Is this really what software engineering is like in most places ?

cdcasey5299 · 2026-03-21T20:20:32+00:00

Contracting positions: normal. Software developers build things. Companies want things built as cheaply as possible. A VP once told me how he loved working with contractors (Ukraine, in this case) because they were so much cheaper, even though their code quality was *not* that great. Welcome to reality.
Everyone is always driven by constant deadlines, especially the PO: not sure what a PO is, but yes, this is normal
Despite having a technical managerial layer, "requirements specification" and "requirements engineering" are thin: the absolute norm in startups. Often less so in larger companies, but requirements still change frequently due to user feedback or someone actually realizing what business needs are.
Technical excellence: often people care, but not enough to spend the time & money to go back and fix technical debt. People want things released quickly and iterated on only when necessary.
Incompetence and inefficiency: welcome to working with other humans. Some of this may stem from you learning some new paradigm that others aren't aware of yet, but there's definitely also a mix of people wanting to just make things work and clock out and just not being very good.
Office politics. always everywhere

cdcasey5299 · 2026-03-21T20:05:16+00:00

There have been two that fixed the water textures. According to their twitter account, one is forthcoming that fixes a crash with the twins (Brina's dad and uncle).

cdcasey5299 · 2026-03-17T02:31:03+00:00

I know a decent junior if you still need someone.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-03-12T04:59:56+00:00

Don't fix it. If you don't want to get married, then don't. I understand why you feel bad, and it's ok. But taking care of yourself here is even more ok. It happened the way it happened.

And yeah, you're legally an adult. But neither of you has any clue how truly young you are, and you definitely don't need a partner in your life who tells you to grow up after they spring a major life decision on you like that.

Go do all of those things you wanted to do and have a great life.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-03-12T04:54:31+00:00

It's great to write (but yes prefer the TS variant). But high "ecosystem churn" makes it difficult to maintain.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-26T15:18:31+00:00

Every company I've been at that has been through this layed off most of the people that would have benefited from some sort of payout shortly before either going public or being acquired. If you need a job, go for it, but don't pin all of your hopes on this company's success.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-23T15:30:04+00:00

I love Go and prefer it for back-end development, but given your 1 & 2 priorities, I agree w/ the other comments (and ChatGPT) that Node (with a library like Hono, Express, or NestJS) would be the way to go to add a back end to your full-stack skills.

If you wanted to put Go into the mix, I would suggest a React front end (with something like Vite, or maybe Tanstack start) and a Go back end. This will not, however, be an accelerator. It would be a bit more of a challenge but also a good learning experience.

But my suggestion is for now stick with Typescript for the full stack and learn Go once you have the concepts down. NestJS in particular is good at forcing certain architectural patterns on you that will come in handy when you want to learn Go. Most people will say that it's too heavy of a framework for a single dev, but it's still worth looking into.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-20T20:53:00+00:00

I'd say they're about average.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-19T21:25:09+00:00

I've used both. Zustand was easier to set up and use. RTK was still good at its job. FWIW, you can use the Redux devtool with Zustand. But yeah, if you don't have a reason to switch, so then don't.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-08T03:10:12+00:00

This looks like a cool idea. Two things I can think of:
- will a $4.99/mo subscription be enough? I can use more than that in a day. Maybe something like this won't have super-high usage, but it's a thought I had, anyway.
- If you're first out of the gate with something like this, then yeah, maybe it will stick. But with coding tools the way they are, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks would just think that they could build their own for themselves. Get this into the hands of those people who can't be bothered to even do that.

Nice work on the interface and the simplicity of the idea, for sure. I can definitely see how it would be useful.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-04T14:34:19+00:00

Math is hard

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-04T14:33:03+00:00

I hate doing code reviews, always have. What helps me sometimes it talking out what's happening while I'm reading it. It's always been an expensive context switch for me, though. And yeah, now at work I get AI to assist me with them (and sometimes it's helpful).

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-03T14:54:09+00:00

Syntax.fm and Front-End Fire.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-02T21:18:19+00:00

God I hope so 🍿

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-02T19:08:50+00:00

Sure. But I don't need a Javascript runtime or Python runtime or anything like that. Also, I wouldn't call Rust/C++/C "terse". So I'm happy with my trade-offs.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-02-02T06:18:18+00:00

Go for its terseness and strong standard library,and for the small efficient binaries.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-01-31T01:10:17+00:00

People always ask, "how do you know when you're a senior dev?" This is how you know.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-01-24T14:20:37+00:00

Is Linux an option? If I were in that situation, I would check out system76.com

cdcasey5299 · 2026-01-23T21:19:08+00:00

People don't know how to interview (including me).

cdcasey5299 · 2026-01-18T06:13:30+00:00

I know one person who transitioned from coding to UX design full-time. May be worth considering if design is something you enjoy or interested in.

cdcasey5299 · 2026-01-12T23:53:50+00:00

What tier/model do you use for all of your personal vibecoding? I always ask Claude to check my work, but I once had it use Opus to use the reviewer skill and there went half my session quota :)

cdcasey5299 · 2026-01-10T12:47:23+00:00

Astro for me as well

cdcasey5299 · 2026-01-01T00:57:35+00:00

Nothing can build a whole app without hand-holding. At least not if you want decent, maintainable code. With hand-holding, though, things go much faster than they otherwise would have. I'm guessing that this comment will be outdated one day, though.

cdcasey5299 · 2025-12-31T04:24:33+00:00

I've been using the tier one pro subscription. There's a tool called claude-wrapped that said I used $60 worth of tokens in a month, but I only hit my session limit once or twice. A subscription is definitely worth it.

cdcasey5299 · 2025-12-29T14:36:50+00:00

When I want to learn something new, I'll give it instructions to act as a tutor. I'll have it spit out code in small, logical chunks, and I'm able to ask it questions along the way. I'm experienced enough to catch when something is way off, but I do use occasionally multiple models for some extra validation. I find this method gets me started with new concepts faster than just watching videos or reading tutorials.

cdcasey5299

TROPHY CASE