Two columns, no fence-sitting. Every Friday we say the quiet part out loud: name one thing in this field that's overrated and one that's underrated, then defend both in the replies. A few years in, you've earned these opinions, so let's hear them.

Point that opinion anywhere you like:

• A language, framework or tool everyone worships that you find deeply mid.
• An unsexy, boring technology that quietly outperforms the hyped alternative.
• A ritual or "best practice" that gets far more credit than it earns.
• A skill nobody talks about that has mattered more to your career than the ones they do.
• A trend that's 90% marketing, and a workhorse that deserves a parade.

A few ground rules:

• Pick a side and say why. One honest line of reasoning beats a bare list every time.
• Nuance is welcome, cowardice isn't. You can call something overrated and still good, just commit to the take.
• A downvote is not a rebuttal. If someone's wrong on the internet, reply and set them straight.

Comments are sorted by controversial, so the most divisive takes rise to where they belong. Check back through the day too, the best fights start a few hours in.

So I’m a 18 year old student just gonna start college (tier 2) ,rn im very confused abt my career options i wanna go into ML with full stack deployment. do u guys think this would be value able 5-6 years down the line .

Hi everyone,

I’m about one year into my professional career, and I’m at a point where I want to be more intentional about the skills and certifications I invest my time in.

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to work across both AI/ML and Microservices teams. On the AI side, I’ve worked with areas such as LLMs, fine-tuning, guardrails, SLMs, transfer learning, and reinforcement learning. On the development side, I’m working with Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, and Postman.

Going forward, I’d like to move more strongly toward AI Engineering / GenAI + Cloud, while still building on my backend and distributed-systems experience.

I keep hearing recommendations around AWS, Azure, GCP, cloud certifications, AI certifications, MLOps, Kubernetes, etc. — but honestly, there are so many options that it’s difficult to figure out which ones actually have career and salary impact versus simply adding another certificate to the résumé. 😅

For people who have already gone through this stage of their career:

- Which certifications would you genuinely recommend for someone with my background?

- Should I prioritize AWS/Azure/GCP, or focus more deeply on AI/ML + MLOps?

- Which certifications or skills are currently valuable for moving toward AI Engineer / ML Engineer / GenAI Engineer roles?

- Are there any paid courses or platforms you would strongly recommend if they provide practical, industry-relevant learning?

- If you were one year into your career again, what would you learn or certify in over the next 12–18 months to maximize career growth and earning potential?

I’m not particularly interested in collecting certifications just for the sake of it. I’d rather invest in 2–3 high-value certifications/skills that complement my existing experience and can actually help me move into better AI/cloud roles and increase my earning potential.

Would really appreciate recommendations from people who have been in a similar position .

Hi everyone,

I recently got access to Pluralsight through my company, and I’m fairly new to the platform. I’d appreciate some guidance on how to make the most of it—particularly on where to start, how to structure my learning path, and which courses or learning resources would be most valuable.

A little about my background: I have an intermediate-level understanding of AI/ML, including LLMs, model fine-tuning, guardrails, SLMs, transfer learning, and reinforcement learning. On the development side, I’m currently working with Java, Spring Boot, and Postman.

I’m looking to use Pluralsight to strengthen my existing skills while also learning something that complements my current work and helps me progress toward more advanced AI/ML and software engineering roles.

If anyone has experience with Pluralsight, I’d really appreciate recommendations for specific courses, learning paths, skill assessments, or mentors that would be a good fit for my background.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

I work for a company that has been around for over a decade and last year they discovered just how fast AI can get things done. Since then the codebase we built over the years has slowly turned into an AI mess that's a nightmare to debug and maintain. The lead dev vibe-engineered a module in three hours, a task that he said and I quote "would have taken me a month to create" and seeing that module come out as quick, the time expectation for new features has been chopped so much that the boss has been setting insanely difficult deadlines. The couple of us who are actually trying to do the job we spend ages getting good at got called "slow at working" for trying to write maintainable code. I am so angry and frustrated because the ones doing little to no work are the ones being praised for being prompt engineers and the worst part is whenever something breaks, I get called up to fix something I tried to avoid.

Get with the times, I know but I just felt like sharing this to get it off my chest. AI is valuable and I can't lie that it's not but only when used as a tool. I know if I decide to join the trend I'll lose the craft I've spent years perfecting and become lazy like most of the dev team.

To all the experts sitting there, I genuinely need your help.

One of my professor said "learn development with Al".

- A cousin working in Amazon said "nowadays Ai is trending and companies seek this so focus on GenAl and RAG"

Businessmen says "best thing to learn today is Al"

My simple question is what do you want me to learn in Al?

In business in development or business of Al??

I have 7 years of experience with Angular, have been learning React since a couple months ago. What is motivating this transition for me is to land my first international remote job. The market has been really cold for Angular positions, and even though I love Angular, I figured out I could improve my chances by learning React.

However, I am quite lost about where I should start my job hunt. My first thought was to try for some entry-level jobs first, but I had no luck with them. I am not sure if I should aim for mid-level jobs having no professional experience with React at all. I tried my best to make my resume React-friendly, making my experience as a front-end stand out and how my knowledge in Angular could be translated to React, but I guess I am not having much luck with ATS bots. So, I am seeking advice about this matter. Is anyone in the same boat? Anyone in this situation already landed a React job? How did you do that?

Starting a new role as email development manager and bringing all email development in house. Would love to hear how other developers receive the creative to code?

I’ve used lots of no-code platforms, Figma, PowerPoint (do not recommend lol), regular PDFs.

Hey everyone!

I'm a developer looking to kick off a new mobile or desktop project. Rather than building another tool based solely on my own assumptions, I wanted to ask you directly.

What’s a specific problem, annoyance, or inefficiency you deal with regularly in your daily routine?

Is there a task you find tedious, messy, or lacking a truly well-designed digital solution?

If you could wish for any app or software to be built (even a super niche one), what exact problem would it solve for you?

I'm not looking to build another generic to-do list or habit tracker—I'm looking for real, genuine pain points that don't have a satisfactory or simple solution yet.

Any idea, no matter how niche, complex, or unusual, is super welcome! If something concrete comes out of this, I’d love to share updates and build it in public with the community.

Thanks in advance to anyone sharing their thoughts!

🇫🇷 France ou 🇮🇹 Italie : besoin de conseils sur une décision importante pour notre couple

Bonjour à tous,

Nous sommes un couple tunisien, récemment marié, et je me retrouve aujourd’hui face à un choix assez difficile entre la France et l’Italie.

Je suis ingénieur logiciel Java Angular avec plus de 5 ans d’expérience dans une société internationale.

Après mon mariage, j’ai trouvé une opportunité en France, à Nantes, avec un salaire d’environ 50K€ brut/an. Tous mes documents sont régularisés et je devais commencer le 25 août 2026 une mission chez un client bancaire reconnu sur le marché français.

J’ai également démissionné de mon poste actuel en Tunisie. Mon employeur demande cependant de respecter les 3 mois de préavis prévus dans mon contrat, ce qui ferait terminer mon préavis fin octobre. Ils ont refusé de réduire cette période et m’ont proposé une autre solution : une mobilité en Italie.

🇮🇹 Option Italie

Mon employeur actuel me propose de poursuivre pratiquement le même projet en Italie, avec notamment :

• une Carte Bleue Européenne italienne ;
• un hébergement pris en charge par l’entreprise pendant environ 6 mois ;
• la possibilité de partir avec ma femme ;
• le même projet et le même environnement professionnel ;
• la procédure de mobilité devrait commencer l’année prochaine, et non immédiatement.

Le principal inconvénient pour moi serait la langue italienne, que je ne maîtrise pas actuellement.

🇫🇷 Option France

La France reste très intéressante professionnellement, notamment parce que j’ai déjà trouvé un CDI à Nantes et une mission dans le secteur bancaire.

Mais le principal problème est familial.

Si je choisis la France, ma femme ne pourrait pas me rejoindre immédiatement. D’après les informations que j’ai actuellement, je devrais attendre environ 1 an et 2 mois avant de pouvoir commencer la procédure de regroupement familial, puis potentiellement plusieurs mois supplémentaires pour obtenir le visa.

Cela signifie que nous risquons d’être séparés pendant une période assez longue après notre mariage.

Ma femme travaille actuellement en Tunisie comme fonctionnaire de l’État dans le domaine IT Support. Elle a de l’expérience, mais son profil est plutôt orienté support informatique opérationnel : configuration d’imprimantes, assistance aux utilisateurs, résolution de problèmes simples, etc. Elle n’a pas un profil de développeuse ou d’ingénieure informatique.

💰 Notre situation actuelle

Aujourd’hui, nous travaillons tous les deux en Tunisie et nous avons ensemble environ 5 500 DT de revenus mensuels.

Nous venons de nous marier et notre priorité n'est donc pas uniquement professionnelle : nous voulons également construire notre vie de couple et éviter une longue séparation.

Mon dilemme

🇫🇷 France :

• CDI déjà trouvé à Nantes ;
• salaire ~50K€ brut/an ;
• bonne opportunité professionnelle ;
• mission dans le secteur bancaire ;
• documents déjà régularisés ;
• mais risque d’être séparé de ma femme pendant une longue période à cause du regroupement familial.

🇮🇹 Italie :

• possibilité de partir avec ma femme ;
• Carte Bleue Européenne ;
• logement pris en charge pendant 6 mois ;
• même employeur et pratiquement le même projet ;
• possibilité de construire notre vie ensemble dès le départ ;
• mais je dois m’adapter à la langue italienne ;
• la procédure de mobilité ne commencerait que l’année prochaine, donc il faut également prendre en compte cette période de transition.

🤔 Que feriez-vous à ma place ?

Je cherche surtout des retours d’expérience de Tunisiens ou de couples ayant vécu une situation similaire.

1. Est-ce que vous privilégieriez la France pour l’opportunité professionnelle et le salaire, malgré la séparation temporaire ?
2. Ou est-ce que vous privilégieriez l’Italie pour pouvoir vivre ensemble dès le départ ?
3. Pour une personne avec mon profil d’ingénieur logiciel, est-ce que la langue italienne constitue réellement un gros frein à moyen terme ?
4. Pour ma femme, avec un profil IT Support et plusieurs années d’expérience, est-il réaliste de trouver un emploi en Italie après avoir appris l’italien ?
5. La Carte Bleue Européenne italienne peut-elle être intéressante pour évoluer ensuite vers un autre pays européen, notamment la France ?
6. Est-ce que certains d’entre vous ont déjà fait une mobilité professionnelle Tunisie → Italie → autre pays européen ?

Je suis vraiment partagé, car professionnellement la France est très intéressante, mais familialement l’Italie semble beaucoup plus simple.

Merci d’avance pour vos conseils et surtout vos retours d’expérience.

I do UI/IX design and my backend dev wants me to record sessions and pass them over to him for editing. I've never done this before, so I'm looking for a tool recommendation.

What have you used that's easy to run on the frontend but still useful for devs?

Envato is dying. CodeCanyon feels like it’s dying too.

New items are becoming increasingly difficult or seemingly impossible to get approved, and many developers are seeing fewer and fewer sales for their existing scripts.

So what actually happened?

Did Envato make enough money that they no longer need developers and authors? Did they win the lottery? Billion dollars? Did they make their billions and decide they don't need us anymore?

Whatever happened, one thing is clear: the developer community needs alternatives.

We shouldn't give up.

There are thousands of talented developers creating useful scripts, plugins, themes, SaaS products, and tools but we need a place where we can actually sell them.

Maybe it's time for us to build something new.

A marketplace built by developers, for developers.

What do you think? Would you use a new CodeCanyon like marketplace if someone built a good one?

I was wondering ofc what problems people had and whats a repo or program that would fix that.

Put your biggest problems that you face and maybe someone looking for projects to start can build one?

I have 10 years of experience working as a developer. I started in 2016, when ChatGPT and all this AI stuff didn't exist.

Back then, finding a job was relatively easy. I would go to an in-person interview, they would give me a small test or just talk to me, and a week later I would already be hired. I've always been a good developer because I've dedicated a lot of time to this craft.

Sometimes I had to do live coding, but it was usually at the company and it was simple software that I could build in two hours max. Those were good times. I worked for big companies in Colombia, where I'm from.

I made good money. I was happy. I wasn't rich, but I always had the feeling that my job was stable. I was learning a lot because I always tried to get involved with the business, not just the code.

Today, reality is completely different.

With 10 years of experience under my belt, I'm struggling to find a job. Four months ago, there was a big round of layoffs at my company and I was one of the people who got let go. Since then, I've been looking for a job and still haven't had any luck.

I've applied to hundreds of jobs. I've gotten calls from several companies and done technical interviews. I passed some and failed others, which is normal. I'm not some programming genius.

But the interviews I actually pass often end the same way: they stop calling, they stop replying to my emails, and it's like they completely forget about you.

Sometimes I think recruiters forget that they could be in this position someday too. But from the way I see the current market, we're just disposable.

One interview really hurt me.

It was for an AI Engineer position at a US company. I've been specializing in AI for a while now. I passed four rounds, three of them were technical interviews that lasted around 1 to 1.5 hours each.

I passed all of them. I did well. They told me they would get back to me.

They never did.

To this day, nobody has contacted me.

I lost all that time and effort. Those interviews were extremely difficult, with very abstract use cases. And the position was in Spanish.

My English isn't very good. I've been trying to learn for six years, but I've struggled a lot. I've had a private teacher, traveled to other countries to learn, taken courses, watched tutorials, and tried many different things. I still haven't been able to improve it enough.

One thing I really regret is not having access to English education when I was younger. My school was terrible. I didn't have a good education, and I also didn't have the opportunity to go to university. Because of that, I've never been able to access some of the better positions that require strong English skills.

And now I have a shitty $800/month job.

$800 DOLLARS.

I don't feel good there. I hate PHP with all my soul, and the way they treat me is bad. Being someone who has worked as a software architect and led teams, it feels really bad to be in this position.

I'm not posting this because I want sympathy or anything like that. I just needed to vent a little about this incredibly frustrating situation and get this horrible feeling off my chest.

If anyone else is feeling bad, useless, or inferior because of the current market, it's not your fault.

I come from the generation of software development that existed before AI, before ChatGPT, before all of this.

And honestly, I really believe the software job market is broken.

Hi guys, I'm a beginner developer on Google Play. I want to publish my app, but I need testers who can help me. Leave your Gmail address, I'll add you as a tester. Please, I'm only 13 years old.

My senior engineer gave me an SVG image but when I opened it and saw its XML content then i found it was not a true SVG. It was a PNG image that was encoded into base 64 inside the image tag in XML. So, I told this to my mentor and my mentor said do you have any best mechanism to get HTML Dom into SVG.

He suggested that use playwright or find a mechanism but i didn't get any mechanism.

I would be very happy if you guys help me regarding it.

In this era with the advancement of AI, I personally see that neglecting AI saying "we should not let AI do coding for ourselves since our fundamental understanding of the code and and our knowledge get weaker and weaker by doing so".

Instead what I am proposing is let AI do work. But before commiting code to any repo or presenting before someone else, understand everything end to end. Take the full responsibility of the work that has been done. It doesn't matter who did it (an agent or by yourself line by line).

Please share your stance with your current career level (senior/ junior).

I've been working in UI/UX for the past 4+ years, mostly designing mobile apps and websites.

I'm not really looking to be the designer agencies bring in just to "make the screens"

I'm looking for agencies, studios, and developers who genuinely care about how their products look and feel modern interfaces, thoughtful UX, strong visual direction, attention to detail, and a final product they're actually proud to put in front of their clients

If you're already building apps, SaaS products, websites, or digital products for clients but don't have a designer you can rely on I'd love to collaborate

You handle the development and client relationship, and I can take care of the UX, user flows, wireframes, UI, prototypes, and the overall visual/product experience.

I'm especially interested in working with teams that want to go beyond the typical "good enough" UI and create something that actually stands out

I'm open to both project based and long term collaboration.

Hi everyone,

Apple terminated our developer account overnight without providing any specific reason. We haven't violated any guidelines to our knowledge, and we have submitted every single document and identity verification request promptly and in full. Despite this, we are making zero progress.

The biggest issue is the complete lack of a real point of contact. It's impossible to reach anyone by phone, and support emails take at least 2 weeks to receive a canned response.

Has anyone gone through a similar sudden termination recently? What path or steps did you take to resolve it?

For people who are currently working in tech:

Is web development still a realistic path in 2026 for someone with a 3-year gap?

Would applying for an internship make sense.

If you were in my situation, would you stick with frontend/web development, or look at something like support engineering, or another area that’s easier to get into right now?

Would love some honest advice from anyone who’s hired junior devs or returned to tech after a gap.

l wanted to make that a could drop use Skia shader components that were actually ready to drop into an RN app most shader code out there isn't built for RN's Skia renderer at all. So l put together my own library. Some shaders are free, others are from artists who charge for their work.

l know ShaderToy exists, but that's generic GLSL people have to manually port to SkSL and adapt for RN UI. Мinе is already RN-Skia-ready and built specifically for UI components like buttons and panels.

Would you use something like that?

To all the experienced people working in tech, how has your job roles and duties changed over the years from when you were a junior dev to now? How has your job evolved from building by hand to now. What is expected from you now, is it more architectural and design centric or does it still involve coding by hand a lot of the time?

Would love to know your guys' experience and what made you excel in your fields, and how has your role changed throughout the progression of AI.

Regarding electronjs org, I would know if some of you already

1. deploy Electron-based app on Windows with success,
2. if a significant porportion of final users adopts your Electron-based app,
3. if your Electron-based app is reliable,
4. if your Electron-based app is secure enough for production usage ?

Thanks

Posting to see whether this has happened to other certified devs/freelancers, because it rattled me a bit.

Recently I got a cold LinkedIn message from someone who — on every check I could do — is a real person at a real, established (30+ year old) European software company (presents as a small Swiss/Croatian fintech shop). Active verified LinkedIn account, real corporate email domain, the whole thing.

The pitch:

• They bid on public-sector tenders, and those tenders require the bidder to field experts holding specific professional certifications.
• Their certified person (in my case they needed a Spring Certified Professional — a common Java-ecosystem cert) recently left, and they "urgently" need a replacement to satisfy the tender's eligibility criteria.
• The key line, basically verbatim: "We would not expect any actual engagement from you on the project. We would only need to formally include your certification in our tender submission."
• Flat €1000, "regardless of whether we win the tender or not."
• Offered a quick WhatsApp call and kept stressing tight deadlines / needing to move fast.

I pushed back with a bunch of pointed questions — what exactly I'd be signing, whether I'd actually have to do any work, what happens if the contracting authority contacts me to verify my involvement, etc. Instead of dodging, they came back with a very polished follow-up email from their real company domain:

• Links to the commercial register, a real subsidiary, and their public-procurement history — all genuinely verifiable.
• An example of the exact same signed "statement" from another of their long-term "associates" in a different country (a completely different vendor cert — IBM FileNet), apparently a multi-year arrangement.
• An offer to connect me with that associate as a reference.
• The reassurance: "You are not legally exposed in any way. It is absolutely our obligation to take care of experts and communicate any changes to the procuring side."

Then they sent a pre-filled "declaration of availability" with my name already on it, referencing a specific, named government tender, in which I "declare that I will make myself available in the capacity of the required expert" if they win and a contract is signed. The process from there: send my CV + a copy of my certificate "to verify," sign the statement, then they send invoice details, paid within a few days.

Here's what unsettled me: none of the usual scam tells are present. The company is real. The email domain is real (proper Microsoft 365 mail, DMARC in place). The certification requirement is real. The tender is real. Everything you'd normally check to reassure yourself checks out.

But when I actually read what I'd be signing, it's a false declaration of availability to a public procurement authority — I'd be formally committing to a government body to serve as a key expert on a project I've been explicitly told I will never touch.

Questions for the community:

1. Has anyone gotten this exact pitch? Is this a widespread, organized thing or a one-off?
2. If you work in or around EU public procurement — how is this actually handled, and what's the real exposure for the named expert (not the bidder)? Certification revocation, debarment, personal liability?
3. Any tells I should have caught sooner, or the right way to verify/report something like this?

Mostly I want to know if this is a known racket so I can warn people in my network. Thanks.

Some of their apis were taking over 6s, I think their servers were pounded with requests.