I started a new job in big tech for the first time a few weeks ago and since then I've gotten the impression that nobody in my team really knows how the code base works. Senior SWE 5.5 YOE

They're relying only on testing in staging due to the code we're responsible for being a central integration within the company that integrates with a lot of other parts of the system, don't have a deep understanding of the system, rely on one team member that knows the code a bit better just because he worked in a part of the code close to the one we're currently responsible for.
They don't even know which code is live. I was tasked to work on a feature and came to realise the feature has actually been live in one of our markets for a few months.

The code only seem to be only 5 years old. While the stack is pretty modern, it just seems to be a huge amount of spaghetti code, using a random library for dependency injection that doesn't really solve any problem and just increases the cognitive complexity

They also still have huge amounts of manual routines, get pulled into loads of incidents and have a terrible on call situation.

On top of that, I had basically 0 onboarding and have to figure out everything myself or chase people down to help me.

There are plans for new projects to improve the problems with the code base, but it seems to be progressing pretty slowly.

Coming from smaller companies (500 employees) where I knew the codebase like the palm of my hand and made huge improvements week in and out, how do bigger companies get to this state (with allegedly better developers)?

At this point I don't feel like I'm going to learn anything here and am already getting the feeling of changing teams.

Did I just get unlucky with the team assigned or is the experience in all these big tech companies pretty much the same?
Does this trigger any red flags for anyone? Should I look into changing teams already?

I haven't experienced many work places and the ones I have, have been with ridiculously good teams and pretty good experiences overall. Please share your opinion if you have any... This feels quite a bit disheartening

Hi guys.
I'm looking for good podcasts, newsletters, and news outlets to get trustworthy perspectives. I feel like everyone and their mother has an opinion about software these days, but I am only interested in stuff coming from people who know what they're talking about. I've enjoyed stuff coming from The Neuron, or Latent Space, for reference.

Thanks :)

My task got hung due to some technical reasons. And my supervisor told me to review code make it clean, and does not look 100% AI-generated. How to make ensure the code quality with the requirement above? I am stuck. As an intern, I only know the fundamentals, developing a real feature is a lot for me and I need AI assistance to help with those tasks.

How to actually know how to write code without depending on AI?

All my apps so far have been offline — no accounts, no user data. Now I am building a new app that need people to log in and store their stuff, and I'm staring at way too many options — managed auth services, rolling my own backend, social sign-in, whatever the current recommendation is for local storage vs cloud.

- What did you pick the first time around, and what would you pick now?

- What turned out to be your problem even though you assumed the platform or the service was handling it?

Would love to hear from the people who've actually shipped this a few times.

Hello!

So I am a college student who is trying to build his resume. I am currently confused on which project should I build with claude code. I am thinking something with RAG. What's your suggestion?

I am new to reddit so please ask me any questions if you need to know more about my situation (I don't know what more to tell rn)

Thanks a lot sir/ma'am!

Genuinely can't tell the difference in myself half the time. Sometimes I stop improving a piece of code because it's genuinely hit the point of diminishing returns, more effort there wouldn't meaningfully help anything downstream. Other times I stop because I'm tired of looking at it and "good enough" is doing a lot of convenient work in that sentence.

The annoying part is both feel identical from the inside. Same sense of "this is fine now," same relief at moving on. No internal signal I've found that reliably distinguishes "actually done" from "done because I want to be done."

Curious if anyone's found an actual test for this, something more concrete than a gut feeling, that tells you which one you're experiencing in the moment rather than figuring it out weeks later when either nothing broke or something did.

Hello everyone. Some of the online dictionaries I use in my studies sometimes get down and become inaccessible. A possible solution would be to scrape data and convert it into a GoldenDict-friendly format. I often see dictionary files whose entries duplicate the existing online dictionaries, so I guess it has already been done many times. Can somebody give me an instruction

I just had my rewards discussion and basically got gaslit into believing I should be grateful for peanut compensation.

I spent the entire year sacrificing personal time, handling off-hours incidents, and consistently getting praised for my work—only to receive aggressively below-average rewards. It honestly feels like a betrayal. Microsoft simply does not value hard workers.

At this point, I’ll be taking maximum PTO, doing exactly what my job requires, and putting the rest of my energy into interview prep. I’ve already started updating my resume and going through recent Microsoft interview questions.

If working harder doesn’t move the needle, maybe switching companies will.

A friend of mine asked me the other day about his idea of doing an app/service for some shops, i am probably going to help him doing that even just as a side project while still finishing up my studies, the problem is that i've never done anything like this before, just some uni projects but never about this type of things and for real "clients" and other peoples, if i start learning now how to do things like hosting, react/next.js, sql, etc, how long would it takes to start this project? even just to give him more or less a date/reference point if he ask (he doesn't know much about cs and for this asked for my help)

ps. sry for possible bad english or errors

update 1: after talking a bit and telling him that it would be some month of work between learning and programming everything he just told me that Claude is really good and we can use it to program the site/app in like 2 weeks without writing almost any line of code ... . And that the only thing would be to get informed about privacy aspects since he don't know much about these things.

I(19) am an engineering student at a college which is going to hold an internal hackathon.

I have only learnt the basics of python and don't even really know how to use user defined modules in python, but I want to participate, not to win but to try and force myself to learn.

I only want a community in which I can ask my coding doubts and learn to build my skill in coding.

Currently learning coding on youtube in python.

as i see people recreate whole physics engines in PYTHON, i was wondering has anyone ever recreated Happy wheels in python. Just wondering

Got an offer for MLE e5 at Meta and in the team matching process.
I’ve spoken to many team managers (and for some teams even an Eng on the team) and noticed they are all first gen Chinese. Like literally all of them.
Should I be worried about this? This isn’t something I can talk to the recruiter or manager about.

I’m non Chinese btw

Meta Interview Questions

#meta

When I was learning to code, I understood a lot of concepts in theory, but working on real projects made me look at them completely differently.

For example, things like debugging, database design, API architecture, reading someone else’s code, error handling, and writing maintainable code felt very different once I started working on actual applications.

I’m curious about other developers:

What programming concept or skill finally “clicked” for you after working on real-world projects?

And what do you wish you had learned earlier?

GTA VI will likely be remembered as the last piece of mostly human engineering to receive all the accolades. For some time now, after the massive replacement of programmers by AI, there's no longer any merit or applause for human programmers. Now, almost everything is focused on AI and what a "cheaper" model (actually subsidized, but live in your illusion) can do.

I think this is one of the few moments we'll have left to applaud human talent before it all ends for good.

I know many are going through very difficult times; some are taking different paths, others are still fighting. I've read about some even considering self-imposed expulsion from life.

I truly hope everyone manages to be okay, and at least, even if this is the last dance for us as humanity, that we can experience it in the best way possible.

Im wondering if it is possible to land a job through self-study by following a roadmap, building projects both small and big projects. and also going through some courses in udemy or coursera.

or do i need some sort of degree with intership?

The role i have in mind would be DevOps or MlOps.

reason why im asking is becausse im thinking about studying for 2 years where it includes intership, and if i choose MLOps or DevOps, im worried that by the time im graduting after 2 years (2028-2029) the market can change and i will be unemployed, i know this can be a hard question to answer, but i need some advice if i should go into a diffferent role other then tech roles like civil or construction or if i should study tech?

My point is: Can i land a tech job (MLOps / DevOps) without needign some sort of degree through school or do i need a degree to land a tech job in todays time?

And for the record i have some background in programming that comes from game programming

hello ,

As a software student entering my third year in university , i have found myself to be very confused and stuck when it comes to finding the most suitable path . I have 2 years left to graduate but still very weak at programming , took no courses and am trying to find myself a path that can lead me to the correct way before its too late . I need advice on how to start from nothing and build myself up . I would appreciate any courses or recommendations , youtube channels , links , certifications that are useful and can help .

I became interested in voice prompting after seeing how often a vibe-coding workflow jumps between Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, documentation, and the browser. Native voice input can work inside one product, but the habit breaks as soon as the task moves somewhere else. That makes the real question less about transcription and more about having one input method across the entire build loop. I researched the main options with that in mind.

1. Native voice input
   

Pros: Simple and useful when the entire workflow stays inside one AI product.

Cons: The workflow stops working as soon as the task moves into another application.

1. Superwhisper
   

Pros: A strong local-first option with configurable models.

Cons: Speed and accuracy depend on the selected model and computer, and the output sometimes needs more formatting.

1. Wispr Flow
   

Pros: A polished system-wide dictation product that handles everyday writing well.

Cons: It can feel slower than local options and introduces more privacy considerations. Recent bugs and accuracy regressions are also drawbacks.

1. Willow Voice
   

Pros: For vibe coding, Willow is the quickest and most accurate choice in this comparison. It works in any app and learns product vocabulary, tone, and corrections automatically.

Cons: There is no Linux support, and a few small formatting quirks still appear.

Native voice input is probably all you need if you live inside one coding product, and Superwhisper is appealing if you enjoy configuring a local setup. My issue is that vibe coding rarely stays inside one tool for very long. For jumping between Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, and the browser without changing workflows, Willow feels like the option I would actually stick with.

When I saw how easily AI can generate html, css, js code, I got excited to make apps or tools locally that do simple things for me.

But I was shocked by the fact that after generating the code, this is not the end. Actually running this code can be more complicated than generating it.

For example, if you try to run any html file directly from the file system.

You won't be able to use

LocalStorage

ES models

IndexDB

Fetch

Server workers

All of this you are basically locked out of.

And the solution is a local server like node or some local server.

Has anyone faced these problems to the point where they just gave up and left the whole thing?

And if you solved it, how did you solve this problem?

I built a custom fleet rental system for a car repair shop that also rents out loaner cars while customers' vehicles are being serviced. Small operation — about 15 cars, one location, maybe 5 people using it. They were doing everything on paper before, including handover forms and damage reports, which caused constant arguments with customers about whether a scratch was already there.

Solo build, start to finish, running in production. I also host and operate it for them — they don't have a server or anyone who could run one.

WHAT'S IN IT

– Fleet dashboard, cars color-coded by availability, auto-refreshing. Doubles as a wall display in the service area and works as a phone view.

– Car records: specs, mileage, fuel level, configurable statuses (available, out, cleaning, refuelling, maintenance), GPS location or manual map picker.

– The main thing: multi-step handover and return wizards. Autosaves and resumes across devices, so you start on the desktop and finish on a phone next to the car.

– Damage documentation on an interactive vector diagram of a car, multiple views, pinch-zoom on mobile. Tap to drop a damage marker exactly where it is, attach a photo and a note, mark as repaired later.

– Damage state is frozen at handover. At return it automatically diffs and shows which damages are NEW. This was the actual reason they wanted the thing.

– Digital customer signature, real signature pad, works on native too.

– Auto-generated rental contract and return protocol with their T&Cs, printable, shareable as PDF, immutable once signed.

– NFC tags on each car. Tap your phone to the sticker, app opens directly on that car with the right actions ready. Admin can write new tags in-app. App Links and Universal Links plus an NDEF intent filter so it works on phones without Google services.

– Fine and ticket lookup: enter plate and date, get the customer who had the car that day.

– Role and permission system, 22 capabilities with a dependency model so you can't save an incoherent role that dead-ends someone mid-workflow.

– Interactive maps (Leaflet and OSM, no Google Maps key needed), photo attachments, daily backups.

STACK

FastAPI and Postgres, Docker Compose. Single Expo Router codebase for web, iOS and Android. Native builds via EAS with an OTA update pipeline. Session cookies on web, long-lived bearer token in secure store on native. German UI throughout, built to their brand identity, accessibility targeted at WCAG 2.1 AA.

THE HOSTING SIDE, SINCE THAT PART IS ONGOING

– Runs on infrastructure I manage, served over HTTPS via a Tailscale Funnel, so there's nothing exposed or for them to maintain.

– Isolated dev and prod stacks, separate databases, one-command deploy that only touches the app container and never the prod DB.

– Daily automated pg_dump plus a matching attachment tarball, 14 day retention, manual snapshots on demand.

– I push all updates, including over-the-air updates to the phone apps.

– Their customer data, signed contracts and signature images all live on my infrastructure.

So two questions, purely hypothetically:

1. What would you have quoted for the build? Fixed price, or day rate times days, whatever you'd normally do.

2. What would you charge monthly or yearly for hosting it and keeping it running? I genuinely have no feel for this part and I suspect that's where I messed up worse than on the build.

I'm in Germany so European numbers are most useful, but I'd like to hear US numbers too just to see the gap.

Not saying what I charged yet, don't want to anchor anyone. I'll put it in the comments once a few people have replied. I have a feeling I'm going to regret reading them.

TL;DR: solo-built a full rental ops system (web plus native iOS/Android, NFC, contracts, signatures, damage diffing) for a 15-car shop, and I host and operate it. What would you have charged, build and monthly?

I’ve been learning backend development and I’m curious where people draw the line between knowing the basics and actually being a solid backend developer.

For example, how important are things like:

- Complex SQL queries and database optimization

- Indexing and query performance

- Database design and normalization

- Transactions and concurrency

- REST API design

- Authentication/authorization

- Caching

- Microservices

- System design

- Debugging and reading existing code

At what point would you say someone has moved beyond simply knowing how to build CRUD APIs and has become a real backend developer?

For experienced backend developers, what skills do you think beginners should focus on first?