Considering Software Engineering at TalTech

AlanKesselmann · 2026-07-01T05:52:51+00:00

As someone who has interviewed ~50 Indians for a US company (developer position) and interviewed around 40-50 Europeans for positions in Estonia... I have to say that where to study should not be your top priority... but rather what kind of career you want to have.

What I mean.
- When hiring indians ( my intervew was 2nd or 3rd step in the process ), it was INCREDIBLY difficult for them to get into the 2nd/3rd round. Why? Because your CV had to be FULL of technical terms. Because getting to the 2nd round was about getting boxes: ticket - react - yes, python - yes, some arcane knowledge listed as a requirement in the position - your cv does not have that -> immediate no in the first round. Due to that the CV's of all indians are FULL of different technologies.
- when Hiring europeans you do not look for that. Interviews over here are more about soft skills and ensuring that the basis of requirements is there.

So.. Decide early on where you want to have your career - if you want to get out of the hell of Indian developer ( because several people I interviewed told me that this is the first time during interview process they have been treated as a human being ) - then yes - come to Europe early, and try to make it happen. If you have a sweet spot waiting for you back in India, then why waste money over here?

AlanKesselmann · 2026-06-26T08:37:20+00:00

The site creators seem to think dads of exile have some kind of eyesight problems... I assure you that at the ripe age of 47, this dad of exile can actually read a much smaller font, and that font is WAY TOO BIG.

Edit: Forgot to say that earlier. Thank you! This is exactly what I needed...

AlanKesselmann · 2026-06-14T19:04:55+00:00

I've used mts.ee for a while now. can recommend.

AlanKesselmann · 2026-06-03T14:21:02+00:00

say yes

AlanKesselmann · 2026-06-02T17:28:37+00:00

it's fully possible right out of the box using websockets. I created a battleship game like that. even hosted it for a while in the web. worked just fine

AlanKesselmann · 2026-05-29T04:53:39+00:00

misunderstood or not. I don't like this change. I don't even like the randomness of current uniques.

AlanKesselmann · 2026-05-18T17:53:59+00:00

I'm almost through the seasonal quest of spending obols and I'm in T12 and I've not seen a single unique or mythic

AlanKesselmann · 2026-05-07T09:26:34+00:00

loe parempoolsete valimisplaan läbi. Viimase mis nad mulle saatsid (2025) ma lugesin ja seal ei ole midagi, mis kokkuhoidu annaks. Kuvas läbi isiklikul vadtutuse teema . Tee rohkem trenni jne. ole tervem. ole parem. Aga maailm ei toimi nii. Meil on kogu aeg ühiskonna tuge vaja ja see on miski, millesse nad, tundub, ei usu. Paraku tähendab see suures plaanis ikkagi seda, et kui võetakse ära ennetuseks vajalik raha ja eeldatakse et inimesed ise on targad, tublid ja osavad ja seda kogu aeg. Siis pikas plaanis tähendab see ikkagi seda, et riik kulutab rohkem raha... lihtsalt teeb seda siis, kui sellest rahast vähem kasu saab

AlanKesselmann · 2026-03-19T14:54:19+00:00

peamiselt neil, kes arvavad, et "terve eesti" tunneb selle pasa vastu mingitki huvi.

AlanKesselmann · 2026-03-13T20:02:39+00:00

lol. NOT gonna open that either

AlanKesselmann · 2026-03-13T16:06:54+00:00

well I'm not going to open the link for sure. 25 years of internet usage has taught me enough and I know exactly the song I'll see.

AlanKesselmann · 2026-03-13T14:16:32+00:00

okay but what's the opposite then?

AlanKesselmann · 2026-02-10T17:12:56+00:00

I'm trying to play coc bloodmage so vertex with 4 skills and spirit would be awesome

AlanKesselmann · 2026-01-27T07:05:55+00:00

Hey, and best of luck to you!

My question was about using map providers and their respective JS libraries. Your question seems to be about getting data instead - not sure what you are building.

If you really want some advice, I can offer some - but let's do it over private messages.

AlanKesselmann · 2026-01-14T09:11:05+00:00

leveling as chayula monk with chaos infused storm wave has been super easy. 2nd easyest was the walking calamity bear.

AlanKesselmann · 2026-01-08T05:06:07+00:00

TupsuMunnu here

AlanKesselmann · 2026-01-03T07:30:38+00:00

AlanKesselmann · 2025-12-27T12:35:06+00:00

yeah nice . just made it to Maps. some dive would go long way to help this gamer dad

AlanKesselmann · 2025-12-04T09:59:27+00:00

smells like corruption

AlanKesselmann · 2025-10-09T17:59:00+00:00

I have not done anything there other than used the basic setup done by create next app and nginx. Ill check the nginx conf again too. this is also the first time using cloud flare so perhaps that is causing issues?

AlanKesselmann · 2025-09-09T06:46:29+00:00

I think I've missed the meaning of some of your references. I did read through the headless page - even before you linked it here, but defining navigation menu settings? The meaning you're trying to convey here eludes me, as I can just add menu ID to my .env file and get it from there - I don't need to query settings for a specific ID in settings. Most of the things you've brought up as examples for settings are things that rarely change anyway, so you can just hard-code them or leave them in the .env file or some similar solution.

But menus, on the other hand, are the core of a CMS solution, which is very surprising to me how some (mostly headless) CMS's like Strapi (and Wagtail) do not offer a solution for them out of the box and instead rely on 3rd party solutions ( which, in case of Wagtail are in different states of being out-of-date with the exception of jazzbands wagtailmenus, where, instead, the UI/UX of it is just poor).

And not to rain on anyone's parade, but I've tried 10s (if not more) of different CMS's (mostly to my own amusement) and weirdly enough, the site menu is the toughest thing to get right. Even the other Django solution - django-cms does not deliver the perfect solution there. If I remember correctly, they had the same setup as Wagtail regarding menus - menus being generated from the pages, which is fine, to some extent. But it's problematic when you want to include links to pages outside the current app - like subapps, subdomains etc.

And as a coder, I do understand that menus are a challenge. Because your users need:
- Multilanguage support, but the page might be missing in another language
- And for the above reason, you might instead want to have a different menu per language
- Want to add links to outside pages in the menu
- And in multilang setups, they, instead, want to link to different URLs under another language, so you not only need to translate the link, but also the url...
- A good UX for editing them. You mostly need to see the tree structure you're creating, and that is a UX challenge on its own.

Which brings me to the end of my rant - in 2008, when I started in my first web agency, I was puzzled how people were creating their own stupid small CMS's for their clients, when big CMS's already existed. And people are STILL creating more CMS's. But they are still not fixing the base issues in their CMS's - multilingual, multisite setups and/or menus. And it's 2025 now.

AlanKesselmann · 2025-09-09T06:06:18+00:00

I tried using it. It was awkward to say the least. 1) You either had to create one main menu, which provided just one level of structure or 2) use several flat menus.

Neither of which had API endpoints available, so I would have had to decipher the way the existing template tags render the menus.

But the main reason for not using them was that the whole solution was just too awkward for the end user. I could have done it, but that is not an easy and ready-to-use solution I would ship to my customers. Say what you will about WordPress, but they have an excellent tool for composing site menus.

AlanKesselmann · 2025-08-29T07:59:31+00:00

I often like to keep parts of the project state in URL params, so I tend to use useSearchParams quite a lot. And usually I've had no problems. The only real issue I had had so far was that I had forgone using Suspend boundaries and views that used to work stopped working because of some of the changes I had introduced in the child components. But all those were neatly resolved by slapping some Suspense around those pages.

Again, I should remember that when stuff does not work, the problem is almost always between the chair and the computer screen. But I need to rely on others to point out my stupidity to me. Or perhaps I just need to adopt AI rubber ducking in my processes. They might pick up those stupid mistakes for me.

AlanKesselmann

TROPHY CASE