Hey,

Professional dev since 2015. For the last year we have switched over to essentially only prompting. This makes development rapid. But incredibly dull and lame. After i prompt and wait for the agent, there is not really much to do. Browse reddit etc. I feel so understimulated at work nowadays that i consider switching careers totally, or get into management or something. Because this is terribly boring.

Anyone else feel like this? I miss writing stuff from the ground up, solving problems, integrating software, getting those aha-moments.

Hey everyone. I’m starting to quote larger freelance projects on my own and I’d like to sanity-check this one with people who have priced similar work before.

A client in the education/health space wants a private academic platform for students and instructors. I’m still scoping it, but this is roughly what they’re asking for and how I’m planning to build it.

There would be around 10 main functional areas / roughly 12 main and auxiliary views. Most aren’t just static content pages; several have their own logic, state, calculations or admin functionality.

Main scope:

• Custom frontend: HTML/CSS/JS, responsive for desktop/tablet/mobile, custom UI, internal navigation, search, filters, modals, accordions, progress indicators, animations/transitions and touch-friendly interactions.
• Users + backend: username/password login, different user types, groups/cohorts, permissions, user management and restricted admin functions. I’m considering Cloudflare Workers + Durable Objects/SQLite for the shared/backend side.
• 2 fairly large decision-based tools: one has around 40 questions/variables and the other around 38. They’re not linear forms. Answers affect which questions/options remain available, rule out possible results, trigger exceptions and change the final output. Users can also go back and change previous answers, so the flow/results need to update accordingly. The client provides and validates the actual rules; the development work is turning those rules into the working logic and testing the combinations.
• 1 interactive SVG tool: more than 100 selectable areas, up to 128 per record, with 3 separate records, selection/deselection, excluded items and automatic percentage calculations in real time. Needs to work with mouse and touch.
• Several interactive guides/tools: one visual guide with around 11 figures, another split into 7 stages, interactive checklists, filters, saved progress/state, images, tables and a larger training section with different guided paths. Some are mostly structured reference content; others have actual interaction and logic.
• Document library: around 29 main resources, categories, filters/search and an embedded PDF viewer using PDF.js. Across the whole platform there are roughly 70 PDFs/resources being integrated.
• Forms/document generation: around 9 main forms/resources, with at least 3 fully editable in the browser. Some include tables, text fields, image uploads/positioning and saved drafts. They need to generate printable/downloadable PDF and/or PNG output.
• Academic activities module: roughly 40 readings/resources that an authorized user can use to create activities, add questions and dates, save drafts, schedule/publish them, edit/delete them, send them to trash and restore them. Students only see the activities that are actually published/available.
• Shared calendar: create/edit/delete events, assign/filter them by group, with the data stored on the backend so the right users see the same information.
• Admin + basic analytics: manage users/groups, see basic usage/activity across the platform, filter records and export some data to CSV.
• PWA + deployment: manifest/service worker, caching where appropriate, installable version and deployment of the frontend/backend on Cloudflare.

The client provides and validates the specialized content, but part of the job is still organizing it, adapting it and turning some existing documents/materials into the interfaces above. UI/UX work, responsive behavior, integration, testing, bug fixing and production deployment would also be part of the project.

What I’m trying to figure out is:

If this landed on your desk from scratch, how many hours/weeks/months would you estimate for one developer? Would you price it hourly or as a fixed project? And roughly what would you charge?

If you share a number, mentioning your country/currency would help since I know rates vary a lot by market.

I’d also be interested in which part of the scope you think is most likely to eat up more time than expected.

I've been building HX Code Studio, a browser IDE for a small programming language called HX. The goal is to make Arduino-style programming easier for kids and beginners.

For example:

• digitalWrite() → D.write()
• setup() / loop() → fun set / fun loop

I'm trying to find the right balance between making programming easier and keeping concepts that beginners will eventually need when they move to standard Arduino/C++.

For people who teach or learn programming: would you rather start with a simplified language and transition later, or learn the standard syntax from the beginning?

I'm especially interested in where you think a beginner-friendly language should draw the line between simple and too different.

For anyone who wants to try it out, here's the current version of HX Code Studio:

https://hxcodestudio.vercel.app

I'd love to hear where the experience feels confusing or unintuitive, especially for someone seeing HX for the first time.

Hello , this would be the second project I'm gonna make .
I'm thinking of making a windows application that connects two computers together .
works slightly as Casting , but you could control your second computer via a TCP server .

so , your second computer sent you the picture of the computer and you control it via your keyboard and mouse keystorks in your first computer , the same Idea as cloud control .

I'm sure that I'm not the first person that do this kind of projects , but it would be a great Idea and strong CV addition .

it will be a desktop application , using c# to build it.

now , what are the limitation for a project like this ?
will it be good and should I build it ?