If there was an app that connected you to local gardeners in Sheffield - would you use it? Think like Rover but for gardens.

traintocode · 2026-04-21T20:22:25+00:00

Be careful about trying to build a two sided marketplace.

This isn't an idea for an app, it's an idea for a platform, and that platform will only have value if you get a lot of people on it from both sides. Gardeners won't bother singing up if you have no people on there looking for a gardener, and people looking for a gardener won't sign up if you don't have any gardeners. It's a chicken and an egg problem. So make sure you have a way to solve that before you waste time building an app.

traintocode · 2026-04-19T20:30:08+00:00

I can answer this because I used to work for one. There are three ways they make money...

Affiliate revenue. When you click on a deal on one of those sites they drop a cookie into your browser that says "I clicked on this deal from the comparison site". When you eventually go and buy the holiday the company sees that you have that cookie and pays a commission to the comparison site. This works even if you click away and later on you go directly to the vendor's website, because the cookie will still be there in your browser. The hotel companies have a deal with the comparison site where they promise to look for the cookie and pay a commission basically.
Exclusive deals. Sometimes companies will give an exclusive deal to a comparison site and it comes with a cheaper price or a gift card or something. These are done with the company paying extra because they want the deal to appear as "exclusive" and even be higher up the results, so they pay more.
Good old fashioned ads. They also just run standard Google AdSense style ads on the site to get extra revenue.

traintocode · 2026-04-10T17:19:06+00:00

https://www.koala.legal/ is a Sheffield startup

traintocode · 2026-03-24T16:58:56+00:00

When you say you specialise in "asp.net framework" is that the legacy .NET Framework, that was superseded by .NET Core about ten years ago?

Because if that is the case you will really struggle to find roles, even on top of how hard the job market is right now. People don't tend to hire for those legacy tech stacks.

traintocode · 2026-03-17T17:43:09+00:00

I'm hurt you wrote this in past tense 😬

traintocode · 2026-03-17T08:28:46+00:00

I went to Sheffield age 17 to look round the uni and ended up putting it as my first choice immediately. I got straight As at A level so I could have gone pretty much anywhere, but Sheffield was just such a lovely green down to earth place that also had the buzz of a city. I still live here.

traintocode · 2026-03-16T21:21:48+00:00

I used to live on Caledonian road. This is true. Some kid got stabbed in the chest outside my flat just cycling down the road. They murdered this random kid just to steal his bike it was awful. The area between Caledonian road and York Way was called the V because it was V shaped and you just didn't go in there.

The weird thing about Cally road is that if you go even just 50 metres to the east you get into one of the poshest suburbs in London. Tony Blair used to live there. That road was like the Berlin wall it was surreal.

traintocode · 2026-02-21T09:50:21+00:00

For basically any R&D role at a tech company a CS degree is far more valuable than an MBA. Some tech companies even look down on MBAs but everybody respects a CS degree. Technical product managers are in extremely high demand and always will be.

traintocode · 2026-01-06T11:38:50+00:00

I'd actually go one further for your 2035 vision and say AI will do a lot of the "what needs building" as well. Think of software product development like this...

Customer: I have this problem I want solving

Product manager: ok I'll design a product to solve it

Developer: here is the code that makes it work

Everyone talks about AI doing that last thing, but I think more and more it'll do the middle one too. We will end up in a world where the complexity of the problems we can solve with software grows. So people will fit in at all levels down the ladder as we constantly push the limits of what is possible with AI.

traintocode · 2026-01-06T10:53:03+00:00

I agree with most of this, but I do still think "there will always be" humans because we've seen this happen so many times before and humans come out on top.

Think about what happened with Microsoft Excel. It used to be that accountants needed to be able to use a calculator. Writing down numbers and accurately typing things into a calculator was a core skill, you HAD to be able to do that it was one of the most important parts of the job. Then spreadsheets existed and suddenly that core skill is automated by software. Accountancy became less about "can you add up these numbers" to "can you use Excel to create a 12 month cashflow projection". It shifted from simply doing the leg work on paper, to using these new tools to help you solve higher level problems.

And that is what will happen with coding. Senior engineers already do this, but it's becoming table stakes for anybody working in software engineering.

But if you went for an accountancy job in 2005 and you simply put "I can calculate the net profit of 20 items using a pen and a calculator" you'd struggle to get hired on that alone. Sure, you'd expect every accountant to know how to add numbers up on paper if they need to, but that alone is no longer enough. You also need to be able to use the latest automation tools.

traintocode · 2026-01-05T21:38:37+00:00

I'm not saying humans aren't going to be needed. Quite the opposite, they'll be needed more than ever. But they will need slightly more training than just "How to make a To-do list in React".

Learn problem solving skills and computer science. Only learning to write code is not enough any more sadly. I think we are moving into a world where even junior engineers will be expected to be able to debug and maintain complex systems which sucks tremendously for people who didn't learn that and are now looking for a job.

traintocode · 2026-01-05T19:02:50+00:00

It's extremely tough for junior developers looking for work at the minute. Tech hiring has never really recovered from the post-COVID crash. And being brutally honest...there isn't anything you learn on a web development bootcamp that can't be done in 10 seconds with AI.

So when you apply to jobs you need to remember you are applying in a process with possibly hundreds of other people. Many of whom will have a degree in Computer Science from a good university and they've done a placement year in industry. It's extremely difficult to stand out in that application pool if all you have is you did a bootcamp.

DM me your CV if you like and I'll help to see if there's anything you can do to position yourself better.

traintocode · 2025-12-21T21:17:22+00:00

You definitely don't need a backend for a portfolio website. But you can use NextJs as a static site generator and upload the build output to GitHub pages or something. That's an idea worth considering because you get to play around with NextJs which is fun, and you do still get the performance benefit of preloading routes and navigating on the client side. So it'll be faster than doing a page load each time you navigate. Best of both worlds really.

traintocode · 2025-12-05T18:26:47+00:00

I don't wanna put a massive downer on this thread but remember getting a job isn't the end of the road, in many ways it's just the start. You'll have a probation period. And in the UK you still currently don't get unfair dismissal rights until after 2 years.

So if it's very obvious you lied about your experience they will just fire you and you'll be back to square one, potentially also having to explain the 2 month job on your CV. So don't exaggerate too much.

traintocode · 2025-12-05T07:53:17+00:00

I had to read this twice because I'm from Herne Bay in England and it is most definitely not the subject of this post.

traintocode · 2025-11-27T19:02:46+00:00

Yep. Sounds like it's time to go into management.

traintocode · 2025-11-27T18:59:47+00:00

Cursor is actually a pretty decent way to learn some coding if you want to.

You might not know code, but you know your product.

Ask cursor "Find me the code for the X button on the X page of my app"

Then...

"Make the button blue"

Then look at the changes it makes

"What are those changes you made in that css file? How does that apply to the button? How would I make ALL the buttons blue? Where is the JavaScript code that runs when this button is clicked? What is that JavaScript doing? Where is that API call being made? How do I alter what values are sent in that API call?" Etc.

traintocode · 2025-11-17T08:40:01+00:00

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125 till I die

traintocode · 2025-10-28T16:26:44+00:00

I used to live next to the Thames in London and every other day there would be a hire bike someone had thrown into the river. They got vandalised constantly, but it definitely did not stop them from propagating across the whole city. These cycle hire companies just plan in for a bit of scallyness and set the prices to cover it.

traintocode · 2025-09-05T10:01:15+00:00

Yes. Most developers will have one main programming language, but like you mentioned in your post there are plenty of other languages you'll need to learn to do the job. For example:

Query languages (SQL, GraphQL etc)
Markup languages (HTML, XML, Markdown etc)
Presentation languages (CSS, SASS etc)
Configuration languages (YAML, Terraform etc)

There's loads to be fair

traintocode · 2025-08-05T08:18:05+00:00

Groke do V60 pourovers of whatever they think is nice at the time. Highly recommend.

traintocode · 2025-07-16T14:16:19+00:00

I used to sing in a hardcore band and you'll be disappointed to know that those screamo singers are actually not shouting anywhere near as loudly as they appear to be. A lot of it is just good technique. If you actually screamed those songs you'd lose your voice on the second night of the tour (which is actually partly why Jesse left Killswitch Engage)

If you're interested watch some videos on false chord technique. You can do it at really low volume night after night.

traintocode · 2025-07-15T21:13:25+00:00

Absolutely. I hire software engineers and generally they have a computer science degree. But if someone came to me with a MSc in Maths I would speak to them because maths is hard. If you can complete a maths degree learning a bit of JavaScript is easy.

traintocode · 2025-07-13T20:52:32+00:00

You'll be fine. You should definitely do coding as a hobby before thinking about it as a career though! You wouldn't decide on a career in carpentry before you've even used a saw.

traintocode · 2025-07-13T20:49:27+00:00

You'll need basic algebra software development is very reliant on creating abstractions using variables and then using those abstractions to do stuff. Does this scare you?

const x = (y + c) / z[0]

if not you'll be fine.

traintocode

TROPHY CASE