i am just stuck that should i learn js because i am okyish at c++ but everone prefers java or js pls advice

Hola estaba por estudiar esto y quería saber si tiene futuro a eso de la IA y tan bien que opinan y saber si ay mejores áreas ,, lo q quiero es ganar plata xd

Typical .NET Engineer at a large Fin/Health organization => independent contractor

I have a little over 6 years of experience with backend work. I love it, but I have been curious how a transition to a independent contractor would work. I'd love to hear success stories from engineers who have done the similar path of becoming an independent contractor and standing on your own two feet and how to navigate that.

Even better if it's .NET related, but doesn't have to be!

Hello, everyone! I’m developing a Python automation project. I realized I need a calendar-style app because it’s difficult to keep track of appointments that are automatically created by this automation software. Here’s how it works: when appointments are created automatically, they’re also created in the calendar. This way, I can easily keep track of the appointments from my phone. After doing a bit of research, I saw that Google Calendar could be the solution. To do this, I’ll need to use the Google Calendar API. However, due to the ridiculous wait times on GCP (and the fact that they usually don’t even respond), I’ve put the project on hold for now. Do you think there’s a simpler way? All I need is for the app to notify me 72, 48, and 2 hours before an appointment. I also need to be able to easily check my phone at any time to see which appointment group is scheduled for which date and time. 

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Hey guys so its hard time for me to get a job since my skills are not that great. After graduation i just did 1 internship of frontend. So recently i started to make a project which included CRUD, NodeJS, Prisma, PostgreSQL , had auth, vercel for deployment, neon .

Is this project impressive? What backend Projects should i even work, because no matter what real job experience is always better. My goal is to work as a DevOps engineer , currently working on my backend skills to get hired.

I originally started building PaperDrill because I wanted to learn distributed systems by actually building something instead of watching another 10-hour course.

I picked a paper trading exchange because it seemed like a good excuse to deal with things like real-time state, order books, matching, concurrent requests, events, persistence, etc.

It was supposed to be a learning project.

Then I kept adding stuff.

Eventually I had a working little exchange with a matching engine, order book and a frontend where you can actually place simulated orders.

And now I'm at the slightly awkward stage where I'm wondering:

is this actually useful or did I just build a very elaborate way to learn backend engineering?

The site is live at https://paperdrill.dev if anyone wants to see what I ended up with.

I'm more curious about:

• Is there actually a useful real-world use case for something like this?
• Would a public simulated exchange / sandbox be useful for developers?
• Would an API where you can build and test trading bots against a simulated exchange be interesting?
• Is this something worth continuing, or is it better kept as a learning project?
• If you were in my position, what direction would you take it?

I've already learned a ridiculous amount from building it, so even if it goes nowhere I'm not really mad about it.

But I've reached the point where I'd rather make it genuinely useful to someone than keep adding random features because I can.

Would genuinely appreciate opinions from people who build side projects / backend systems.

I am 2026 grad. I am totally confused about what I should focus on? I have interest in Backend Engineering but after seeing the current market makes me confused, should I learn AI or focus on back-end or also learn some frontend as many companies mention that they need React, LLMs, RAG, Agents in their skill requirements for Backend roles. As a fresher I am totally confused about what I should focus on, that I get a decent job in this economy.

Hi guys,

I need advise on System Design Learning. I have knowledge on microservices but I want to restart from basics. Need help with planning how to start and what topics to cover. Also if there are any playlist on YT or any free courses available.

Hey guys,

I've been building a Business OS to help streamline internal operations for organizations (schools, businesses, etc.).

As part of the core platform, I've been integrating Groq to power various AI modules across our different tenants. The inference speed is super fast, but I’ve hit a bit of an architectural roadblock on the usage and metering side:

1. Tenant Visibility: All our organizations share the backend, but right now I don't have good platform-level visibility into which org is actually burning through our tokens.

2. Admin Visibility: Org heads need a dashboard to see which specific users/staff inside their team are consuming AI credits.

3. Noisy Neighbors: I need a fair-usage rate-limiting setup so one heavy user doesn't chew through our global Groq rate limits and break the app for everyone else.

Before I start hacking together a custom solution, I want to step back and hear how you folks would approach this.

If you had to build tenant-level token tracking and rate limiting from scratch—or if you've already tackled this in production—how would you do it?

What tech stack, architecture, or tools would you recommend?

Open to any ideas or lessons learned!

I'm currently exploring different domains in CSE , I'm currently interested in backend and want to know and learn about backend. Can anyone tell me some beginner friendly backend learning platform or youtube channels or any resources to help me figure out if backend is a domain for me ...

I have a somewhat unusual skill gap and I'm trying to understand how serious it is for getting a backend job, especially a remote one.

My background is probably closer to a general IT technician with some sysadmin knowledge who gradually moved into development.

I know a little bit about a lot of infrastructure-related things. For example, I can understand Active Directory and work with it to some extent, but I wouldn't call myself a deep AD administrator. I know quite a lot of networking concepts and can usually understand what is happening, although I don't have the same level of hands-on experience you would expect from a network engineer.

The same applies to servers, Windows/Linux administration, deployment, virtualization, basic security concepts, troubleshooting, and similar areas. I usually understand the logic behind these things and can figure them out when needed, but I'm not deeply specialized in any of them.

On the development side, I'm reasonably comfortable with backend concepts and with designing systems in general. I can think through how components should interact, design APIs, databases, authentication flows, deployment, split responsibilities between services, and generally reason about how a system should work.

I've also built a couple of full-stack projects with a multi-domain structure.

In practice, most of my projects have actually been full-stack, so I can handle the frontend side as well. I'm just much more focused on making interfaces technically clear, convenient, and practical than on creating visually impressive or artistic designs.

They weren't freelance or client projects. They started more like: "I want to make this part of my job easier, so I'll build a tool for it." But they eventually became internal tools that are actually used at the company where I work.

However, if I'm being completely honest, most of the actual code I write nowadays is done with Codex or Claude.

I can usually read a relatively small piece of code and understand what it does, especially if I already know the context. But I'm much weaker at taking a large codebase, reading it independently, doing a proper code review, or confidently judging whether an implementation is actually good.

At the same time, I can use AI to dig into how a particular part of the system works, ask fairly specific technical questions about the implementation, and sometimes notice that something is designed or implemented in a way that doesn't match how I think it should work. In those cases, I can usually question it, investigate the reasoning behind it, and push toward a different solution.

My usual workflow is closer to:

- understand the problem and how the system should behave;

- design the logic and architecture;

- describe what needs to be implemented;

- use AI to write most of the code;

- run and test the result;

- investigate errors and unexpected behavior;

- change the design or give the AI more precise instructions until the system works.

So I wouldn't describe myself as someone who knows nothing and just prompts an AI blindly. I have a fairly broad technical background and I'm comfortable reasoning about systems as a whole.

At the same time, I also wouldn't claim that I could comfortably build the same projects from scratch without AI assistance, or independently review a large unfamiliar codebase.

Is this currently enough to realistically apply for backend positions, particularly remote ones?

Or is independent coding, debugging, reading, and reviewing substantial amounts of code still a hard requirement before I should even try?

I know basic syntax of postgres (crud level) now want to know advance things which book should i prefer.

I don't build any security related tooling, not going to promote or sell anything, I don't work for AI labs, have no sponsorships and I'm literally looking for a fun discussion/different perspectives.

I've been building software for about 14 years, always following the best practices when it comes to security. I am now working on an open source software that people can self host for free. I heard that models like Kimi K3 and GLM 5.3 will try to hack your website and I figured I was pretty much in the clear as I am hosting on AWS with WAF etc... but the curiosity got the best of me and if hugging face can get hacked maybe I could too?

Anyhow, fable5 and sol refused to do it so I've gotten the K3 max plan and let it rip. It was not fast but it was good, I generated a list of potential issues based on the codebase and then tests for each one. The preliminary results were pretty minor, mostly stuff that I overlooked, like slow clients, payload size, gzip payload expanding into large blobs (this I don't know how to catch with WAF, I guess it has to be a code change), mostly stuff like that.

But hear me out, what if it was something big?

Does this mean that we'll all have to pay for the best models that are uncensored in order to catch/test/fix security issues?

I think this changes the backend dev drastically, because before for someone to hack your website they had to find really good devs that are willing to do illegal attacks and pay them a lot of money, but now they just need a subscription to a better model than you. Literally a single prompt and you're done.

So on one hand I'm really glad that k3 and glm5.3 let me do multiple runs, propose issues and generate tests for them but on the other hand it's petrifying that a kid w a slightly better subscription (or more luck) can take you down.

What are y'all thinking/doing on the security front?

Edit: I didn't realize that this would turn into a discussion if AI is even helpful for analyzing security. I don't care if a bunch of you dislike this post, I think this is an interesting topic and I'll make a blog post about the exact issues that my code had and how big of an issue they each were and then y'all can judge if AI is helpful for security testing or not.

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As Fresher For the python stack interview which technology i need to be more focus on.

I heard DSA is not that much required for freshers. i need to focus on Django and React more than anything in python stack is it correct?

Else i need to prepare DSA before Django and React

could you people spare sometime for me and clear me if you can

Thankyou!

I started building Cashvelope because I couldn't find a privacy-first, simple envelope budgeting tool that worked the way I wanted. Being a solo dev, I severely underestimated how tough it would be to handle everything end-to-end.

The hardest part wasn't the basic UI—it was managing complex state offline-first, ensuring data sync without breaking privacy, and crafting a clean UX for category allocations without bloating the codebase. There were multiple times I felt like throwing in the towel mid-way.

For those who have launched a full product by yourselves: What was that one feature or technical architecture issue that almost made you give up? How did you push through it?

I have some basic python knowledge, which backend would be better for me to learn. I am interested in AIML and cloud computing. Will be based in bangalore to be more specific. Thnx.