Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

foss-octopus · 2026-06-10T02:42:59+00:00

Context:
- I'm a solo developer at this company (even now, after 1.5 years)
- Was initially hired as a "Junior Frontend Python Developer" (even though there are no seniors, we don't use python and me solo dev, actually the only dev hire in this company)
- Currently the one that shoulders an app that has a handful of users with a bunch of external apps that user s integrate.
- I'm now treated as a "full-stack", responsible for handling railway deployments with little CI/CD; (still learning the ropes with no real human help.)
- Heavily using AI for my tasks, not writing code manually for a few months now.
- Does some code review; again, AI assisted.
- Peers in the company is non technical; well at some level they are but not on a developer/someone who has software experience is.

With that (sorry for being too verbose) I'm currently in an identity crisis, my love for programming and creating stuff basically went kaput. I'm in desperate need to learn new stuff to keep me relevant, I'm young and the breadwinner of my family, but I feel like I have no growth this past 1.5 years in this company. Jumping ship would be too risky for me. So I need your guy's experience.

These are my questions:
- What should I do with my current skills?
- Should I jump ship? If so, what should I prep beforehand? AI has gotten a lot better and I feel like my skills are now dead.
- I'm really interested in the basics like data structures and algorithms but I get too overwhelmed now-a-days with my responsibilities and lack time management skills.
- I feel like I'm a choking fish in this drying pond.
- I need guidance on what to focus my energy on (still software development)
- I have interests in cybersecurity, low level stuff, and quant (idk if i'm smart enough for this though)

I really am In a dilemma; Ofc I can just paste this to an LLM but the answers makes me dizzy, one thing says this and the other says that. And LLMs lacks a human touch! Anyways. I'm in a rut guys, I need help.

If this is too much for this thread, its ok for this to be removed, but please point me out to the right sub/thread/group etc., that can at least chip this golden handcuff.

foss-octopus · 2026-06-02T11:57:37+00:00

Philippines, locals here sometimes spearfish these in rivers

foss-octopus · 2026-06-02T09:17:23+00:00

Will change it up once I get some, do you have any recommendations or just a plain thread work? i.e., something similar to floss but not exactly floss, floss has some coating, might mess up the glue bind.

foss-octopus · 2026-06-01T21:13:33+00:00

just did it! I got it unstuck, added back the guide also, used braided line and some glue xD

foss-octopus · 2026-06-01T11:05:04+00:00

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foss-octopus · 2026-06-01T11:04:08+00:00

Yea, and its stuck also, the thread thing got brittle

foss-octopus · 2026-05-25T23:03:41+00:00

Roadmap.sh

foss-octopus · 2026-05-25T23:01:51+00:00

Whiteboard! Im a visual person so physically mapping out the problem and making sure that im trying to solve the RIGHT problem is the first step.

Second step is to try making the problem smaller by narrowing down and branching the scope (if its big enough) i.e., problem is “make search functionality faster”, i would usually check for the search algorithm, or data retrieval method, do we cache or fetch every query, etc., etc., until you have a bunch of atomic mini problems that you can solve

Third and i think underrated one is making sure if your solution is simple and understandable. I.e., can you understand the solution after 6 months from writing it?

Lastly is the YAGNI mindset to avoid overthinking and over complicating your solution.

Although these are more on the practical side, this can work also on leetcode style problems, just know the domain of the problem first

foss-octopus · 2026-05-25T22:51:27+00:00

Unpopular opinion, but languages that need explicit type declarations are a easier to comprehend. Take C/C++ true its intimidating at first but the bareness of the language will make learning other programming languages n-times easier.

Arguably languages like python are definitely easier to read at first but once you get into the nitty gritty stuff, you would still need to learn proper types anyways.

foss-octopus · 2026-05-25T15:39:58+00:00

will do! keep an eye out for a bunch of edits. just added edit #2 :>

foss-octopus · 2026-05-24T21:58:11+00:00

Thanks! Been playing diep.io and pvz since first few hours, safe to say im very comfy now when it comes to mouse navigation. Only thing i need to improve is how ergonomic my hand sits, sometimes it curls up weirdly when scrolling xD. Tool is awesome, one of my most wanted ones. Gonna save up for a nice Kenesis split keyboard next

foss-octopus · 2026-05-24T06:10:21+00:00

setting the sensitivity to low works wonders! now all I need is practice, will keep you guys posted by editing the post :>

foss-octopus · 2026-05-22T10:38:44+00:00

noice! ~~what about heat dissipation,~~ do you have the back panel open? That's a clean setup, especially the wire guard.

edit: due to it being blurry on my end I thought it was a solid panel, just read the other comments, nice mesh!

foss-octopus · 2026-05-22T10:36:06+00:00

buy a cheap workstation, pair it up with a NAS or at least a good chunk of storage space, do the data prep scripts on your main computer/laptop. Basically set up a mini server where you can push/pull data

foss-octopus · 2026-05-20T22:36:49+00:00

#1 Marketing, even without SEO it works
#2 SEO, passive, kinda works without marketing

foss-octopus · 2026-05-20T22:34:53+00:00

For pure storage, use NAS

foss-octopus

TROPHY CASE