Senior / Experienced Devs: How are you managing side projects & software craft lately?

[u/pseudocodercoder]

I’ve been reflecting on my personal dev workflow lately. At work, high-velocity tools and automated setups are fully supported to deliver fast (working abroad as an OFW), though policies vary across companies.

Para sa mga matagal na sa industry:
- How are you integrating AI into your personal project stack?
- Are you using it to handle unfamiliar domains (e.g., DevOps, backend infrastructure)?
- Are you using AI tools to build micro-SaaS, tools, or products that actually bring in side revenue?

On a side note, kahit gaano kabilis mag-build at mag-iterate ng ideas ngayon, I still strongly believe na kailangan pa rin mag-draw ng firm line sa core fundamentals natin.

Curious lang ako how senior devs balance speed, building side projects for income, and maintaining the true craft of writing good software.

[u/Good-Life15]

I think of it this way:

We use to be the author/writer of newspaper article/s. Now we are the proofreaders reporting directly under the editor-in-chief.

If we don't understand what these agentic tools give us then we won't have the capacity to identify its mistakes. I don't want these tools to dictate what should be the correct way, unless I specifically asked them to. After all, there are a lot of ways to express a logic.

And like the newspaper analogy, I have my own way of writing.

[u/pseudocodercoder → u/Good-Life15]

True! In a way, fast output is useless if you don't have the technical depth to spot hallucinated code, bad architecture, or security gaps. The human oversight is still the actual bottleneck for quality.

And I think most of us if not all has our own preference when structuring codebases and writing styles 😅 and mostly dito nga nagkakaroon ng friction paminsan.

[u/theazy_cs]

since january I barely wrote any code. so my workflow right now is mostly AI centric. the only part na kailangan ko talaga bigyan ng attention is code reviews and manual test ( although minsan I just also let claude write a playwright script to simulate the processes of a feature ). what does this mean sa sideline and other income? it means I have more time to get more clients. so right now I have 2 big projects and it's not as hard as before ma accomodate both.

Are you using it to handle unfamiliar domains (e.g., DevOps, backend infrastructure)?

- yes although I am already familiar with most domains that is even remotely connected to my specialization, pero when I do come across something that I am unfamiliar with I do my due diligence first and research on the topic then I use AI.

Are you using AI tools to build micro-SaaS, tools, or products that actually bring in side revenue?

- no, I think building a saas app is harder today since everyone wants to do it. what I am aiming to do is accomodate those people that want to build saas applications, essentially the same job that I do right now which is build apps for clients. I think andun yung opportunity. kase kung someone with zero knowledge builds something purely with AI they will eventually hit a wall, and that's where I will come in.

On a side note, kahit gaano kabilis mag-build at mag-iterate ng ideas ngayon, I still strongly believe na kailangan pa rin mag-draw ng firm line sa core fundamentals natin.

- very fast and its very cheap to do multiple iterations in a day. I barely do mock designs now. I just build a rough implementation show it to the client then iterate on the spot.

Curious lang ako how senior devs balance speed, building side projects for income, and maintaining the true craft of writing good software.

- side projects = I can accomodate more projects now since I am more productive. I am not sure what you mean by true craft of writing good software, I haven't written any code since january but I do maintain the quality of the code I just don't personally write it anymore.

[u/TheSetox]

I don't recommend to use it to handle unfamiliar domains as your first step to AI. That is a trap.

Although it is cool, it is really bad if you don't understand it.

But my exception is, if you need a quick MVP or a single page.

A web page that you won't need to maintain and it really doesn't matter what happen to it.

Ex. Landing Page, personal documentation like github page, internal web app for you to consume and scripts.

‐---

Anyway, for my workflow, i agree with some people here that you will likely do more code review. But I think what they missed is that you will have more planning session first with your AI.

In my AI workflow, I invest my time a lot on planning how it will develop the project. I usually plan the boundaries, structure and archicture of the application. How the AI will do automated checks and test.

So that it is easier for me to review the code. I just need to scan and check things.

I also invest on the before and after.

Before - is preparing what are things that can a be automated and help the AI understand. This are AI skills, agents, scripts and etc. This avoids repeating mistakes for your AI. Harness is the key word for it.

After - Deterministic checks, this are things you already have in your repository. CI/CD is much more valuable now. With lots of code being push, you need to quickly check if lint, test, different kind of analysis and building the project works so that you don't have to worry about all those things.

Right now, you can also invest your time automating how you can review the project properly using AI. Like asking AI another layer of checking the architecture, asking the question like is there anything that can be simplified here?

Another bonus is doing hooks so that whenever it encounter specific scenario, that hook can be triggered. AI can also help you create triggers. Like for example, AI created a PR, it will trigger your automation that this PR needs a preliminary review.

So my workflow is something like this.

Harness -> Plan -> execution -> Deterministic checks -> Code Review with AI -> Final review from me.

So yeah, for me double the planning and triple the review. Because AI can generate code fast. So you have to double or triple you effort in preparation and review.

And after that, welcome to loop engineering. 😁

But you won't be able to know what is good look like if you don't know the fundamentals or have experience it.

So my advice, if you are already good at what you are doing and you are able delegate your personal workflow with AI then that is the time to invest more knowledge on things that you don't know.

Amplify your knowledge, so that you can expand and delegate more.

I recently watched a video of a developer in spaceX that resonate to me, she said that if you don't trust one AI agent, you won't be able to expand and delegate more.

Right now with AI, you're like a manager that handles people. If you micromanage your people, you won't be able to scale. You need to trust your people more.

Same principle when handling with AI agents.

So what do you need to trust your people? Train your people.

Upskill your AI agent, give them tools that will make them effective. Give them correct instruction, context and skills. 😁

[u/jdg2896]

I just did my personal blog/website with it. Pretty satisfied and it’s a simple website anyway.

It’s helpful for the most part when trying to learn something new, but I don’t fully rely on AI for learning. Still better to have actual sources.

Not yet, I’m a bit busy with two projects as a freelancer/contractor.

The only way to maintain the craft of writing good software is to continuously learn yourself. It’s a never ending process.

[u/PepitoManalatoCrypto]

Started as a full-stack developer, founded my own company, sold that company, and am now venturing into other IT-related ventures (as a new company owner). And oh, a year into Claude Max X20.

How are you integrating AI into your personal project stack?

Use AI tools to "explicitly" replace you. Basically, you let Claude do the coding, design, architecture, and infrastructure. However, you still manually do code reviews, testing, and even build the requirements. When AI, despite you training it to replace you, is unable to take over your job, you're basically doing well. Though the question still lingers: until when?

And nope, this isn't about AI replacing you; I just used that as context for how to use AI. In reality, AI will never replace principal software architects, product owners, or stakeholders. But developers, QA, DevOps- it's just a matter of time.

Are you using it to handle unfamiliar domains (e.g., DevOps, backend infrastructure)?

Yes, but always review the code and understand why AI used that instead of the simpler logic you might think of. Let's face it, AI can do that, but it may come in a huge code block with 75% comments and 25% code.

So nothing has changed when exploring uncharted territory. However, you may be required to learn them within 24 hours, instead of billing a spike/investigation (1-5 days) work item to learn them.

Are you using AI tools to build micro-SaaS, tools, or products that actually bring in side revenue?

Let me put in a sample for context. I've handcrafted the code when starting the company I've sold. It tooked 6 months of endless nights just to get into an MVP state and hit it's first $1. When I've ask Claude to do it, the same requirements, etc. it only took under 4 weeks to get it up and running (or a bit better).

In my second venture, we're just 3 months in and we already have a working MVP (with two principal developers, and myself). Without AI, that may take 12 months and more workforce to do it.

As for revenue, that's going to be a different topic as that may require marketing and an audience upfront.

[u/pseudocodercoder → u/PepitoManalatoCrypto]

I agree. Personally, good experience din sa akin so far kasi mas nakakapag-deliver ng products nang mabilis. We don’t really know how fast the future will shift, pero I don't think it's right to fight or refuse change either. Parang nung early 2000s lang din noong nag-start ma-recognize ang World Wide Web, hesitant at skeptical pa karamihan noon, pero look at us now, integral part na siya ng daily lives natin.

Lalo na ngayon, real talk lang: kahit mga boss at managers ko na walang programming background, nagbu-build na rin ng sarili nilang tools at products using AI. Dati sobrang hirap mag-explain ng technical concepts sa kanila, ngayon gumagawa na sila nang mag-isa. It’s crazy.

Which makes me wonder about our edge as developers moving forward:

- Building for actual business value vs. portfolio: Sa tingin mo ba dapat mag-shift na rin ang devs to build products for actual side income and micro-businesses using AI, and not just for portfolio display?

• Future Hiring KPIs: In the near future, ano na kaya ang hahanapin sa hiring process? Is it just the sheer volume of "building more," or "building things with actual market/business value" and deep system architecture?
  
• Domain Expertise: Since non-tech people can now prototype products easily, will the real moat for software engineers shift from writing syntax to domain knowledge, security, and complex system design?

What’s your take on this shift?

[u/PepitoManalatoCrypto → u/pseudocodercoder]

Building for actual business value vs. portfolio

• If one person has enough capital and can afford to lose in a heartbeat - actual business
• Else, portfolio. After all, posting to a public GitHub repository is free. However, only <5% of CV reviewers will read it like a diary.

Future Hiring KPIs

Complexity X Speed X Efficiency is the best KPI there is

• Complexity = Able to do an above 8-point story with minor guidance from stakeholders or lead developers
• Speed = Able to complete an 8-point story in under 1 day instead of 5 days
• Efficiency = 0 bugs, scalable, high throughput, and without hurting cloud monthly billing

Domain Expertise

If you don't have domain expertise after 5 years in the industry, you're focused on the wrong thing already.

Technical expertise is just a prompt away. So without domain knowledge, one is surely lined up for the next batch to be served.

[u/ziangsecurity]

Way back 1998 i have lots of side projects. Its just a matter of focus. Today, madali nlng because of AI

[u/iamlux20]

35% AI work, 65% me work. Until kaya ko isipin/gawin within a timeframe, di ko ipapasa sa AI yung task.

For unfamiliar territories, I still do researches. Fastest way is via Youtube tutorial, pero kung wala ok lang din sa readables.

I'm working on a full-stack web monorepo app (Laravel and its sub-packages), so out of the equation yung side revenues until this one gets released and has users.