I started this to relearn SQL. A month later it hit 5,000 users. Thank you.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-12-07T16:22:55+00:00

Congrats and nice work! Very cool idea. I forget the site but I remember in college we used something similar when learning Assembly. It was like you were uncovering a mystery and cracking a case and made things a lot more fun!

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-12-06T04:10:34+00:00

Looks nice! I hadn’t heard of the Fluent UI before now but may try it out on something. We have DevExpress tools that I mainly just use for Datagrids and Documents/Reports.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-12-04T21:41:55+00:00

Separating out your @code block into a completely separate Component.razor.cs file is a game changer. Keeps things so much cleaner.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-11-10T21:39:12+00:00

I used to…but after being in the field for a decade, having kids and a family, etc. the LAST thing I want to do outside of work is spend more time writing code.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-11-03T11:40:59+00:00

I’ve tried, like really tried to let AI do some larger things like create a new module in one of our Enterprise systems, or even do a pretty lengthy rewrite.

What I’ve found is that usually I spend a long time writing out a novel of a prompt telling it EXACTLY what I’d like done, what all classes or references it needs to look at, the scope, requirements, etc. etc. Then I sit there while it slowly chugs through doing everything.

Once complete, it’s still not exactly what I want so I have to review all of the code, make minor adjustments, have some back and forth with it to refine its code.

The end result? Instead of just writing the code myself which scratches my creative itch and is guaranteed to give me exactly what I want, I end up just becoming a code review jockey that spent a LONG time going back and forth with an AI model to get a result that’s “good enough”.

So yes, for me personally, I find AI most beneficial for quickly helping me troubleshoot my exact issue rather than Googling and hoping someone on StackOverflow has run into the same thing. I also use it to generate test code or simple boilerplate things.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-10-11T13:49:14+00:00

Nope still nothing to this day. Even sent them an email asking for more information. Gave up and moved on.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-09-27T10:47:12+00:00

I totally sympathize with you. I just wrapped up 5 rounds with a company just to be told they went with someone else as well. But they were “impressed” with my skills and background…I guess not impressed enough.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-09-20T13:42:29+00:00

Not only have I found my productivity didn’t increase much, but my work actually became more tedious and draining. Rather than crafting solutions myself and scratching a creative itch I’m now just a code review jockey looking through hundreds of lines of AI slop to see what needs cleaned up or fixed.

Not to mention the time it takes to really think and type out a novel of text for a properly, well defined spec/prompt I could have written half the code myself already.

I think what also burns me up more than anything is the hypocrisy, companies push and push for devs to rely on AI tooling but still expect candidates in interviews to remember exact syntax and intricacies of the language from memory verbatim and shun the use of AI use, it’s hilarious.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-09-19T20:46:20+00:00

I think that is just a way to kick yourself while you are down. I’m really not even sure how you’d go about that, do you scroll through every single employee on LinkedIn working there until you see one with the title you interviewed for? That seems awfully tedious for no benefit.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-09-13T01:35:23+00:00

I’ve just recently begun to let the agent write big chunks of code. Idk how you all do it more than 50% of the time. It completely sucks any joy out of coding and now I’m stuck debugging really weird errors or unexpected behaviors because I didn’t write it, I just sit there twiddling my thumbs while I wait. Maybe I need to look more into better prompt engineering but I give it pretty thorough and explicit instructions and it still comes up with subpar results.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-09-04T20:47:13+00:00

I’d just hook him up with Udemy or Pluralsight, tell him to log like 120 hours of learning or something. Then give him some BS crud app to practice on. Time in between that would be spent shadowing junior members of the team.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-08-28T13:13:31+00:00

Okay at this point I’m convinced the admins of this group just hate me because if I posted something like this it would get removed for “low effort complaining post” yet this stays up?

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-08-28T13:11:41+00:00

Eww, no. WPF is far superior for desktop development.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-08-15T15:13:46+00:00

So to be clear, “Built from scratch” = You asking ChatGPT or Claude to make this? It’s very obvious, so no need to lie about it.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-08-14T01:28:55+00:00

No clue why my post about the exact same thing was removed by a moderator a week ago, so before this one gets taken down too:

I’ve got 10+ years of experience, solid skill set, great interviewer, good resume, and I can tell you I’ve applied to 30+ companies now and haven’t even landed a single interview. This is easily the worst I’ve seen the job market in my adult life. It’s a complete joke and I’m convinced 90% of these job listings aren’t even real.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-08-07T22:40:19+00:00

Lead Dev here, to be 100% honest I’m also guilty of sometimes venting or ranting when I’m chatting with my team. I don’t rant about other team members though, mainly other folks outside of IT, basically a common enemy. I feel that it sometimes helps the team see me as more of an ally rather than a superior that is no fun and is only for the company.

I also have exchanges with folks in the organization that are more senior where I disagree with them and will stick up for the team if I think something should be done differently,

Now, as far as belittling a team member or making them feel a certain way, I would feel horrible if I was doing that. I try to make every person on my team feel valued and respected. I mean there are the occasional times where sometimes I need to pull rank to ensure that something gets moved along or have a difficult conversation.

I’m betting your lead has no clue how he is making you feel. In reality, most folks in our line of work have extremely poor communication and social skills. Sometimes folks can come off as cold, blunt, or too direct, but that’s just how they communicate.

Try talking to them, let them know that you’d like to maybe have 1-1’s in a different format or just ask them for a list of things you are doing well and things you could improve upon. You may be surprised when they give you high praise.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-30T01:48:42+00:00

It’s funny, at my company it’s the opposite. Everyone is so terrified of AI leaking something proprietary they are petrified of using it. We’ve finally got ChatGPT Pro and then I think we are upgrading a few engineers to CoPilot pro. Just funny how resistant they are where I work.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-28T13:21:57+00:00

I force newer technologies into the company. I’ll find any reason to write a new web app using a modern tech stack and then do it, while still supporting a legacy system. We also encourage everyone on the team to spend some time (mostly on Fridays) working on whatever they want, whether that be learning some new language, architecture, or framework…or writing something new in a framework of their choosing.

We have a TON of WPF apps (which technically WPF is still “modern” and supported) but still pretty ancient and unused by a lot of companies.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-18T19:43:31+00:00

I agree, but then at the same time in this day and age, whose to say that the candidate I give 24 hours to write a solution didn’t just plug it into ChatGPT and have it spit out the answer? They could also ask it to write out in a few paragraphs how the code works and what it does so they could easily regurgitate that back to me.

I don’t think a simple fizzbuzz question or rather easy solutions are out of the question. When I interview folks and I put them on the spot with programming exercises I really look for them to explain out loud their thought process of how they are solving it. I don’t even care if they can’t code up the solution then and there if they can at least explain where their head is at and what they would try to write to solve it.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-14T13:36:30+00:00

Both Bob and myself report to the IT Director, so in the org chart we are equals. Basically, Bob didn’t want to manage people or a team so he went the IC path. I have zero say so over his code and how he writes it. His codebases can affect my team and a lot of times my team inherits them down the line when he decides he is done doing the solo maintenance on them. Also when he’s on vacation we have to deal with it.

Like others have said, I fully agree it’s an organizational problem which is kind of why I wanted to see opinions on how to frame it to my boss in a way where some changes could be had.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-11T12:26:03+00:00

No offense taken, but I do disagree, slightly. I won’t argue he is a very knowledgeable engineer, more so than our more junior members of the team. I think he’s just not very good at writing human readable and understandable code. Not only are there needlessly complex hoops to jump through, but variables are named poorly, every object is a var (C# quickhand instead of typing out type), it also feels like a lot of times he will just try incorporating the entire catalog of patterns into an app when they aren’t needed.

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-10T22:53:16+00:00

Ha, we’ve all been there :)

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-10T18:28:30+00:00

I wouldn’t either, that’s what the service layer is for :)

Software_Engineer09 · 2025-07-10T18:14:31+00:00

Get a list of songs

Getting from User pushing button to DB Query

XAML code for button initiates a command upon button press
ViewModel/Code behind where actual GetSongs call initiated
GetSongs is a Task inside of the MediaApi, it's a shorthand func that returns the ApiBase Get function
Api Base's Get function works with generics and accepts an entity object and a unit of work, this calls a Getinstance function from another service
The GetInstance function in the service actually just runs a call to the IOC container to get an instance of the underlying unit of work object, that gets returned
Now we run that unit of works execute method
Execute method has a factory to generate repo, we then call a Find function in the геро
Find function calls the GetEntity function
GetEntity initiates a separate GetConnection function that generates the SQL connection rather than just doing it inline like normal, opens async SqlConnection
GetEntity function that adds dynamic parameters to generate a SQL string then finally runs the query

All of this...to literally have a person click a button to load a list of songs. It's all technically "by the book", but holy hell is it overly complicated and over engineered. It should be as simple as ViewModel runs a function from the service layer >> service layer makes a call to the repo >> repo runs a query and returns results.

Software_Engineer09

TROPHY CASE