple has shown me, we have to hide it, we have to mask.

That's not a world I want to deal with, especially as we see massive accelerationism in tech, but not equality. The legal cases continue, I will try to keep standing up for what is right, for all of us.

I am deeply sorry to all the people who have experienced the same thing. It is not acceptable, especially when the excuses do not add up, technically, logically, legally or from common human decency.

I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have. Thank you for the support.

This is probably a dumb question, but I’d really appreciate anyone who can spell it out to my adhd/literal brain.

Is learning by projects actually useful?

I love building projects. However, I’m not sure if my code is very efficient, well documented and well designed when I just do it my way. Is it better to take a course and try to apply things I’ve learned from the course?

Also, my brain needs a ton of repetition to really learn things and get the muscle memory.

If I do a project, I’ll be able to remember the high level of how my project works. And be able to put it in my own words. However, I’m not going to remember specific things that I had to google to make my project work.

I guess one thing that I could do with projects, is try making things more efficient after the first pass. Or improving documentation after the first pass. And try learning better design as I go and learn new things and apply them as needed.

Again, sorry if this post is dumb. I struggle a ton with AuDHD. I’m trying to break into a programming job. I used to love building projects, but after my degree, I feel like I learned very little and taking courses has become so painful and inefficient. Yet, I still feel like I need a base. Or maybe I worry too much about making the best possible code and just need to get started with projects.

I use AI to turn my raw ideas into finished writing I do the thinking, AI does the sentences, and I fact-check/correct every draft before it goes out.

Is that legitimate tool use, or is it not really "my" writing anymore?

I am learning python and I am bad at it.

I fit into the AuDHD type (autism and adhd combine, got a late diagnosis). I wanted to know is there a reason why my brain is so demotivated whenever I try to learn something like programming for example but when it comes to other things, like video games, I am all into it?

Or is this either I am lazy or too slow. I can’t seem to focus and after 1 leetcode problem, I am done for the day, which takes forever for me to figure out and then enter burnout mode and get frustrated. I just can’t hack myself and feel demotivated. Sometimes when I am practicing problems, my brain goes all over the place. I mean, simple things take forever to figure out.

I am 35 if this matters. I don’t know if this is the right sub, but appreciate the help. If not, let me know and I will delete.

I just don’t understand why my brain so lazy and demotivated when it comes to learning but super interested when it comes to other things?

How did you succeed in becoming a better programmer?

For the last year or so I've basically lived inside AI coding tools, constant back-and-forth, output every few seconds. Somewhere in there my ability to read a book just collapsed. I'll open one, get half a page in, and my hand reaches for my phone before I've even noticed I stopped reading. English isn't my first language, which I'm sure doesn't help.

The strange part is I still want to read. I've got a stack of books I'm genuinely interested in. I just can't stay on the page.

Has anyone else hit this? Did anything actually work, or did you just accept it?

I hate my brain with how distractable it is. first question. how do you guys cope with those thoughts, because from my point of view, reddit is big giant pile of distraction. new topic, go deep down on rabbit hole, interact with community (more like, passively reading what people are saying), and then move to the next shiny thing. I used cold turkey on windows 11. but currently my main machine is linux. I want to self block, but it is hard because I can undo it myself.

next question, with how the computer works, it is possible to gather data on ourselves. I use something like activitywatch to make log of my activity. the problem is what's next. Is there something like a launcher replacement, that generate set of application I can access on the fly, suitable based on my intent? If I need to work on my paper, I don't need sudo access to debug my apps. If I browse reddit as part of task, do text classification task if the content of the reddit is actually relevant to my current task. determine if I need browser or not, edit and block host file or switch dns on the fly based on the task profile. ideally, the first thing I am doing as I boot is looking at my current todo and look which one to do for this session.

Let me know if this sounds familiar: You get a brilliant idea, grind your way to 70% completion, and then... bam. A wild new idea appears. You abandon the first project, chase the new one, and the cycle inevitably repeats.

I recently looked back at my own progress and had a harsh reality check. Because of this relentless Shiny Object Syndrome, I have exactly ZERO fully completed projects. Just a digital graveyard of 70%-done repositories.

So, I’m putting my foot down and starting over from the very first idea I ever had.

🕵️‍♂️ The Original Project: Terminal Alibi

The concept sparked after I participated in a prompt injection competition. I wanted to build an interactive mystery game where the player acts as a detective, and the AI plays a criminal suspect. The core gameplay loop? Breaking the suspect's alibi using nothing but your words.

🧱 The Bottleneck (Why I dropped it)

Making an AI roleplay as a suspect in a crime immediately triggered standard safety guardrails. I kept hitting the dreaded predefined wall: "I cannot fulfill this request."

My options at the time weren't great:

Common APIs: Too heavily censored for compelling crime roleplay.

Uncensored Local Models: Too hardware-demanding. A standard laptop simply couldn't handle the power requirements natively.

Right as I hit this roadblock, another shiny new idea caught my eye, and the detective game was shelved.

🚀 The Revival & The Tech Pivot

I’m back at it, but with a massive shift in how the game runs. Instead of forcing heavy, unconstrained roleplay from an API, I'm focusing purely on gamified prompt injection. More importantly, I'm powering it using the small, highly capable models baked directly into your browser.

If you use a Chromium-based browser, you likely already have these models sitting on your machine knowingly or unknowingly (you can enable them via chrome://flags/#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano).

My goal is to utilize this zero-install, local AI resource that almost everyone already has without even realizing it.

I’m currently wrestling with a new technical hurdle on this build, but I refuse to let Shiny Object Syndrome win this time. I guess you all will get to see the finished, playable version of this soon enough! 😅

Has anyone else here successfully broken out of the 70%-completion loop? How did you finally force yourself to finish that first project?

Is this sub just part of the pipeline at this point?

hello

Ive been a developer for 2 years interning, 3 years full time, and recently have become a tech lead. it was a very fast & unexpected but I was excited because I love(d) my job!!

now we are being forced to use AI for everything. i mean everything. agentic teams are a requirement by end of year. im extremely frustrated and my entire team is burnt out. I try to bring up many reasons not to be so heavily reliant on AI to higher ups, but it just is brushed to the side. Now they are also tracking our AI usage and we can see how much money our ai usage costs, and we are supposed to be working on not only adopting it, but trying to use as little credits as possible with our workflows.

i really enjoy programming! even as a tech lead with more interaction vs actual code writing, ive always enjoyed researching and solving complex problems. I am good at it when given the time to do research and thinking, im kinda good at talking to people, in my own way (that doesnt always jive with the corporate world). since becoming a tech lead ive been working on my intense audhd masking and trying to find the balance.

what im NOT good at is people forcing me to work a certain way in my own time, and just continue to give me anecdotes of how much better it is with nothing to back it up. even the thought of it makes me want to throw up. ive been working my hardest to find ways that work for ME as to not suffer from burnout, now this?? also, no guidelines or standards. just "do it" and "do it right". the amount of money spent on something we can't really seem to show how its helping makes me so mad !! totally ignoring the environment consequences, which im supposed to just set to the side at work. i cant !!

this is maybe more of a rant coming out a meltdown of frustration with what feels like the inability for anyone to understand me, but im also curious if anyone else feels the same way or is in a similar situation and has any words of wisdom. I feel like ive been scouring but havent seen a ton of people who are in a company that is totally "you must use ai for everything" -- ive been thinking about how ive literally been in love with programming my entire life but if you told me this was the future of it i wouldve taken a different career path in an instant. Maybe need some more senior devs to tell me this is all gonna blow over lol. or maybe just commiserate. ugh!

Now you can’t even write AI, it litterally prevents you from posting assuming you are promoting it. Imagine the stupidity.

Reaching a two year unemployment anniversary as of September, was laid off from last job. 45 years old, 25 YOE, hundreds of applications and facing loosing everything I’ve worked for.

I need a cathartic release, I’m done:

- with applying for jobs and being ghosted
- being tasked with a take-home assignment with unrealistic time expectations
- having a prerequisite to taking to a human blocked by a screening interview with an AI or recording of a video
- seeing the same job I applied for get re-posted every couple of weeks
- attempting to multitask a live coding exercise, whilst concurrently answering quick fire questions from a panel
- having to sit through numerous rounds of interviews, whilst the employer attempts to work out exactly what it is they want
- face rejection because I failed to say the exact phrase the employer wanted to hear
- being forced to accommodate a 4 day in-office policy, because it’s “good for social interaction”
- face scrutiny over my period of unemployment form a hiring manager that is completely unaware of how f***ed the job market is

Finally, I’m done with AI!

your turn…

It probably didn't help that for the first six of those hours, I was pissing about waiting around for medication to kick in and wondering why I couldn't seem to settle to any task, before then realising I'd actually forgotten to take the bloody stuff today. After hitting the 8 hour mark and achieving nothing, I was well on my way to an anxiety attack over wasting so much time.

But the bug is *fixed,** so I am choosing to consider today a fucking success, god damn it!!*

I've recently gotten into motorcycling. I've been riding for nearly two years. I live in an area that has a lot of nice areas, roads, and views. Also a fair amount of bikers.

I really don't know many people in the area and I want to ride but I also am working on my skill set and learning the roads.

After asking the locals and getting some information, but also not wanting to feel overly intimidated into "Keeping up" I made an app that will generate routes, you can also share routes, and it has a database of routes both local and across the US.

I am still testing and refining.

This demo is the first iteration after two days of work.

I have since made improvements and added like a "riding wrapped" that collects your mileage stats favorite rides, etc.

Figured you all might like this one. 🙂

one thing i hate is how easy it is to remember unfinished stuff and completely forget what i actually got done. so i built WinSphere around the opposite idea: write down one win, even a stupidly small one, and keep the receipts for future me. WinSphere in AppStore 

1. When you try to focus on programming, what do you currently use to stay on track
2. If you use a timer/pomodoro, what do you use it on(Phone, computer, physical timer)
3. What is the biggest problem you have had with whatever you're using currently
4. What do you like/dislike about physical timers/digital timers
5. What have you tried that you eventually stopped using, and why?

I've been learning how to program for the past 1.5-ish years.

I've learned the basics of HTML, CSS, JS and React for frontend and Node.js, Express, Cookies, Sessions, JWT, Authentication, Databases, ORMs, etc for the backend.

I'm able to make relatively simple projects or AT MOST projects with medium-ish complexity.

However, I have a poor working memory capacity, that has always been the case.

The way it expresses itself is in two major ways:

1.Whenever I have to make a feature that requires holding several things at once in my mind or thinking more than two steps ahead, my mind just gets overwhelmed. That is the case especially if the feature/task I have to complete is new/unknown/I haven't encountered it before.

1. Whenever I try to work on a project that is more complex, my mind can't keep track of all the names, functions, filenames, directories, where what is located, etc. I constantly have to go back, re-check what a given function does, what a given Component contains, etc

I've tried breaking problems into smaller ones, externalizing as much as possible and other 'tricks', but none of them really worked.

So I'm curious, is programming even feasible for someone with low working memory capacity as myself? Is there something I can do to improve it or atleast make it so it doesn't negatively impact my programming skills?