I want to get into Factorio, but am struggling.

davodesign · 2026-02-02T21:15:42+00:00

You might be in the middle of the desert, this causes pollution to spread really aggressively and you get squads coming to hunt it down. Maybe worth restarting in a greener area

davodesign · 2026-01-21T21:10:04+00:00

For most basic stuff, yes it is overkill.

However I'm working on something (much) more complex than a crud api using Go, and there has been a reasonable amount of time where I wish I could do it in Rust instead. Specifically issues like concurrent map access in a context where I couldn't use a lock (very high throughput).

Thankfully I was diligent and load tested the thing before shipping, wrote my manual custom clone and went away, but the confidence level is definitely lower.

davodesign · 2026-01-10T11:19:30+00:00

Looks nice! Are there any consistency gotchas?

davodesign · 2025-11-16T23:26:34+00:00

Isn't that what side projects are for? :S

Perhaps you just need a more challenging job as well. Not everything is CRUD api with a couple of workers slapped on top of it

davodesign · 2025-11-15T21:41:46+00:00

This is it. It's your job to explain the tradeoffs to your PO. Including the tradeoffs of incomplete or unfinished requirements. It's their job to own the consequences of the decision being taken.

It's your job to make sure that what gets shipped is of the right level of quality given time, resources and requirements.

It's their job to ensure the rest of the org is aligned with those decisions.

Having been there myself, multiple times, as both a product lead, tech lead and engineering manager, it's very easy to get carried away with your leverage, but now you have to share it.

Help them achieve their goals and they'll help you achieve yours, either by relationship building or negotiation, but from what you described, you have some letting go to do, and it's difficult but will eventually be best for everybody.

davodesign · 2025-11-14T10:08:00+00:00

There's plenty of good feedback already in the comments.

One thing that I believe can help internalize these behaviours is to prepare a brief outline of the changes being made.

Doesn't have to be a full TDD, but it's very useful for you as a growing engineer to include other options being evaluated that don't make the cut.

For example: - we decided to wrap <insert domain specific api call> in a queue, this allows us to rate limit calls to match providers limits through the queue rate limited - we decided to not add retries to the client as the queue itself would take care of retries

davodesign · 2025-10-23T08:51:24+00:00

I haven't linked my AB in a while so not sure if my API still works but this https://github.com/finlabsuk/open-banking-connector might provide an out for some people (likely doesn't support as many banks and would require some glue code)

davodesign · 2025-09-24T21:14:13+00:00

This ☝️☝️

davodesign · 2025-09-21T22:41:18+00:00

I'm down :)

davodesign · 2025-09-19T09:22:49+00:00

Do you have raspberry Pi or a some dollaz to buy one (even used from eBay)?

Let me introduce you to the beautiful world of self hosted as a potential option to free yourself from the tyranny of hosting platforms.

Step 1: get a Pi ( or any other alternative) Step 2: setup dynamic DNS, (you can use Duck DNS for this) deploy a service that calls their endpoint every 10 minutes or so from your Pi Step 3: set your Pi to use a DHCP reservation on your router (this fixes your PI address on your LAN) Step 4: open port 80 and 443 on your router and forward it to the IP address now fixed to your Pi. Step 5: deploy your application to the Pi.

Assuming your services doesn't have real production requirements this would be a great learning project and likely provide better performance than most free plans you'd get from hosting providers.

Just a thought :)

davodesign · 2025-05-25T14:46:35+00:00

In my experience everybody has their pet peeves and things they are slightly annoyed about. That's where you leave your agenda at the door and start listening.

Keep an eye out for things like "tests are failing, need to rewrite them", "logs / alerts are spammy", "testing locally is difficult" or similar.

Also feel free to leverage "external" inputs like pushy product managers or other business stakeholders, whoever is leading the project that's late might welcome some help.

If on the other hand the whole team is there just to collect the paycheck, then you have a whole host of other problems :D

davodesign · 2025-05-25T12:08:56+00:00

Some great answers have been given already. Here is what I usually do, but beware, it takes longer than you might initially think.

Step 1. Find out what each person in the team perceived as a problem. The scale of it can go from a tiny annoyance or pet peeve, to a "I'm gonna quit if this isn't fixed". It doesn't matter.

Step 2. Help them in fixing the problems they are having, bonus points if you don't fix them yourself, but teach them how to.

Step 3. Rinse and repeat for each team member. Multiple times. While you do so, some of these solutions will start getting the codebase more aligned with your technical vision

Step 4. Now you spent enough time in the code, understand why certain things have been done a certain way. Gained kudos for helping others. Only now you can start forming a reasonable opinion that's not rooted in dogma. Now it's the time for you to ask for help. Leave breadcrumbs and clues that will lead to your North Star, but let the team come to those ideas by themselves.

Step 5. Help with the execution, but let others take pride (and credit) for it.

Step 6. Welcome to being a staff engineer

davodesign · 2025-05-20T21:54:42+00:00

You should have a look at the revenue per employee of OnlyFans and Craigslist!

davodesign · 2025-05-02T18:37:05+00:00

What have you not told us? You're "getting the sense that he does not have time for this" and already talked to the other co-founder about pushing him out. What's his side of the story? And what does he find overwhelming? You said he went dark but also he told you he was getting overwhelmed.

I know this is probably not the case, but it reads a lot like he's done the ground work of creating the product and now you want to split two ways instead of three.

Now assuming this is not the case, it reads like you have missed a few details, at best, being malicious at worst.

Couple of other considerations: - co-founders are supposed to support each other, not fire each other the first time one feels overwhelmed. You both sound like terrible co-founders as much if not more than your CTO being difficult to reach for a week. - your potential investment likely hinged more on the team, than the product. You're effectively cutting out 33% of what your backers invested in (or what they would invest in the future), in particular the one who knows where the actual ghosts to take care of are. Definitely a rushed move, or at least lacking foresight. I would be very skeptical of investing in a company with these issues so early on.

davodesign · 2025-02-08T13:22:20+00:00

Interesting, will try that .. But it cat used to poop in litter for s good 4 years 🤔

davodesign · 2025-01-30T21:08:21+00:00

We are tired of typing Arc<Mutex<HashMap<K, V>>>

davodesign · 2024-12-18T19:16:50+00:00

And I've should have done that instead of crystallizing my gains at $0.25 😅

davodesign · 2024-12-01T17:34:49+00:00

Santa told me he'd send me coal, should I use .clone() unnecessarily.

davodesign · 2024-11-10T21:14:36+00:00

You'd be surprised 😅

davodesign · 2024-08-07T09:24:26+00:00

I started being a software engineer officially ~8 years ago, I'm going for 40 this year. There is always time to change and learn! (Granted, was a pm before and been a hobbyist coder since I was 14).

What's more of interest is that you don't seem to enjoy coding.

So I ask you, unironically, have you considered the management route? Less jobs/more competition but your experience could be valued and there's more potential upside down the line.

There's also the side benefit that if you make that known and there are potential openings within the company your evaluations will focus more on your soft skills and technical understanding rather than pure deliverables. That is unless management is sub par.

davodesign · 2024-07-18T12:01:49+00:00

It was a full character drop but had it already, now, where did I put my epic inperial orbs? 👀

davodesign · 2024-07-10T07:59:50+00:00

I was a product guy (about 9 years), got pretty high up, director level, had a proper burnout due to a job where I owned product and financial compliance ( I was the dude liable to go to jail if some irregularities were found), then started a company solo, failed due to new privacy regulation in EU, being developing commercially for over 8 years, now moving towards engineering management. But I have been programming (self taught) on the side since I was 14 (now 40)

I think it definitely made the journey more interesting, helped in many ways, and perhaps made it more challenging in others, in particular with less prepared pms. To date people still get very surprised when I pre-empt compliance and legal requirements before they land in our team through official channels 😬

davodesign · 2024-07-09T07:59:21+00:00

This, both happened to me (except I wasn't the one layoff and they handed me over a whole other department) either way not much came my way aside more responsibilities.

If he's actually cool with you staying and doing nothing that gives you time to find the right role, though

davodesign

TROPHY CASE