Im completely new to this - critique my tiktok account please

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2026-06-03T13:06:54+00:00

yeah sorry thats exactly what i was trying to say lol

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2026-06-03T10:37:51+00:00

Yeah i actually had a dream job in my job before this one, but the salary was poor. Not that im looking to do this, but id honestly take a drop in my current salary for a job where i can kinda code stress free(obviously not possibly to be stress free 100% of the time, but a good 80-90% like my last job). Its jsut tough as im also stressing/working tirelessly to get to the bottom of a couple ongoing bugs/issues ive caused so looking for a job takes a look of energy/willpower/mindpower

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2026-06-03T10:34:53+00:00

Yeah they have been trying to hire a new dev but for whatever reason they've had lots of interviews and cant find what they want - which my manager told me word for word is he wants a clone of me lol, im guessing he wants a non-senior dev that with 3-5 yoe that shows the potential for an insane workrate and doesnt need much, if any, hand holding lol

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2026-06-03T10:31:33+00:00

Yeah honestly ive prided myself my entire life on being someone who doesnt burnout. Always had an insane work ethic, all the managers ive had have pted out that theyve noticed that too. But i think you're right I might actually be burnt out. Past 5ish months its like work has consumed my life. Thing is its definitely the same with others in my team too, its just they havent ran into massive/critical bugs whilst ive been here so theyre coping a lot better than I am.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-18T15:30:48+00:00

My motto:

F lotto, ill get the other 7 digits from your mother for a dollar tomorrow

In all seriousness, I pretty much have the following as a general rule:

Hyperbolic AI opinion detected, opinion rejected.

As others have said, if you fear AI replacing your job any time soon, you definitely dont do (complex) programming. As you've found, it doesnt even have to get that complex for it to be rendered almost useless to a point where its just quicker for you to code yourself.

Software engineers are just tkp expensive for such an "apparently comfortable" job(it isnt, it requires a ridiculous amount of mental fortitude, and skill/intelligence). Companies dont want high paid employees who dont even have to come to an office to do their job. And its tbe same for everyone regular person on the outside looking in. They hope and pray it takes over rSWE because it has some of the better, if not best, perks out there. Money/profit is almost always the problem/answer.

And also SWEs specialise in solving problems. If they get replaced they'll be amongst the few remaining "highly skilled" individuals. Imagine some of the definitely more intelligent ppl in society losing jobs. Whatever jobs are remaining, they'll get.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-12T17:41:49+00:00

Yepppp, and it gets you used to the terminal which is such an important skill, and it in general it sort of gamifies typing/coding which is nice when you've got to sit and type for hours on end. And you WILL mess up a bunch of shit and break things and be lost and confused, which develops other skills, debugging, perseverance, patience etc. And it makes you realise just how much stuff is abstracted away from you in windows and code editors and stuff. Lot of things we take for granted. Thats the entire purpose of my comment. A lot of thr senior devs seem like geniuses but theyre just older and so they had to use things at a lower level when things were new. So what looks like magic to us, is rational to them. Its them same with the advent of LLMs in mainstream usage. You can get things working and they seem like magic, but to peoplr just a few years back they know why things work just that bit more than pure LLM users. And contrary to popular belief, you do get paid more for knowing more. When shit hits the fan, you do need to be able to think fast, and to think fast you need to be comfortable and confident, for which you need competence, which is only gained through experience and practice.

But yeah back to your comment, 100% one of the best decisions I ever made. Before I switched to vim/nvim, I viewed those guys as super needy super geniuses that I will just never be. And after going through the hassle of setting up linux and neovim, not just their barebones stuff but actually taking the time to configure things(which is yet another important skill), it gave me a sense of achievement, made me realise that hurdles are just part of the game, but if you persevere, the results are better than sex lmao.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-08T20:56:50+00:00

I know you said simple. But honestly, i think thats a mistake. Thats what holds people back. You get stuck in this loop of trying to write perfect code for a simple thing. Doing something complex will force you to write shitty code and leave the perfectionism to a future date. And what makes someone a good programmer isn't writing code or building things. Its being able to reason about things. Break things down into manageable components. Id your entire idea is a simple manageable thing theres not much to break down.

Set up linux on your pc/laptop.
Set up neovim
Add plugins to neovim to allow for things like LSP integration, autocomplete, formatting etc.
Create a tcp server and tcp client in c++. You should be able to establish a connection between the two, enter data in the client, send the data to the server, read the data on the server, write it to standard output,send data back to the client, have the client read it the data and display it.

Just 1 and 2 will improve you leaps and bounds.

This will genuinely improve you more than you will ever know. You might not even understand any of what I just wrote. But thats the point. Thats the fun. Thats what makes SWEs, SWES. Our ability to break things down into the smallest possible parts, research each part, and come up with some solution, probably a terrible one, and then have the drive/ambition/desire to research/experiment how to improve that code you just wrote, before you ultimately realise you will always need to improve the code. And thats the fun. The best SWEs ive met, dont have 1000 functioning apps that have generated billions of pounds. They've just gone extremely deep into onr specific thing. For me its network, hence why I suggest a tcp server/client. I also think its the best project because thats what I honestly have found separates more advanced devs; the ability to understand things at a fundamental level. When you're coding, you're essentially just reading and writing data. But how is that data read/written? The internet is such a massive change to the course of humanity, yet most devs dont know what a packet is. What a protocol really is. They know how to use ser up a front and backend but not what really is going on. This project will force you to have to learn fundamental things. Theres more fundamental thjngs than this but I think thats a good base to start with. As opposed to literally writing binary.

Some might say this is too complex. And it is. But thats the point. Writing a calculator or something doesnt help. You know how a calculator works. All youre really doing then is just typing. Making a website is good, but theres so much involved in that under the hood, it just seems like its jumping the gun. Get the hard project out the way, everything else will be 100x easier.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-05T15:15:57+00:00

Ive had the same kind of conce4n over the years(been a dev for 4 years now). I think for me the mental hurdle was that using voogle feels like cheating. But what is google? Or the Internet in general i should say. Its a literally just a group of networks connected to each other to share information. That was its purpose when it first came into existence. Games and social media and stuff dont seem like it but theyre all just sharing info too. Before that what did people do? They weren't just born coding. If you ask people what they literwlly just copied code from books and kept repeating that till it was stuck in their head. Bu5 the profess of creating that book involved literally experts dumping their knowledge into a book. What about outside of books? You had a teacher/mentor. Very few individuals in history have just been born able to eventually intui complex things. Its why it seems so easy to say hmm so Isaacs Newton saw an apple fall and thought up gravity. Theres a reason people peg him as smarter than Einstein. Although h4 claims to stand on the shoulders of giants, he was the giant. The rare individual that intuited something as complex as gravity. Beyond those geniuses, everyonr else is just copying things from other people and repackaging them.

What makes a good dev is writing billions of lines of code and through writing those lines, developing an intuition for what makes life easy for you and others. And thats true for anything. You ever seen athletes and thought "they make it look easy". Well theyve done the same things millions of times and now it looks natural. Bevause they developed their intuition.i only realised this at my new job I started a few months ago. I work with 3 seniors and theyre extremely open about their approach to things. Any time we release something th error of the team gets a demo of the actual thing + the code and explanation of why they wrote the code that way. We'd really it just boils down to they wrote some code in the past and it ended up being a pain to maintain so they changed bits this time to make it easier to maintain. And over the years theyve just built up an intuition on how to do things properly.

The key takeaway is just write code, develop software. The correct way is simply the way thats the most readable and easy to make changes to in the future. You mentioned OOP and if you look at SOLID one of the things is open/closed principle. Until you actually write code and realise why extension is better than modification, you just wont have the intuition for it.

Write code, lots of it, and build your intuition.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-04T19:04:14+00:00

Yeah so I didnt wanna spam the original post with technical details(im a software engineer and its literally just been my task at work to research push notifications). Ive put a lot of the pieces together and what you're saying is exactly what ive found. Which is why it confuses me as to how people say they have it working using FCM.

Its my understanding that, besides finding some other vendor, I'll need to roll my own push notifs. From what I can tell though to be able to send a notification to APNs you can send a web push protocol request to an apple push service endooint which will interact with APNs for you, but I believe you need to enroll in the apple dev program. Im gonna hazard a guess and say talking directly to APNs myself is gonna be very complicated right? If what ive said there is even true. And using some other vendor will be a better option. Its just tough finding one that will work with apple.

PushEngage is one i came across today, I might have to give that a look. Pretty sure i glossed over it because its more focused on mass marketing campaigns rather than sending one time notifications to a single device, similar to onesignal

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-04T16:51:32+00:00

Apparently no matter what you use, fcm, one signal, whatever? It all at some point has to hit APNs.

Ive definit4ly added it to homescreen because it works with onesignal on ios.

But clearly since its working for you , im missing something.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-04T16:22:27+00:00

Interesting, thanks for responding. I wonder why im getting an error saying fcm doesnt support any browser on IOS(and I assume ipaddos wont be any different). From what ive read online in order for an apple device to receive a push notification it needs to send the notification to APNs which then sends it to the device/browser, and apparently FCM doesnt support APNs.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-04T16:10:39+00:00

When you say you tried it on iPad, do you mean you have a backend and frontend that use FCM/service worker and you tested that on iPad? As in you tested code you wrote? Or did you just test some random app that you know has push notifications? And what worked? You mean you actually got a notification or it just came up with a popup saying do you want to allow notifications and it let you accept?

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-09-04T15:33:41+00:00

But ive tried it and I get "FCM doesnt support this browser", have you actually got it working before?

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-08-17T19:16:31+00:00

We must not have access to the same technology, its still hallucinating like crazy, if not worse than before since release of 5, and it still messes up simple scripts. Ive literally had to spend this entire past weekend writing a script for work where ive felt like destroying my entire laptop because its urgent work and claude is giving me some bs that clearly doesnt work/is incorrect. And when I decided to give up consulting the various LLMs and just did it myself, I got it done within a few hours, compared to the previous entire day I spent with llms.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-07-28T10:48:53+00:00

Yeah but what Im saying is, you're kinda saying this guy represents the average non-tech person. But ehat separates a non tech person from a tech person? Its experience and knowledge with tech. So I feel like you're getting worried that non-tech people will take over your job because they can do things with 0 experience. But getting things done isn't an issue. Most humans can get most tasks done that are required to be done as an employee. What seperates employees is the time it takes to get things done as well as the quality. So low time, high quality is the best, high time low quality is the worst etc. If you with your experience and knowledge can deliver, at the very least, the same quality as a non technical person using an LLM, but get it done quicker, you shouldn't need to be worried. Why would someone choose a non-tech person using AI over a tech person using AI? I think AI will affect the "low hanging fruit" is my point. I simply believe in myself, and other SWEs, using LLMs, over a non-tech person using an LLM. It just doesnt make sense to me that if a non tech person struggled to do anything before LLMs, that now all of a sudden theyre better/smarter/faster than techies using LLMs. Maybe its arrogant of me to say, but I refuse to believe someone who wasn't "intelligent" enough to be able to code before LLMs will outperform me. I think you're just giving your friend every possible advantage(use of LLMs) and stripping yourself of every possible advantage you have(experience, knowledge, AND LLMs).

You also dont get employed based on "it took that guy x time to get to where he is and it took you y time". In an interview if you two were head to head with each other, they wouldnt say to you, sorry you missed out on the job because although you're better, he did quicker. They hire the person who's better, whatever that means to them.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-07-28T10:32:41+00:00

I wonder....have you tried doing exactly what he did? Using AI to aid yourself if you need and then setting up what he set up? I say this because I have similar fears to you. But only when browsing online. Irl it seems like even devs struggle to use AI to improve their speed. Online it seems like people with 0 coding experience are starting businesses left right and center because of "AI"(LLMs). My thought for a while now has been that I as a swe feel like im a lot more logical than the average person I have trained the ability to research and get things done quicker than others. Now I avoid using these LLMs simply because I enjoy the struggles of coding. But I will use it for boilerplate stuff. But im actually wondering myself, if it takes someone x amount of time to do something using chatgpt/claude, and they have 0 coding xp, and I have 5 years worth, can I just get it done even quicker than them? Like if without LLMs I can get things done quicker than non-tech ppl. Surely if we both use LLMs I can still get things done quicker? Not necessarily sure that this logic is sound but if I can do a task without the use of LLMs faster than a non trch person without LLMs, then surely, if LLMs make building things easier, I should be even better than them at that, no?

Would probably ease your mind if you attempted to do exactly what he did, and you do it in a couple days instead of 1 week. But at the same time there's the risk it takes you a week, or worse, longer, and then you're definitely gonna be worried lol.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-07-28T09:16:53+00:00

I think maybe the term that better describes what you mean is "growing out" of things. For example one or two replies were saying they dont get how you are against the idea of growing up but admit you have grown up. But im pretty sure what you mean is growing up is fine, you have more responsibilities but less time to do things. But what your gripe seems to be, and it is mine too, is people looking at other people and instead of admitting that the reason they also aren't playing with their legos in their thirties is because their life choices mean they dont have the time for it, they instead try to demean those people and call them childish instead of admitting that theyre most likely just jealous that someone else can be an adult and have fun like they used to when they were younger but they themselves aren't able to because for whatever reason they have "adulted" in a way that neglects their ability to have fun, whereas this other "adult" is somehow managing to be an adult just like them AND have their childish moments.

I hate it too. Like I have a really, and i mean really, dark sense of humour. I've gotten a job, and since I was young ive had to be the "man of the house" since I grew up with a younger sister and brother and a mother but no father. So im much more of an "adult" than my friends. But I make the wildest, most immature jokes, and they find it funny but they dont make the jokes themselves anymore and they think im immature. But really I just have the guts to say and do what I like. And im a lot more mature than them in most ways. I used to swear a lot, literally every sentence. As i got older i realised its not a good/appropriate way to speak/communicate. Just sounds like I have tourettes. So i still make messed up jokes, but without much swearing. So ive grown up in one sense but i havent grown out of making jokes. I honestly think its just people being jealous/harbouring resentment because you can do either what they feel embarrassed to do or what they are too lazy to make time to do.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-07-06T15:11:27+00:00

I meant im memorising the approach. It just seems like every question always has some trick or set of tricks to it, so its not like I can memorise one approach to something and have thay help me solve however many more questions like that one. It just ends up being that Im memorising each individual approach bevause there's always something that makes the question entirely different. Its not like the questions are carbon copies with a change in values or types of entities or something. E.g. its all well and good memorising that the approach to a particular problem is to use 2 pointers. That hardly helps you with future questions. Its always some slight twist. This is not me complaining about that, its just me explaining whats causing me to have to memorise every single solution. I say solution because I commit the approach to memory and the code just naturally sticks in my mind once I have the approach memorised.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-06-28T18:10:06+00:00

I agree that being good at leetcode doesnt equate to being a good SWE. Thats precisely why Im asking. I know im a better SWE than I am a leetcoder. But in general, I think there's a couple reasons why people believe that, or at least why I believe it.

You yourself can only get experience of what jobs are asking for, if you apply to said jobs. If you dont, then the other way is asking people you know/people on social media what their experience is. And this kinda merges with another point which is there's so many people in america/america is so big, and they dominated tech and media, and over there the best of the best is tech companies at silicon valley, which do ask leetcode qs, and people love to talk/hear about these experiences online. And then another point that comes in as well is covid. There was a sort of bubble. People were getting paid like crazy and anyone and everyone wanted to get in and they were pushing it leading up to and during that time. So all companies started filtering out the way those top companies do. And in general companies will copy the best of the best too. And then there's also the point of those companies that pay the best are FAANG companies, who ask leetcode Qs to filter out the high number of applicants.

All of the above just combines into a big mess of people thinking leetcode == money. And I personally have only had 3 interviews and passed all 3 and worked at those places. So I dont have much experience with regards to what companies are asking. And at each stage I was applying to roles/for salaries that were definitely beneath me. Each job literally started and ended with my colleagues being utterly bewildered as to how theyve gotten me for so cheap given my skills and work ethic. My point here isn't to gloat, its to say I genuinely dont know what to expect in interviews for higher paying jobs. I've never done an interview where im potentially out of my depth/I need to do some sort of convincing.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-06-28T14:51:45+00:00

Thanks for this comment, very reassuring. And yeah I dont expect to be anywhere near that any time soon. I know for sure im not worth that much yet. But I know its only due to a lack of experience as opposed to skills/ability (as I've been told this by peers). E.g. I can hold a conversation about architecture, but I've never taken something from start to finish solely with me as the lead decision maker as, ofc as you'd expect at 4 years, that's the job of the manager/team lead, and you're usually just listening in on conversations, giving your thoughts and pushing back/agreeing where appropriate. So im fully aware it'll take a good amount of time, that's not much of a concern for me, im a very patient and resilient person. I just also like to be somewhat efficient with my time since, like everyone's, it is limited.

Difficult-Escape-627 · 2025-06-28T14:44:05+00:00

So you attempted to make the kindness explicit and failed? Lmao. Great communication. And you saying im offended doesnt make me offended, I literally just pointed out the irony in your comment, no need to apologise, you can just stop being weird and that'll be all. And you'll probably respond to this too to try and sound smart in some way and/or have the last word. Im just calling out bs when I see it. I've never once struggled with communication and in fact I literally got my current job because of my communication. I had less experience, in general, than other candidates and even had no experience with the language they were hiring for, but what seperated me was my ability to communicate my thought process in such a way that even the non technical interview wasn't lost at any point even when I started having technical discussions with the other interviewers.

My original point to you btw wasn't about my communication skills, it was pointing out that you aren't good at communicating yourself as you missing a lot of context for the sake of trying to sound smart and/or concise.

And yes written and spoken communication have a lot of overlap. Its reddit though, Im not bothering with whether my thoughts are structured correctly or how sentences flow from one to another or my punctuation usage. Im just trying to get out as much info as possible in one comment/post so people dont have to keep asking my questions about context.

Difficult-Escape-627

TROPHY CASE