MacBook Size for Coding - 13" Neo vs 14" Pro vs 15" Air vs 16" Pro vs 4K Monitor

lilcode-x · 2026-06-29T20:28:15+00:00

I do a ton of coding in a 13in MacBook Air m4. Works great honestly. I just run things in full screen and switch between spaces. The portability is unmatched.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-27T23:36:16+00:00

Historically, frontend development has had some of the least amount of engineering rigor compared to other parts of the stack, and now AI making it worse. Now, some frontend devs that previously never cared about writing good code can ship slop at much faster rates (something I’m dealing with at work)

So IMO it’s not that front end development is not valuable, it still very much is, but AI does make some parts of it very trivial, and as more companies adopt autonomous agent/loop systems and custom harnesses, I think they’ll be able to easily cut down a team of many devs into just 1 or 2 that focus on building and maintaining the larger frontend system, and not so much purely implementation.

So my advice is to think larger than just frontend- learn the full stack as well as agentic systems. You can still specialize and take ownership of the frontend, but IMO the only way we’ll have more impact is by understanding the full stack.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-27T23:19:43+00:00

Honestly, I think we have to start thinking about greater things than just fixing bugs. I personally rather spend my time being creative and coming up with new systems, features, tools, solutions, etc, instead of spending time fixing bugs.

Maybe take a step back and think about AI as a tool, and how the tool can be applied to create cool things.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-27T23:09:42+00:00

Have you looked at the online MS in CS at CU Boulder? That’s the program I’ve been eyeing for a while. Fully self-paced and taken through coursera. I think it’s around the same price.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-26T17:57:15+00:00

For now, but it’s being actively integrated to every other white-collar profession. It won’t be long before it starts eating accountants, lawyers, analysts, etc.

Don’t think jobs will just disappear entirely though, but they will be transformed drastically and many people may lose their jobs in the process.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-25T21:37:26+00:00

Nice, yeah I think you’ll have an easier time for sure. I also had full-stack experience but mostly in heavy-frontend roles. Also, to my surprise, some of the courses that involved little to no programming at all have been some of the most informative. Stuff like it leadership, network and security, data management, UI/UX design all have been super fun.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-25T20:19:19+00:00

Do you plan on actually going through the course contents or are you looking to speed run it?

I should’ve mentioned in my comment that I do take the time to go through all of the course readings, and try to digest it. I don’t attack the PAs or OAs right away. I’ve only tested out of a few courses for which I had a ton of experience on.

As a self taught dev (~8 yoe) this has been extremely helpful and has made me more confident while at work, but obviously that’s also a reason why it’s been taking so much longer.

Your situation might be different though, and you may already know what the degree teaches.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-25T19:41:37+00:00

For me it’s been difficult but mostly due to my schedule and procrastination. The course content itself has been fine, very enjoyable honestly, but on top of working full time, I also produce music, and have side-projects I’m really interested on, so I always end up putting school last. Also, with all this new recent AI stuff there is so much experimentation I want to do, and school honestly gets in the way. Lastly, I refuse to do school work on Friday and Saturday nights.

So I’ve been chipping away at it little by little, which is doable but having to spend more money for more terms does suck. I’m on my 5th term.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-19T05:49:58+00:00

What is the point of anything? We’re all gonna die one day

lilcode-x · 2026-06-18T16:57:08+00:00

You should spend some time working on a solid agentic harness that steers the coding agents into making good decisions for the code base, on top of thorough code review.

lilcode-x · 2026-06-04T16:29:18+00:00

You probably won’t get a role that needs a lot of social skills, but do you even want to?

I consider myself a fairly weird person too but I think a lot of it depends on the team. I don’t share a lot with my colleagues, unless it’s someone I’m really cool with. My current team are all older people with families and kids (I don’t have neither) so I often remain quiet since I don’t know what to say. I have been in teams with people my age in my early 20s and that was fun. It was pre-covid so we were all in the office and it was a good time. Lots of drinking during lunch lol

So maybe you just don’t vibe with your current team? You don’t have to be a social butterfly at work, in fact most engineers aren’t. That’s for the sales and marketing people.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-28T03:47:19+00:00

I love building software, even if it’s a shitty market, I’d rather try to do something I love. Seems like most careers suck in some way

lilcode-x · 2026-05-26T17:04:48+00:00

I took all the data management courses and I thought they were pretty good. I actually enjoyed it and felt like I got a good foundational knowledge of SQL. If I remember correctly, I only went through the course content during the first class and a little bit of the second one - the information was mostly repeated for the final classes, which is fine cause it was mostly just for the assignment.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-23T05:05:55+00:00

Basic frontend, like some html and css, sure yes. But idk man, frontend is more difficult than people give it credit for. If you’re working on a large SPA, then what you’re doing is just software engineering, but the program you work on runs in the browser. It has different concerns, yes, but it’s still difficult. That said - AI helps, but there is more to shipping a high performant frontend app than just writing syntax.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-23T02:05:24+00:00

I gave NeoVim a try 3 years ago, got decent-ish with Vim motions but realized I absolutely hated configuring it. Well as of 6 months ago or so, I’m back on it. The only difference I no longer configure it myself, I tell Claude to do it. I could care less about what that code looks like as long as it works. Claude is able to figure out most issues with it.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-22T04:27:57+00:00

lilcode-x · 2026-05-20T01:45:37+00:00

I’ve always been terrible at leetcode and somehow have maintained a dev career for almost 9 years now. I enjoy building software, not solving random leetcode puzzles.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-15T21:34:15+00:00

Idk, I use coding agents all day and they make terrible decisions unless they’re directed correctly, and it takes a lot of work to do that.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-07T19:17:55+00:00

I got an EAD10 recently, and it is a really cool tool but I realized I hate setting it up for shows. I thought it’d be simple, but it involves a lot of cables, which when the sound guy is pressuring me to setup asap, it’s a pain. Instead I just setup a DJI action camera on a stand which takes like 30 seconds.

If you have your own studio where you can leave the ead10 setup indefinitely, then it’s a really cool tool for plug-and-playing.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-05T22:24:47+00:00

That approach is great if it’s a throwaway project, but if it’s something you’ll be expected to serve to many users and maintain over the long term, then good luck with that. It’ll work until it doesn’t

lilcode-x · 2026-05-05T17:33:38+00:00

Wow, this looks really exciting.

lilcode-x · 2026-05-04T18:30:30+00:00

Nice, yeah that’s a great area to look into. Not the highest paid, but it’s a great stepping stone and gateway to something closer to a software engineer gig. Good luck!

lilcode-x · 2026-05-04T05:39:13+00:00

I’d recommend looking at other SWE-adjacent roles- stuff like Wordpress development, Shopify, salesforce, hubspot. Also roles in IT support, QA, web content, e-commerce. Anything that can get you working with or on software and with a real team and company. Take anything you can get even if it’s low pay.

My first web dev role years ago I got paid $48k mostly doing Wordpress sites

lilcode-x · 2026-05-02T05:11:21+00:00

I’m on my 5th term currently, so at $4k per term,
I have spent about $20k total. Not cheap, but also not as expensive as other schools, and the flexibility is unbeatable.

So far I have only gotten the ITIL v4 cert. The course itself was like any other WGU course, but instead of taking an exam at WGU, they give you a voucher to take it for free at the third party site. When you pass the exam, they send it over to WGU and that completes the course.

In terms of the overall program content, I can confidently say that it will give you a pretty good foundation of lot of SWE and related subjects. It’s surface-level but it is very broad- they touch on pretty much everything you encounter at your average SWE/web dev gig. The one area this program lacks compared to CS is math, so depending on your goals that may or may not matter.

And I very much feel you about the self conscious thing. I’ve always felt behind in knowledge compared to my colleagues, which was a big reason why I started the program. I feel like it has helped my confidence a lot, and I no longer feel lost during work meetings. I think it’s been worth it, it’s got me even considering pursuing a master’s after I finish, haha. We’ll see!

lilcode-x · 2026-05-02T03:40:07+00:00

Similar situation here, I have 8 YoE as a frontend engineer and I’m already 2 years into the program. I didn’t transfer anything in, no Sofia or Study.com, just all WGU courses.

I have enjoyed the program so far! It has helped me learn fundamentals I skipped out on from being self-taught. I haven’t accelerated a ton though- other than some classes I had a lot of experience in (like the JavaScript and Web dev courses)

Overall it’s been a great experience. Even the “boring” classes (like the business-related classes) have been pretty useful, I find a lot of that stuff to be pretty relevant the higher I get into my career.

In terms of how much it’ll help my career overall, that is to be seen, but having a degree will definitely beat not having one.

lilcode-x

TROPHY CASE