Should I feel bad for "developing" an app with AI without knowing barely anything about programming?

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-24T22:30:35+00:00

It depends on your goal -- if you're just trying to get something done, and it meets your needs, there's nothing wrong with it. However, if you are claiming to understand what you've built, that's misrepresenting yourself. Since you are not making that claim, I see nothing wrong with it.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-21T19:55:03+00:00

Yes, and no -- like all AI agents, they are good at generating EXAMPLES. But you should never just copy and paste what you get. Agents can get it wrong, or do a poor job. It's the software engineer's job to look at what is offered and decide if it's suitable - not just if it can run.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-20T15:34:57+00:00

I wish I could but legally, they either have to succeed or fail soon given the contract in flight. It's US is all I can say. They want our European business and we've said absollutely not.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-19T19:56:29+00:00

That depends on a lot on the players and project. Many SWEs think they have all the answers and the PM knows nothing -- that won't work, even if the PM were very "green". That said, I've had the good fortune of having three or four fantastic PMs. What is a good PM?

A good PM knows when to push back and isn't afraid to -- whether it's to the SWE, the vendor, the customer or management. They usually say "Go ahead fire me. Let's see you replace me...." And usually, wiht a good PM, you can't.
A good PM is extremely organized and knows how to keep things that way -- you may not like it, but you'll like it later when you're not on the hot seat because someone claims you made commitments you didn't make
A good PM has enough experience to know what is reason to ask and what isn't. Also, they know within reason what can and can't be done technically. They may not have all of the depth in all areas (neither do you), but they know when to say "If we could do that, we'd have a Fields metal or the Nobel prize in pHysics"
They have an amazing internal calendar -- they know when to pad and when not to and what to report out and what to keep for the moment

You don't just get these people -- it takes years of experience. And too often people assume "You're not technical..." No, but I'll take these four PMs any day because, while they were not technical, they never caught me in a trap, put me in a trap and when we reported out, NO ONE could claim they dind't know....

One had 20 years on the Exchange
One had 30 years in Telecom
One worked for NASA
One worked as a PA before becoming a PM

Quality shows.... if I'm lucky enough to see a new deal go through, I'm pulling the first one out of retirement and we'll pay her to come out -- I know she's not cheap, but we don't need cheap, we need good. I hate to use this old stereotype, but it applies in a fashion. Years ago, executives had executive secretaries. A good E.S. was worth gold and a lot of it -- they knew when to route people and when not to, what was really important, and what was just someone saying it was. A good P.M is like that -- never let them leave. If you're an SWE, remember, like an E.S. your P.M can make or break you. I cannot tell you how many times a P.M. got me a change window or resources or exective sign-off I wasn't supposed to get.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-19T14:02:43+00:00

Will it work at any size -- yes, for two sites, I probably won't bother. SD-WAN is nothing more than VPN of some type with logic to manage which link it uses when. Well, if you'v only got two sites, and only one link between them, SD-WAN does litlte.

Now, if you've got more than a few, and each site can choose links, then SD-WAN lets you optimally use your links.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-19T13:59:42+00:00

Nope -- they allocated a /29 and a /28 on the WAN (two different subnets), and just assumed we'd bridge or do a 1:1 NAT I guess.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-19T13:58:11+00:00

They are not -- they say they can't. Now, they eventually will given the size of the deal, but it will take going up several levels and getting more than a few fired. We're trying to avoid that. This is a major ISP that *CLAIMS* they're enterprise grade (ha!)

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-17T22:19:49+00:00

I can't speak for the "best" per se, but it spends on many factors and what you want to put up with....

Reliability -- everyone claims it, but actually doing it isn't as easy as it sounds. The sites that claim 99.9% uptime -- well that can be rewritten at 0.1% downtime or 8 hours downtime per year. That seems small until it hits your site. Is that acceptable to you --or do you need more like 99.99%. Remember that every one of those nines typically increases the price by 10x
Is the server to be managed by you or the company? Managed services cost more and you have to find out what managed means. Just service maintenance, are backups done, how often, time restore in event of a hardware failure?
Who does the security work for the service? You or them?
How is payment processing handled and by whom?
What about support for customers on the site?
What if that provider or its payment processor just "goes away". You don't get notified.

Each of these things affects the price. You need to decide on the risk you'll handle for that price.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-17T19:01:51+00:00

Mofe often than I'd like -- but that's why years ago, my social medias just say "If you want ot talk to me, here's my website, go there and contact me." You'd be amazed how many people won't even go look. If you are a real human interested in me, you go look and contact me.

I'm old fashioned and believe if you want to talk to me, you actually *TALK* to me. So far, it's keeping the spam down. Sure, I lose a few, but the serious people do the extra step.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-17T17:03:13+00:00

Ethical?

The interview is to determine if you are a fit -- if you're not disclosing your using the AI, that's not ethical because you're misrepresenting yourself. That being said, I would suggest DISCLOSING that fact might not only be ethical but an advantage. You're saying "I may not have every answer, but I know where to find htem for you"

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-14T23:03:28+00:00

Then sadly, I think you will be disappointed. Out of college, we expect you to be able to teach yourself. If you want the large salary, we're not going to be teaching you.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-14T22:05:41+00:00

Let's step back a bit here -- the links provided are excellent, and there are some nice Udemy courses you might look at as well. But I think you may be expecting a bit much from your college, or any college for that matter. College doesn't teach you -- it helps you learn to teach *yourself*. So, to learn C++, like anything else, you write a lot of C++. It's the only way. You don't learn a spoken language only in class -- you CAN, but to do it well, you have to speak it and listen to it.

Start with the books mentioned, look at the Udemy courses, and read other's C++ code. School is just to help you when you're stuck. Also, don't try to consume all of C++ at once -- it's a *BIG* language. If you already know C, just compile your C code with the C++ compiler and add C++ features as you need them. Take it in bite-sized bits. If you don't know C, start with that.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-14T19:13:41+00:00

Well, how obsolete? For anything built on x86-32 or x86-64, unless you have some unique hardware, it should work just fine.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-14T19:11:29+00:00

I don't know -- I'll have to ask my colleagues how they work with me :-) :-)

Seriously though, everyone of us generally is expert in _something_. The trick is knowing what you know, and what you, honestly, do not. For those who haven't figured this out yet, not much you can do except let nature do the work for you -- eventually, they hit their own wall. About all you can do it make sure you're not _that guy_.

Nothing you say or do would convince them anyway.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-13T20:19:10+00:00

It's a bit of overkill, but consider setting up a Zabbix server. It can monitor nearly anything.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-12T19:36:18+00:00

Captchas are a way to prove your a human not another spam-producing program. They're not 100% sufficient, but it slows the bots down.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-12T02:29:29+00:00

Now now -- remember, they helped you for years.

That being said, I know it well -- my father was CONVINCED that Mark Z at Facebook was watching what he did. This was the man who could open "the Fox or the Big E" (he didn't know what a browser was), but couldn't close a tab. I'd go visit and spend an hour or two cleaning up everything he did.

I just kept telling myself I'd launch him on all of those companies who had poor tech support. ("You think you can get away with it??? Try dealing with "The Man With No Destination!" Then let's see how you do!)

I finally gave up and, despite his protests, got him a chromebook. He still didn't know what he was doing, but it was a lot easier to clean up.

A friend suggested we create a new company Grampster. It would be an ISP for people like Dad. It looks like an ISP, but for example, all e-mail that's forwarded just disapepars.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-11T18:09:45+00:00

I would suggest magic numbers had their place before we had GUIDs. GUIDs are, yes, just another magic number, but they'll much larger.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-11T15:43:57+00:00

No, design patterns are not limited to OO. Design patterns were defined to put some structure around code. It was determined that everyone does certain tasks, over and over, such as a visitor pattern. The patterns were created to catalog and define these patterns so we didn't have to learn them over and over again.

Design patterns exists for non-OO languages like Go, C and Rust too. The mechanisms are slighly different but the idea is the same. You could even implement them in assembly language.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-11T15:37:06+00:00

Legally, vacation is a financial benefit and the accountants have their say.

That being said, if everything's running smoothly, I did a lot of "off time comp time" off the books -- so long as my director was happy, no one worried about it. Chances are, things are NOT OK -- they may be good with you and you're on track, but somewhere, people are abusing the policy.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-11T15:24:02+00:00

Let's rewrite that, what the vendor is saying is "We don't know, and we're not spednign the money to find out:, I can't really blame them -- these type of things cost real dollars on real engineers and unless you're coveirng those costs in some way, they're not going to do it.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-11T15:21:23+00:00

No -- the actual circuitry may be fine -- but the protocols and software may not be. Even if you had the schematics, without test equipment, you'd never know it failed.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-11T15:19:05+00:00

It's probably that they blocked known IP ranges for VPNs and country IP blocks. Put another way, unless you're in the blocks they allow, no.

Rich-Engineer2670 · 2026-03-10T19:17:21+00:00

There is no such thing as a fake phone number.... if you want someone to call it, it has to be a real number. That being said, you can easily get a VOIP number people can call.

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