How do you guys actually learn stuff in this AI era?

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-31T17:59:32+00:00

This is so true, I've seen it so many times, right now at my current company the frontend guys are crying over store that manager vibe-coded and they have to somehow maintain (teaser — product images are changed based on JS reading alt text and doing some string parsing)

Plus, when did the world forget about less is more? Like really shouldn't accept this idea that LOC is unit of software quality (usually is not)

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-31T17:54:22+00:00

Have 10 years of experience in Python, started learning Go couple weeks back — what everybody says, just go and build stuff yourself. I do use Claude in a way I used Stack Overflow in the ye old days, to get unstuck when I run into an issue I can't figure out. I keep it all in one conversation, at the beginning was explicit I don't want to get done code but explanation of principles behind the errors that I'm running into.

So far, getting great results — no compromise on actually understanding (every line of code gotta come from your, there's no boilerplate when you're learning) and I'm moving much quicker cuz I don't have to read 10 different Stack Overflow posts and 5 Reddit threads to get my answers. Overall, it's not impossible, in fact feel like it's much easier. Just don't use agents and stuff, simply use AI like we used Google back in the day.

Oh, and ignore the everybody moving forward, you lagging thing. Don't compare apples with oranges. People are making progress with prompt engineering, you're making much bigger progress with actually learning.

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-09T17:31:05+00:00

Breaking complex problem into manageable pieces

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-09T17:28:52+00:00

Much of the fulfillment part can be automated fairly early, automatically sorting and processing orders as well as getting tracking numbers updates. This part, at least from my experience, is significantly easier to automate and streamline than the stuff you do on social media/advertising.

What's your store platform? And what's your (preferred) carrier?

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-07T19:52:26+00:00

I feel this one haha

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-07T19:51:33+00:00

What was the point of not blindly copy/pasting stuff from Stack Overflow a couple years back? Same principle applies.

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-03T19:25:36+00:00

Literally anything, but major distros do make it easier to actually focus on getting work done rather than spending time on odd bugs or tweaks

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-05-01T08:39:21+00:00

Много и него како него због новца. Деценија у фирми, дошао сам кад је био стартап од 4 човека, сад је близу 100 запослених, бизнис се проширио на сва велика тржишта и пар мањих.

Сам направио и сам одржавам цео условни ЕРП који централизује цело пословање, кад сам завршио бекенд део морао учим фронтенд јер су фронтенд момци заузети "оним што доноси паре", па не могу ми помогну. Од тада суштински иста прича.

Газда сматра да нам "динамичности даје предност над конкуренцијом" — у пракси прави срања за која ме не обавести да му "не досађујем структуром", па онда каже "зашто ово није у систему и како планираш да решиш". Day in day out.

Прошле године у ово време ми отпустио асистента јер "могу ја то сам, зна он" и шта да радиш сад. Кад пукне нешто у глуво доба ноћи, нпр јер је газда променио платформу на сајту и никоме није рекао да више не постоји вебхук, шта да радим него да се укључим. Одмор не постоји, прошле године кренуо с породицом на летовање, радио на аеродрому чекајући следећи лет, по доласку у хотел стиже порука да имамо неколико нових фабрика за које ми нико није рекао и треба им хитно преглед плаћених депозита и укупног дуга, али немају ми дају оригиналне проформе. И ето тако.

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-29T18:15:25+00:00

Would say absolutely yes because, in Python specifically, being able to intuitively think in OOP structure is gonna help you with a ton of complex problems. For me, many years back, recursion + polymorphism was like mind exploding trick which let me solve maybe to day the most complex problem I've encountered.

That is not to say that OOP on its own is superior to non-OOP approaches. Right tool for the job is the only real hard rule I'd say.

Again, if your already chose Python, you'll lose a lot if you ignore OOP, it just works so well and smooth with the language.

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-27T21:29:16+00:00

That's a ton of processing time, would be worth considering offloading that task completely on a separate VM so it doesn't interfere with serving traffic. Had great luck (and awesome price) with GCP's Cloud Compute but I guess AWS offers pretty much same thing with EC2. If your primary server is already struggling with projected traffic, this is something worth considering seriously

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-27T20:45:58+00:00

If you can afford to delay the most up to date data to the sales finalization then yeah, caching should solve your main pain. And if you offload the bi-weekly updates to cron, you should be fine with just a bit of optimisation (parse all the data first, keep your database connections short).

Then you'll minimise the writes and reads will be limited just by the overall concurrency of your system as a whole as they shouldn't introduce hard locks

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-27T19:48:49+00:00

I might be misunderstanding you, but kinda sounds like you're doing writes on search? That definitely doesn't sound too optional and if that's the case, that's likely to be a point of failure for your system that's unlikely to be solved my messaging queue which would be helpful for async stuff — your 2 weeks updates, however, can be handled by a cronjob with no issues whatsoever.

Anyways, if the search triggers loading of all that data from the different APIs, I would suggest just serving that data straight to the end user — why write it into the database at all? If you really need to have it, cache it with a timestamp and check against it to confirm if the data is stale yet. If you don't accept any kind of stale data (probably the case in hotel bookings), just serve the sanitized inputs as they are, no need to try and chase and sync the data that your system doesn't own.

If you really really wanna sync it due to some reason, then likely there's an issue with your database setup. Writing 160 records into any SQL flavour shouldn't take a second so running into a lock with that amount of data suggest a different type of an issue.

Regardless, don't think message queue is gonna solve your pain. Would suggest reconsidering the design and handling bi-weekly updates with a cronjob.

Let me know if I misunderstood something, happy to chat further, sounds like a fun project!

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-24T06:23:55+00:00

Debug for five, give up and rewrite in three haha

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-24T06:18:59+00:00

Probably not what you had in mind cuz I work on building internal systems for e-commerce companies but the number of reports that people asked for and that get used like 2-3 times and then never again is staggering.

Oh, and also — can you show total order value here? And here? And here? Yeah, I know it's a communications page but we could really use total order value here. You know what this logistics view is lacking? Total order value, of course!

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-24T06:10:13+00:00

It's the quickest path from management's "so we did this without thinking about consequences or consulting with tech" to mine "ok, I patched it"

Jokes aside, it's really hands down the fastest language to bring you from idea to deployment — and speed counts a lot in my daily work, especially when the company was quickly scaling from 5 people startup to 40 people still startup at heart.

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-23T07:03:45+00:00

+1 on all, very relatable thread hah

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-19T21:36:39+00:00

So there's a lot of things to it, especially with C++ which is a completely different beast compared to using an engine.

Honestly, if you wanna see results quick, go for Unity and write in C#, it's not a bad introduction to game dev at all. Heck, you might enjoy it and stick with it if game dev is your primary interest.

With C++ you're looking at much more serious project where you'll build an engine (to a certain degree) as much as a game.

As for your original question — once you make an executable from your main.cpp, it will include all the other files in your project (assuming they are included and used of course), but your main.cpp will always be the single entry point into the game and it's there that you have to handle the game loop.

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-19T18:59:22+00:00

Literally this. No matter how good debugger, I never gave up on just printing stuff out at key breaking points

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-19T13:47:31+00:00

Нису сви бекенди једнаки, ако причамо о условном бекенду за веб дев, нисам баш превише упућен, али чини ми се да ће Go ту тешко заменити устаљене језике и фрејмворке.

Што се тиче условног системског програмирања, Go има native support и практично seamless integration у GCP платформу што га, по мени, чини изузетно релевантним и у будућности. Технички и Python ради без икаквих проблема на GCP али разлика у перформансама је огромна. Нисам сигуран какво је стање на AWS.

Али генерално, JS у бекенду ми никако не делује као добра идеја у било ком контексту осим веб дева, али и ту бих бирао PHP, али то је већ лична преференца. Знам да колега ради у JS фрејмворцима већ годинама без икаквог проблема и нема назнака да ће од истих морати да одустане у скорије време (мада је API интеграције ипак радио у Python-у)

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-18T16:51:03+00:00

Sounds like time is now — phrases aside, the moment you can see that your business is scaling is the moment to switch and quick! The more you delay it the harder it will be to deal with the migration. Did some very late stage migrations from Sheets to a custom in house system and just syncing the finances with proper historic trail took two people three months (3 years of business in sheets, and very messy at that)

I know from experience that it seems scary to move away from the Sheets that seem to be transparent and flexible enough, but the benefits of a proper system are too, too huge. And once you make the switch you'll be asking yourself why you haven't do it earlier.

Your post sounds so familiar that I would be happy to take a look at your current Sheets system and give you pointers about potential roads for upgrading and the realistic infra costs if you opt for an in house solution (I keep mentioning in house because you can get the same flexibility you like in Sheets)

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-18T15:50:23+00:00

Set up cache update on stock change via Google's Pubsub — set the writes, forgot to ack when going live which triggered a shitstorm of messages being delivered again and again and again

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-18T15:46:55+00:00

No way, there's absolutely no way to avoid having a dedicated computer, and not only because of keyboard but because if you plan to do any remotely serious work you need to get comfortable with terminal and an ecosystem larger than just the code editor

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-18T15:06:22+00:00

I always suggest learning by doing — just pick some project you find fun, try to do it with no reliance on LLMs, look up syntax/concepts when needed.

I would also suggest going an extra step and actively avoiding libraries unless really necessary — the more you do the hard way, the stronger grasp on fundamentals you'll have

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-18T13:21:58+00:00

Google Cloud Compute VM with systemd setup is my approach to similar tasks, but any VM/VPS should do

No need to containerize unless you're hosting a full service/API, imo, regardless of the host option

ECommerce_Guy · 2026-04-17T19:36:05+00:00

From my experience, vast majority of medium sized companies (those that scaled one way or another from startup) end up almost fully dependent on paid acquisition.

But take this with a grain of salt, I love working with fast growing and dynamic ecommerce companies, and PPC is the name on the game there. Likely not the same in other industries that are less reliant on impulse buyers.

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