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

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Lightning_McAlan@reddit

I am a college 3rd year CS student. Have been working as an backend intern in an fintech startup for 3 months now.

But now I want to implement a DBMS system of my own. Should I use C or C++ for it.
Or anything particular that should I add or implement in it.
Any piece of advice that could be helpful for me to start my journey........

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nxsynonym@reddit

Any advice for making the most out of working on a team that has relatively low business impact?

I have ~8 exp and am currently working on my BSC (about half way through). I have worked primarily as a full stack eng. My last job was tech lead for a startup where I had huge amount of impact and learned a lot across fe/be/devops/infra but ultimately had to leave due to burnout and work environment.

Since then I've joined a new company (non tech) that has small team focused on ecomm. I get paid well, good benefits, and fantastic w/b. Its the perfect situation to allow me to study at the same time and but feel burned out. However, the scope of the work is very limited. There is not a lot of growth potential at the moment, and the bulk of the eng organization is doing plumbing work or tweaking the ecomm site for micro optimizations.

I've been able to dona few impactful things around dx, cms integration, and performance improvements, but overall have had a step back in terms of scope and responsibilities.

Any advice for making the most out of this job and not stagnating in career growth? My current plan is to finish my degree and then start planning my next move.

I've started keeping a brag doc, which helps, but it feels like everything is minor compared to previous jobs.

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aghost_7@reddit

Do some side projects, finish your education. Then, jump ship.

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Even_Ask_2577@reddit

Tldr; I have no clue what I'm doing.

Today was my first day working as a software engineer. I'm still a student now starting my 3rd year with almost no real hands on experience.

My first day was basically a simulation of a client describing specs so I can build the software. It's an internal HR app for the company to use that has to be (re)written in C# and Blazor with MSSQL database, since the old version is really outdated.

I have to admit it was pretty overwhelming, since I haven't used the technologies before. It seems like a mountain of work and I don't really know how to start climbing it?

I feel like vibecoding it will take me longer than actually building this from scratch by myself, but I feel like there will be so many time consuiming problems I won't understand and won't even know where to actually look for an answer since I'm so new to this. The impostor syndrome kicked in real hard today ngl.

Tommorrow is an in-office day so I will do my best to communicate as much as possible with my mentor on how to proceed. The company seems to like me though, I just hope I am able to keep up.

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CXCX18@reddit

Just wondering how true any of this is https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1n9abky/i_miss_when_coding_felt_simpler/ and if this is a career I need to turn around and rethink before I dive deep into studying. It's about the only thing I've felt passionate about but Reddit like to push these posts in my face and I only have myself to blame for interacting with them.

Currently doing TOP and going from there, will maybe go to Trinity College in Dublin to get a degree or continue self learning and building my own projects.

I don't expect this to be a cakewalk but I do want to acknowledge that the general sentiment of "learn to code" years ago before I decided to finally start this year was "It'll pay more, be more rewarding in terms of constantly learning and the work is far more respectful of work/life/balance." to lets say, all the blue collar work I do right now. I don't know if that dynamic is shifting now though because of AI and if I should just genuinely consider being an electrician or something for the rest of my life.

I will likely regret not pursuing the only thing I felt genuine interest and enjoyment out of during the learning process though. And no, I wouldn't want to do it as just a hobby, I have an all or nothing mentality with a lot of things.

Quick edit, not sure if this matters but I am 25 and turning 26 with only blue collar work under my belt since I was 18. Not sure if there is such a thing as "too late" but just thought I'd throw that out there.

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tonklable@reddit

I worked in corporate with an encouragement to use AI in work, but I feel like it makes me dumb even I get jobs done.

I know that we can’t rely on AI and need to check every line, so I do check. And I do learn a lot from them. For example, it suggests me beautiful Java stream map-filter (Java) instead of for-loop.

I check and understand what it does, and everything is delivered correctly and quickly with praise from seniors.

However, I lack confidence. I feel like I can understand the code but can’t write code in my own.

My questions: Is it really healthy to do like this? Company expects x10 productivity from employee to use AI. I do concern of my skills in the future, but if the future only requires to “read and understand from AI” more than “write”, will the trend keep continue like this?

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Wide-Pop6050@reddit

This is legitimate way to learn. The thing is you have to actually remember it and put it into practice sometime. Understanding it well the way you did is the first step. Now you have to keep it in mind when you run into a similar issue again. Maybe even take notes or bookmark it or something.

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tonklable@reddit

Thank you for your comment. I will take notes more!

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Spare_Environment867@reddit

You're describing a positive learning experience which costed the company less senior dev teaching time and you delivered. Don't read into it too much, but I hear most senior devs spend less time coding as their career goes on, not because the skills aren't there, but because leadership becomes a multiplier

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tonklable@reddit

Thank you for your comment. I will learn more from it.

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drnullpointer@reddit

> but I feel like it makes me dumb

Yes. The same way GPS makes you not be able to drive around town without it. Our brains are built to be lazy, if they can get away with it.

> Company expects x10 productivity from employee to use AI

Productivity is a lot of things taken together. For example, a person who produces a lot of code might be completely unproductive if the code is doing the wrong thing. Or if the problem could have been solved without having to code it in the first place.

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tonklable@reddit

Thank you for you comments. I will take note.

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reboog711@reddit

My questions: Is it really healthy to do like this?

Sure. In the 90s we often solved problems with our own physical collection of books. Then we discussed things on mailing lists. Then web searches became more common. At some point StackOverflow took over. Now AI tools are here. It is perfectly valid to get other opinions on your code, and seek out external solutions that do not come 100% from your mind.

Company expects x10 productivity from employee to use AI.

Company is delusional.

I do concern of my skills in the future, but if the future only requires to “read and understand from AI” more than “write”, will the trend keep continue like this?

Honestly, no idea. I postulate that eventually AI will just be a tool, like all the others before it. You can use it for good positive effect. And bad negative effect. Learning to wield it is good for your long term career.

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tonklable@reddit

Thank you for you comments. These are helpful to me.

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reboog711@reddit

I feel like I can understand the code but can’t write code in my own.

I've heard that before from less experienced people I worked with. What I told them was "Now you've seen it and have one more idea how to tackle this problem the next time something similar crops up"

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Brilliant-Shop6112@reddit

I’m a new grad junior dev working in bigtech. Our team’s directive seems to have shifted recently from maintaining an existing product to packing as many new AI features as possible into said existing product - good because the company is all in on AI and it is making us very visible, bad because the product was already dubiously profitable and the new AI features are even less so. (And also creating a ton of tech debt that is rapidly becoming unmanageable)

95 percent of my day to day work is MLops related - which on the one hand I’m excited about because I’d love to work as a research MLE someday and I’m gaining a lot of skills in that area, but on the other hand I’m getting much less experience than I’d like with regular dev work (pretty much everything I’m doing is some sort of greenfield project) and I’m scared that when the AI bubble inevitably pops I will be much more screwed in terms of career progression than your average junior dev.

Curious if anyone here has any advice on how to balance learning as much as I can while I’m here with making sure I’m employable when the other shoe drops :)

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No-Economics-8239@reddit

The industry has been full of fads and tech changes, and there are always some prognosticators who think they can tell which is which. I'm glad you are confident you know which way the wind is blowing. I happen to agree with you, but only time will tell if we are right.

In the meantime, you do what pays the bills and learn what you can along the way. Sometimes, your employer will pay for your time to learn new skills. Other times, you will either need to learn the rest on your own time or surreptitiously make time around your work schedule.

Good employers will listen to your interests about what you'd like to learn or what direction you want to take your career. Better ones will have formal training programs to upskill in and/or pay to have you travel to training programs or conferences. But those are just part of the overall benefits to keep an eye out for.

At the end of the day, it is always a balancing act an employer needs to walk to keep their good employees current with changing technologies while risking investing in them skills that will make them more marketable to competitors. But it is on them to pay you what you are worth and on you to know what that is and how best to acquire it.

That means you need to be the one keeping an eye for what opportunities can be found, either on your own time or with your employer. Sometimes, for example, you'll be given some sort of self-improvement goal to learn a new skill. Or you can try and negotiate such with your manager during any 1:1 meetings or reviews.

If you can get one, you can then try and negotiate blocking off time during the week to work towards such a goal. I typically try and always block off four hours a week for it. If your employer requires or allows such a goal but then claims your priorities are elsewhere and they can not spare any of your time this week to work on it, they are telling you something important and you should listen to them.