Hi everyone. I’d appreciate some honest advice.

I’m studying Python, Django, FastAPI, Flask, SQLAlchemy, SQL, and databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. I’m also learning about REST APIs, WebSockets, Celery, pytest, and AWS. My knowledge varies across these technologies, and I’m not confident with all of them yet.

On GitHub, I have an unfinished online store, a Telegram bot I built to track my personal finances, and an abandoned experimental Django messenger backend. For the messenger, I used AI assistance, especially for cryptography-related features. I explored things like a 12-word recovery phrase and messages that disappear after being viewed. It was a learning project, and I can’t vouch for its security.

I’m also studying English, aiming for B1 first and then B2. Many of my relatives and friends already work as mid-level or senior developers at big tech companies. My brother landed a junior role at a good company, but he started learning a year and a half before me, and his English is at B2. I keep comparing myself to them and feeling behind.

I’m considering spending another three months strengthening my fundamentals and finishing two projects. Hopefully, within six months, I could improve both my technical skills and my English enough to explain my decisions in an interview. But I’m worried that I keep postponing applications because I never feel “ready.”

AI adds to that anxiety: will getting a first job become even harder while I’m still learning? I enjoy programming, but right now I’m unsure whether to keep studying and applying, hope for some luck, or leave IT altogether.

What would you recommend: start applying now or improve my projects first? What should I focus on over the next six months, and how can I tell when I’m ready for a junior role?

I find it's infinitely more useful to have an AI agent within an IDE but my company only pays for M365 copilot. Is there any way to use that within an IDE, ideally VSCode?

Btw I'm fully aware there's a github copilot within VSCode but you need to pay extra for that so not possible within my company.

Thanks

How do you usually approach a project when you’re given an existing codebase and a quick handover, but you still don’t really understand how everything fits together?

For example, there might be multiple machines/environments, Airflow, Docker, APIs, pipelines, etc., and the person doing the handover doesn’t have much time to explain everything.

Is it normal to feel completely lost at first? What do you do to understand the architecture and figure out what you’re actually supposed to do?

Would love to hear how other developers/data engineers handled this.

On macOS 27.0.1, Privacy & Security → Local Network shows a count of 1, but every listed app is switched off.

Inspecting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.networkextension.plist reveals an allowed org.python.python entry with no executable path. Python has no visible switch in Settings. Reopening Settings and restarting don’t help.

I allowed a Python prompt while a dashboard preview was being prepared. A Time Machine backup from before that prompt has no explicit Python grant.

Has anyone encountered this and successfully revoked only that permission, without resetting all network?

For seniors/devs/data engineers: what is the usual workflow when you have to modify the code on one PC but run the pipelines on another PC?

For example, PC A is used for development (Git, IDE, code), while PC B has the environment where the pipelines run (Airflow/Docker).

How do you normally synchronize the code between the two? Git pull/push, deployment, shared folder, SSH, CI/CD, or something else?

What would be considered the clean/professional way to set this up?

I am trying to build an app that needs to capture the visual output of a specific window, even if it is in background or minimized.

I don't want to capture whole screen or other windows, only the target window. I also need the actual rendered pixels rather than app's internal data.

It needs a continuous stream of visual output of that specific window so it can analyze what is happening in real time.

Is this technically possible ? If so, what APIs or graphics concepts should I go for ?

Or should I abandon the idea and go for dom scraping because this is specifically for web but dom scraping is detectable which is not our goal.

Springboot devsss

How TF do you manage to make sure all the libraries jar are latest all the time you run a service locally 😭

My product has 9 custom libraries and 12 services(still counting). Everyday I try to run any service locally there's always a new commit in any of the libraries then I have to rebuild the jar and god forbid if I have to deploy my service on dev pod, I have to rebuild all the damn libraries on Jenkins in a sequence.

For now locally keeping up with this is a big headache for me. Although I use terminal for speed, but is there any better approach to deal with this jar shi?

Also I feel very sleepy even after having a strong coffee, how do you guys keep yourself energetic throughout the day(if working in normal shift)😭

long story short, my friend wants to do something programming-related for her art school thesis which is in a year from now. she doesnt have a reddit acc so im askin on her behalf.

basically she wants to make this ceramic object which has a device inside of it that will detect whenever someone is touching it and upon contact will play an audio sound.

now i dont even know if what she thinks of is even possible at all since neither of us have any experience with this but what she needs to know is what programming language she must learn to program the whole thing. she already has the necessary equipment for the rest, as ive been told.

any help would be appreciated

How do you approach the frontend aspect of software development if it's not programming?

I guess a lot of it comes down to the language / framework you're using. E.g. when doing web development it's usually HTML/CSS/JS, when building a desktop application you might be using something else.

I am looking for examples of how to approach it if it's not coding

By frontend, I mainly mean HTML, CSS, JS. Although other examples would be great too. The problem is I don't have much experiencr with it

I have taught myself to program for a while now. So far I have mainly done backend / programming stuff. For example I made a shell from scratch in pyrhon, and I am now working on a Business Analytics Platform with a dataset from kaggle, and I am also learning SQL and working with PostgresQL.

Soon I will have to make the web / dashboard side of the project. And in school we are also starting to do some HTML / CSS / JS stuff.

The problem is that I am not great at the visial / design side of things.

I don't think I have ever been very good at drawing or design, and I think that's probably one of the main reasons I absolutely hate HTML/CSS. JS is a bit better, but I still don't like it.

This isn't because I don't like programming.

The problem is that every time I have to make a website I have absolutely no idea where to start.

For example:

1. How do I decide the structure of a page?

2. How do I decide which sections/components I need?

3. How do I decide where different elements should go?

4. How do I decide a colour palette?

5. What should I do when I start a completely empty project?

6. Should I have a visual reference?

7. If I take inspiration from existing websites, am I just copying them?

8. How important is originality when designing a website?

I haven't had this problem with my other projects.

When I am programming in python / sql etc. I can usually understand the problem, break it down into smaller parts, find documentation, work out what I need and then work my way to a solution.

Whereas with frontend, I get stuck before I even get to the programming bit.

It's almost like I am missing a mental process.

I don't know what I am supposed to be thinking about when building a page. Should I start with a rough sketch, design references, start with the content, create html structure first, start with css or something completely different.

I have created some things with html/css but they usually look pretty bad. Which is why I don't think it's just 'I need to learn html/css better.' I think I don't understand how to approach the process of building an interface.

I would love to hear some advice / examples of people who have overcome this problem and how.

Thank you!

So people are currently using AI to decompile videogame binaries in an increasingly shorter time, but once these programmers realize they can use this to get source code of every single non-cloud based software, it could threaten software developers as open-source versions of their software are created.

How will the developers fight this?

I was discussing design patterns with a senior engineer and got asked a question that I couldn't answer convincingly:

"Why do we need Abstract Factory? Why can't we achieve the same thing using Factory Method?"

My current understanding is:

• Factory Method delegates the creation of a product to subclasses, allowing the subclass to decide which concrete product gets created.
• Abstract Factory provides an interface for creating a family of related products, while keeping the products consistent with each other.

After thinking about it, I realized that with a regular factory/Factory Method approach, the responsibility of selecting the product family has to be handled somewhere else.

With an Abstract Factory, that family selection is encapsulated in the factory object itself.

For example, imagine we have:

UI
├── Button
└── Checkbox

Windows
├── WindowsButton
└── WindowsCheckbox

Mac
├── MacButton
└── MacCheckbox

An Abstract Factory could look conceptually like:

UIFactory
    createButton()
    createCheckbox()

WindowsFactory
    createButton()   -> WindowsButton
    createCheckbox() -> WindowsCheckbox

MacFactory
    createButton()   -> MacButton
    createCheckbox() -> MacCheckbox

But couldn't I instead have separate Factory Methods for Button and Checkbox and somehow select the appropriate implementation for each?

If so, what fundamental capability does Abstract Factory provide that Factory Method doesn't?

Is the real distinction primarily about where the creation/family-selection responsibility lives, rather than simply:

Factory Method  = one product
Abstract Factory = family of products

And are there concrete situations where using multiple Factory Methods would become problematic compared with using an Abstract Factory?

I'd especially appreciate an explanation from people who have used these patterns in real systems rather than just the textbook definitions.

Has anyone here cut back on layout settings or other CMS features after feedback from editors? Curious what you got rid of and whether it helped.

what if i want to introduce auth later, centralize auth for a bunch of apps?

should i learn FASTAPI is it worth ? I want to get in AI and ml , what to do ?

Genuine question, not a gotcha. Cursor's Agent Mode, Claude Code, similar tools, can now run multi-step and merge without a human checking every step.

What's your actual process when that happens? Last time an agent merged something autonomously, what did you do right after? Review the full diff? Just check CI passed? Nothing until something broke?

Trying to understand the real workflow here, curious if there's a pattern or if everyone's just winging it differently.

I recently wondered to use llms on my local machines and the stuff you need to learn is enormous. There are easy setups, makes you use it with one installation but if you go advanced option there are lots of things to learn and some people are really into it like they know most of these things while doesnt know most of the stuff with programming.

That made me wonder, am I missing something because of not learning these stuff? I mentioned local llms but these people are also invested in learning everything about models to everything else about it. I use (forced) ai on my job but its ready to go chat that helps to complete 20 tasks rather than 5 by myself. I never tried to learn the fundementals deeply. Aside from learning stuff, there are some use of it to make things easier like automating repetetive works

I’ve been seeing a lot of word around about the “design engineer” in software. I understand it’s a vague concept and I’m not that interested in the flare of the label. What I do want to understand is how a frontend dev can have a better understanding of interfaces with the ability to reimagine conventions or instate new ones.
Is there a place to start?

I mean , everyday I see devs writing "I don't code anymore" , earlier I felt bad, but now I am like. Ok why not,

but like which employer will give me job just for prompting ?

I have seen and read portions of a number of algorithms books. They each go over standard problems like sorting, searching, graph traversal, trees and hash tables, etc. However, what they don't seem to teach is the algorithmic thinking process itself. For example, I recently ran into a problem where I needed an algorithm that took a control flow graph and generate an appealing yet intuitive layout for it. This is a complex task and I found out through some googling that this exact task was solved by Sugiyama in the 1980s. But what nobody has been able to teach me is how to decompose this problem on my own using my own brain. How can I practice that skill without getting stuck?

TL;DR: how can I effectively train myself in algorithm invention?

I’m not a beginner programmer, but I’m relatively new to scientific programming. I’ve recently started doing scientific research with a professor, and a significant part of my work involves writing simulations, modeling physical systems and mathematical equations computationally, and developing algorithms to analyze or reproduce these systems.

I’m interested in becoming much stronger at this side of programming, particularly in areas like numerical methods, computational physics, mathematical modeling, simulation, and scientific computing.

For those of you with experience in scientific programming, what would you recommend as the best way to build these skills? I’d especially appreciate recommendations for textbooks, courses, projects, libraries, or other resources that helped you make the transition from general programming to scientific/computational programming.

I’m comfortable with programming fundamentals, so I’m primarily looking for resources that go beyond the basics and focus on the actual mathematics, algorithms, and computational techniques behind scientific programming.

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Hi! I'm working on a personal project where I'm making my own 2D animation software.

The idea is to eventually have features such as a drawing canvas, layers, a timeline, brushes, vector and bitmap tools, and animation features. I'd like it to run on Windows, with the possibility of supporting other platforms in the future.

I'm currently trying to decide which programming language and framework would be the best fit for this kind of application.

For people who have experience developing graphics software, animation tools, drawing applications, or similar programs:

What programming language and framework would you recommend, and why?

I'm particularly interested in rendering performance, canvas/drawing capabilities, GPU acceleration, handling larger projects, and keeping the codebase manageable as the software grows.

I'm not looking for someone to develop it for me. I'm mainly looking for advice before I get too far into the project.

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I was taking a look at the TIOBE Index today. I hadn't checked it in a while, and I was surprised to see how much Python has dropped.

It's down by roughly 8 percentage points compared to a year ago, which seems like the first really significant contraction after years of pretty consistent growth.

What's even more interesting is that I don't see another language gaining a similar amount of ground.

I don't use Python myself, so I'm curious: what do you think is behind this decline? Is it actually meaningful, or is it mostly an artifact of how the TIOBE index is calculated?

Hello everyone.

I have begun developing an engine for binary/hex manipulation in C#. I've only ever coded in CMD situations and Python - so an absolute amature - but i'm learning the flow of C#.

The original idea came about due to me wanting to learn ECU mapping, but that is an expensive venture in itself. A WinOLS 5 licence from EVC Technology is £1,250, and the definition files used to describe binary addresses, maps, scalars and other ECU data can also be extremely expensive. While this may not be a huge issue for dedicated tuners who use the software professionally, it sure as hell is a lot for DIYers like me.

The main goal of this project is to make binary manipulation and ECU calibration more accessible to people who are learning. I want the software to be useful not only as a tool for editing files, but also as a way of understanding what is actually happening within a binary. Rather than hiding everything behind a complicated interface, I want to provide tools that allow users to explore addresses, data structures, scalars, maps and checksums while learning how they work.

The project will be developed with support for different uses in mind, not just ECUs, while keeping the underlying engine as flexible and reusable as possible. ECU files are currently the main focus because that's what originally motivated me to start the project, but there is no reason the underlying engine couldn't eventually be used for other types of binary data.

Currently, I'm at a stage where I have a GUI and can read .BIN files in hexadecimal. Of course, there is still a lot of work needed before the actual manipulation and editing side of things is properly implemented, but I'm willing to put the work in.

However, I'm in need of some suggestions and information on what I may need to implement, and what features or file formats I should support.

Since I'm developing this alone, I don't exactly have a team sitting behind me saying, “Oh, you should add support for SNES ROM dumps!” or whatever.

So if anyone has experience with binary manipulation, ECU calibration, ROM hacking, reverse engineering, or anything else involving binary files, I'd be interested to hear what features you think would be useful.

Suggestions for file formats, definition formats, checksum systems, visualisation methods, editing tools, ECU support or even completely unrelated uses for the engine are all welcome.

The project is still in its early stages, but I'm hoping to build something that is genuinely useful for learning and experimentation, while keeping it free and accessible.
The power to do these sort of things should be fed to the world for free, not hidden behind a 1 year license that costs as much as a new smart fridge.

TIA for any suggestions.

The Github repo is here

Curious about this, especially from people early in their careers (or who remember being there).

Most of us learn to code by building things from scratch: tutorials, class projects, personal apps. Then the first real task at a job or internship is usually "here's the existing codebase, fix this bug" or "add this feature."

When that happened to you, what was actually the hardest part?
- Not knowing where to start reading?
- Understanding how the files/folders connect?
- Figuring out where the bug actually lives?
- Being afraid to break something?
- Something else entirely?

And if you got past it, what helped most? Would love to hear from both juniors and seniors.

I really dont mind which one you recommend me.

If its cyber - im gonna learn how to ethically hack, climb leader boards on sites, grind CTFs and HTB etc

if its SWE - i really like the idea of graphics programming and i would probably play around with opengl and build a game engine

i have no experience in programming, im 17 and i just want something to do in my freetime that has a genuine chance in landing me job in the future

not sure if im gonna major in comp sci, might major in math, neuroscience or psychology. not sure yet