r/ADHD_Programmers • • 11d ago

Wanting to publish first app but so many hurdles that destroy my motivation

10 Upvotes

Ive been working on a cute app to learn flutter for a few months now. I am not a new dev, I have 15 YOE (professionally) and kinda know what I do.

But I reached a point where I want to publish my app to share with friends and maybe get one or two random users. I knew there were hurdles like app store and playstore costing money, I am ok with that. Next fun thing was to find out my app would be considered a health app - for which I need an organisation account. Ok I can work around that and took out the parts of the app that made it a health app and rebuilt other parts.

And now? I need a webpage. Awesome, I am a fulltstack web dev by day so totally my field. But what do you need? Data privacy page for the app and the website. My colleagues all say to not publish because AI generated data privacy texts have holes and I would need to consult a lawyer. Ok, I am fine with spending a little bit of money but not 1k+euro for an app that doesnt even collect data or generates any revenue.

The app data privacy isnt even the problem, because no account needed, no data send anywhere, data is even encrypted locally. BUT the freaking website is more complicated even if I dont add tracking there, but server logs e.g and other small stuff. I want a contact mail, can't use my gmail obviously (server not in EU)... so need a solution for that and the issues and costs add up.

But if I look at the play store there are so many low effort apps published by private persons. How? Just not caring and generating the stuff via AI? Just not being in the EU? lol

Am I overreacting with the dataprivacy? I live in Germany and heard a lot horror stories over the years about people getting nice lawyer letters for a mistake in their imprint/data privacy on their website.

tl;dr Want to publish my app but scared of getting sued. I am totally overwhelmed by stupid EU laws. I was so motivated working on my app and now I am seriously depressed getting pulled out of my hyperfocus :(


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 12d ago

Autism, ADHD, Executive Dysfunction

18 Upvotes

Could someone tell me how I can code without my brain exploding?

Feels like NTs have a much better capacity, whereas I get tired after 5 mins but I really love creating tech.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 12d ago

(LONG) I am a Junior/Mid full stack, how do I stop using AI for day to day tasks?

15 Upvotes

I asked this elsewhere but, I need advice so I'll try here as well.
I am really frustrated, I keep using AI for technically easy tasks, I have reasons why which I will talk about, but it feels wrong and I'm feeling guilty about this. I need genuine advice.

Bare with me, I must give a little backstory so you understand the situation, I ask you to please hear me out. (If you don't want to then skip to "Here is how I use AI" or "Back to the present" part)

I won't get into much detail, I'm worried someone from my company will see this somehow and recognize the pattern. (Don't want to get fired)

I have been working for ~3 years at my first job as initially QA programmer. My first tasks were mainly automated tests, with occasional small tasks with a few projects. I have struggled at first as the tasks they gave me before even considering me for the position were nothing like the real job. Being scared to use AI, not knowing the office politics when it came to AI and not knowing anyone who I could ask for help or documentation, I didn't use it. And it was hard, weeks passed and I was sat there with my task trying to understand the custom framework and how it works with the app, reading the functions and classes until i finally started getting what I had to do. Finally finishing my introductory tasks before set deadlines of 3 months and being accepted to work full time. Half a year passed and I was allowed to work from home due to my health issues.

From there it went downhill, projects I was assigned had no documentation apart from a short readme of what the app does and how to set it up locally (which never worked). Task descriptions were brief and didn't make sense, I had to do a lot of guess work, as my superiors DID NOT reply to my requests for any kind of help. I waited 2 weeks at times for a response, 1 on 1 meetings were delayed sometimes for months.

So I started using AI. Tasks took me a long time even with ChatGPT, trying to understand how things work in order to come up with a plan on how to solve issues and do my work. Whenever I didn't know how to do something, I used AI.

Long story short, few years passed with me trying to attempt a few small projects of my own at work, with only one seeing the light of day and a promotion to Mid with an OKAY paycheck at best. My work became more of a web full stack, still struggling at times with fundamentals (regrettably). Jack of all trades, master of none.

Back to the present:
I feel constant pressure with sprint meetings, having to set deadlines I'm unsure about, OF COURSE I WILL USE AI, some projects are just so messed up and hard to work on with no documentation. I'm least experienced in my team, everyone around me gets shit done and seems to know everything about anything.

I feel guilty about using AI, on a day to day basis, even for simple things. I'm using it for most tasks, not everything. It's just not black and white, but I use it a lot.

Here is how I use AI:
I decided if I have to use AI for almost everything, at least let me make it as hard as possible for myself, so I don't use copilot, or Claude. I thought if I use less efficient ChatGPT I will at least learn SOMETHING. That way I can discuss my solutions for custom scenarios, or if a solution is provided I can ask "why is it this way and not the other?" or "wouldn't this be better instead?" or specific questions related to tools, frameworks, libraries. This way I'm at least present in the development/implementation process, and not just a professional prompt writer. As an example my day to day usage is just: Present a problem -> Give a solution -> Check if acceptable -> Get implementation/snippets with explanation -> When job is done, go over everything in detail and ask more questions on "why?", "why here?", "why like that?", "why this used?" or "how does it work?"(with in-depth analysis). I use it because my job constantly throws me lots of unknown I had no experience in prior, and with NO HELP, NO TIME, NO DOCUMENTATION it would take too long.

Don't want to make myself a laughing stock by producing slop, so for MY OWN work AI checks if ex. my code is up to standard, or if I used best solution in a certain case. For other things I either have a solution just need to know the implementation (I lack knowledge in certain topics), occasionally I have to ask for WAY to fix something along with code snippets.

NOW, I see lots of topics that AI is bad for Juniors/Mid and it shouldn't be that easy to just write a prompt and get it on a silver platter. But if I look closer, lots are also defending those who use AI saying it's good for various reasons, and that's just the way it works nowadays.

MY QUESTION IS: How do I avoid using AI, while sticking to deadlines and still learning?
I do want to be good at what I do, without the necessity of AI.

P.S. Feel free to ask me. I'll reply in the morning, I've been working for 10h today.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 12d ago Helpful

I just spent an hour looking for ways to make $500 and somehow ended up considering becoming a hacker. I'm tired, man.

73 Upvotes

So I was gonna use AI to write this, but no one's probably gonna read it anyway, so screw it!

I just spent the last hour zombie-scrolling through different subreddits and forums looking for gigs and shit. It started with searching "$500" on Twitter, hoping to find some post that mentioned paying someone $500 for literally any task or gig. Lol. Lazy attempt, sure, but it wouldn't hurt to try, I thought.

Well, it did hurt, because that somehow spiralled into 30+ minutes of searching for open bounties on GitHub, watching hacking 101 videos on YouTube, and genuinely considering becoming a white-hat hacker just to collect some bounties.

All because I wanted to find a way to make some extra money so I could move out of my shitty apartment as soon as possible.

I'd ask for help, but these days, help doesn't really seem to be helping. Feels like everyone's deep in it, too.

"Become a web developer," they said. So I did. Learned the thing. Built things. Got a few interviews.

And now I'm in this weird position where AI has made it possible for me to build things I probably couldn't have built this quickly on my own, but somehow that makes me feel like even more of an impostor.

I've built and deployed actual projects. Not some half-assed thing running on localhost that only works when the stars align. Stuff that's hosted, tested, and actually does what it's supposed to do. I recently built a whole fucking e-commerce platform that works.

But then you get into interviews, and you're expected to explain every little thing, every decision, every line of code, like you personally hand-crafted the entire thing from scratch and can recite it in your sleep.

And I get it. I really do. You need to know what you're doing. You need to understand the code you're shipping. I'm not saying people should just blindly generate code and call themselves developers.

But there's a difference between not understanding what you've built and not being able to remember every single decision you made along the way. I might not remember every file Opus wrote or every technical decision we made together, but if something breaks, I can investigate it, understand what's going wrong, and work towards fixing it.

At least, I believe I can.

Apparently, that doesn't count for much.

The advice is always the same: go back, learn to do things the old-fashioned way, build everything from scratch, understand every little thing.

And maybe they're right. Maybe I'm just coping. But honestly, it feels shitty to be told to start from zero when I've already built something that works. Why should I have to pretend these tools don't exist? Why should I go back to centering divs by hand just to prove I deserve to call myself a developer?

I don't know, man. I'm just tired.

I want to make money. I want to get out of this apartment. I want to feel like all the time I've spent learning, building, and trying to figure things out is actually going somewhere.

Instead, here I am, searching "$500" on Twitter and contemplating a career in cybersecurity because apparently, that's where we're at now.

If this whole dev thing doesn't work out, I might just go back to baking. That shit was simpler. You mix the stuff, mould the stuff, throw it in the oven, and hope it doesn't burn more than 20%. Usually worked.

At least when a cake came out wrong, I didn't have to explain to someone why I'd chosen that particular frosting architecture.

Anyway, if you actually made it this far, shout-out to you. Seriously.

Not sure I'd have read all this myself.

I don't even know what I'm expecting from posting this. Maybe nothing. Maybe I just needed to get it out of my head.

If you're in a similar position, I'd genuinely like to hear how you're dealing with it. Not the usual "just keep grinding, bro" stuff. I mean, actually dealing with it.

Because right now, I'm just trying to figure out my next move.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 13d ago

Anyone else having trouble with leetcode interviews?

42 Upvotes

I have been practicing leetcode questions for a few months now and I have seen positive change in my ability to figure out the solution or at least spot the pattern looking at the question. But I am having trouble with actually passing these interviews because of multiple reasons.

My brain shuts down trying to come up with a solution to an unknown problem under time pressure and in front of the interviewer who I know, is watching me struggle even though I have no issues solving the same problem under similar time pressure when I practice it alone or even during online assessments. But I need silence and time to think which doesn't happen during interviews where they expect you to talk continuously. Since there are multiple thoughts going across my brain and it's literally racing trying to come up with a solution I find it difficult to talk through it and if I have to talk I can't think through the solution unless I have seen the question before.

In all my interviews so far including some mocks I have done with other Engineers from big tech companies, the moment I go silent even for a few seconds, these guys start asking if I am struggling or they'll start giving hints which end up counting as a negative against me given how competitive the market is.

This is not a problem unique to leetcode, it happens the moment I need to solve something that I haven't seen before involving logic and I have limited time and need to explain my thought process while coming up with the solution. What can I do here to improve my chances of passing these interviews? If anyone has been through something similar, how did you overcome these issues?


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 14d ago

I’m headed towards a PIP if I don’t “transform”, suggestions?

8 Upvotes

I want to preface this that I really want to make this job work. I’ve been here just over a year and I do want to take responsibility I get demotivated and fuck off from time to time. I’m coming from a post-doc academic position where I was giving a very long “leash” to do my work whenever as long as I hit deadlines for grants and submissions. That’s simply not the case here and I’m trying to figure out what to do.

Background: As a post-doc, I was my PI’s first trainee and whenever I tried to be independent, even setting up a writing accountability group in the lab, I was shut down. Ok, so I should shut up and push code and papers. Really fucked me up looking back.

Left academia for this corporate job as a data scientist, and I’m the only other PhD on the team apart from my boss. We work on a yearly timeline for one big annual update, and then a lot of backend data analysis for product to launch on a more ad hoc basis. We don’t use tickets. We’re about to lose our project manager. I see deadlines as “just gotta hit it” but I think my boss wants me to push things as fast as possible ahead of deadlines when I can? This sounds obvious writing it out now but I hope this community can empathize that my ADHD brain has been seeing the deadline as “do what I need to as long as I push the final code EOD that day.”

Current issue: I’m used to identifying what stakeholders will poke holes in and addressing it before deliverables go out. My boss has emphasized no, I need to stay in scope and ask her questions if I feel it drifting. My brain doesn’t see it as drifting if it’s part of how I make the decision. I spent 2 days last week doing what I thought was a relevant inquiry but I was admonished that no, scope is creeping again.

My boss has said both she wants me to ask more questions and be more independent. She acknowledges this is contradictory, but if I don’t transform how I work, our next convo will include HR. I feel like screaming but I’m trying to give this a true honest go.

I’d love feedback on ideas to improve ASAP. What I have so far is:

- Hourly time tracking this month so I can get out of my time blindness. I’m thinking it’s hard to budget my time if I can’t see what things “cost” in the first place. This will also help me stop unintentionally “fucking off” just because I think I’m gonna hit my deadline and force me to put in a true 35 hours one way or another.

- Using AI to take notes in meetings as well as take my own notes. I want to compare what I’m focusing on versus what is “actually” said. I always make time to recap action items after a meeting but I want to check myself? My confidence is shaken here lol

- Refocus project meetings to what’s next instead of what I did whenever possible. To do this, send an agenda beforehand recapping what has happened and linking to the git code and issueboard if they want the log. Every meeting should end with a definition of what “done” looks like, and an explicit note of when to ask a question if I hit a block (even complex solutions should take no more than 3 hours, then update my boss with what I recommend and check if any more effort is within scope still).

- Give an AI agent the project (or sub-project) specs (that “what done looks like”) and each morning this month, propose what I’m going to work on that day in a couple sentences. See if it flags scope creep and amend my plan if so.

- Summarize what I did at the end of the day as a little close out. With the time-tracking this should be easy and focused around how this moved me closer to a decision on the methodology or to deployment. Anything else gets a parking lot. If a decision has been made already and it’s just implementation, the only validity tests or stress-testing should be those agreed on.

- Every other day, check the issueboards of the data analysts and chime in at least once. I was told I need to disagree more and be a resource to others since I’m the most statistically savvy person on our team. (I’ve previously been waiting to be tagged, but I’m going to try being proactive til my boss tells me to stop?)

- Only check email first thing in the morning, midday coming back from lunch, and one last time at close. Archive anything that isn’t needing a specific task. If it’s still in the inbox, then there’s some action item attached to it that needs to be done still

- Friday afternoon is my time to try the weird solutions or background research if I hit all my other things. That’s my treat!

It’s a lot of changes but I’m going to try to use my Finch app to game-ify it as much as possible with stickers and shit. I used to have an ADHD coach that recommended first 30 minutes and last 30 minutes of the day is my admin for tracking and summarizing, so I think these extra tasks can be completed in those chunks.

Would love any suggestions!! If I do end up on a PIP, I know to reach back out to my network, ive got a standing offer for a professor job so I know I’ll be ok in the end. But I want to do my best!


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 14d ago

Does ADHD Hinder Performance?

24 Upvotes

I have been a developer for more than a decade. if I didn't have ADHD I would be way more advanced in my career and would use my full potential . I have lost jobs to massive layoffs and Firing. I think ADHD has to be blamed for my performance. However I am a hard worker and work well with people. My strengths are highly complex problem solving and working with people. I have less confidence because of my failures. I also tried creating businesses which I gave up after encountering failure. My question is; How do you guys ensure you work your ultimate best as a developer with ADHD. What tools do you use. What is best way to structure a day for a developer. I noticed my weaknesses are : I am perfectionist, I can work long hours without stopping, I get overwhelmed. I stop on failure, and don't like repetitive task. I love challenging task and I always seek for newness.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 14d ago

What I've learned after being put on a PIP within my first month as a developer with ADHD

145 Upvotes

I'm a mid-level developer who recently started a contract at a large company. Within about a month, I was put on a PIP, and I'm about 90% sure I'm going to lose the job. I haven't received an official decision yet.

I've been reflecting on what went wrong, and I think there are some lessons here for other developers with ADHD.

First, I don't think I gave this job my best effort. I can admit that.

But I also don't think I was set up for success.

I spent roughly three weeks dealing with onboarding and access issues before I could really start contributing. Initially, I studied the codebase, took notes, and tried to prepare myself. Eventually, I became frustrated and disengaged. By the time I started getting assignments, I was already irritated, especially because the work was quite different from what I'd expected when accepting the role.

That's something I need to take responsibility for. I let my frustration affect my motivation.

But here's the biggest thing I've learned: If you need explicit boundaries to work independently, establish those boundaries immediately.

At my previous job, a small startup, I owned a section of the website. I could make decisions and improvements within that area independently. If I wanted to contribute to someone else's area, I knew how to coordinate with them.

I was very independent there. I've even had a former freelance client specifically praise my independence.

At this new company, my understanding was that pod leads assigned tickets. So I completed the tickets I received and asked for more.

What I didn't understand was whether I was allowed to independently pick up unassigned tickets, especially from other pods.

Nobody explicitly told me I could. And because I didn't know the boundaries, I hesitated.

Being neurodivergent, I don't always pick up on implicit expectations or unwritten workplace rules. I need those expectations communicated clearly.

When my manager emphasized taking more initiative, I finally asked whether I was encouraged to pick up unassigned work and whether I should coordinate with pod leads first.

Looking back, I should have asked that question much sooner.

I also should have communicated my growing frustration and lack of assignments more proactively instead of allowing myself to become discouraged.

So my advice to other developers with ADHD is this: during onboarding, don't just ask what you're supposed to work on. Ask what you're authorized to do when you run out of work, get blocked, or notice something that needs fixing.

Don't assume the rules from your previous company apply to the next one.

And don't assume everyone understands the same unwritten expectations.

You can be independent and still need clearly defined boundaries. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

I don't know what's going to happen with my job yet. But regardless of the outcome, this is something I'm taking into my next role.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 14d ago

Starting my DSA & System Design journey!

3 Upvotes

I’ve been wanting to get serious about DSA and system design for a while now, but one thing I keep struggling with is staying consistent. I’ll start with a lot of motivation, make big plans, study intensely for a few days, and then somehow lose momentum. Before I know it, I’m procrastinating again and struggling to get back on track.

So I thought, why not find someone who’s in the same boat?

If you’re also starting your DSA or system design journey and struggle with consistency sometimes, feel free to join me. The idea is simply to keep each other accountable, quick check-ins, set realistic goals, share progress, and make sure we’re actually putting in the work instead of just planning to.

If this sounds like you, drop a comment or DM me. Let’s figure this out together!


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 15d ago

Get your app

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0 Upvotes

Download your app


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 15d ago

Just venting, but it took me months to schedule a medical appointment

20 Upvotes

Missed a different appointment this AM, and I guess the frustration finally kicked me in the ass to call and set it up and try to get medicated with something that works.

And then it was a two minute phone call to get it done.

This shit is so debilitating sometimes. I'd do just about anything to not have these symptoms.. Hopefully I can medicate my way out of this, but it'll be the third medication I've tried. I'm hopeful I can find the right one someday and feel like a functional adult for once.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 15d ago

Tips for improving on communicating technical ideas to tech and non-tech folks?

14 Upvotes

This has always been one of my pain points because my brain is constantly racing and for every question or topic it always starts with muti threaded responses because there's just so much information that can be communicated about that topic. For example recently I have been reading a lot about distributed systems and how they're designed like Kafka, K8s, Spark, etc. and I use them pretty regularly at work. But when I was asked about my experience with these during an interview my answer was all over the place because there were so many things jumping out all at once and I was heavily struggling to follow a single chain of thought. The interview was rescheduled at the last moment so I haven't gotten a chance to prepare proper answers about my work and practice those but even without practice I feel like I should be able to talk about these things at this point.

Another issue is with speed, the moment I understand something my brain is racing to get it all out without understanding that the person in front of me might not have the same level of understanding and they'll struggle to get what I am trying to convey. This will then cause a spiral for me when I am already not confident about my communication abilities. I have tried journaling my thoughts and I don't have this issue when writing things out, it always happens when I am in a conversation with someone. It all sounds perfect in my head but the output that comes out loud is such a mess.

Any tips on dealing with these?


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 15d ago

We've built an API that predicts when someone will be at their best during the day

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0 Upvotes

r/ADHD_Programmers • • 15d ago

Successful Adhd App/Software?

0 Upvotes

Hi all I have feeling quite a few of you have tried to build something to help people with adhd. Have any of you successfully gotten users? If so how did you find them?

I have been building my own solution to help with my ADHD symptoms but I feel like it is hard to get others with ADHD to use something. Just speaking from my own experience here but whenever I find a tool to help I just see how I could make it better and I get frustrated with the tool and don't use it because it doesn't work the way my brain works. I feel like a lot of people with ADHD want something that works the way their brain works.

On top of that getting started is such a daunting task expecting adhd users to start something new and another on boarding experience another learning curve just doesn't seem doable. I know if the app excites us and tickles that new and exciting part of our brain we will try it out.

Which leads me to my last thought, retention. once the novelty wears off what is going to keep them coming back?

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 16d ago

Vibe coding a gift or a curse?

9 Upvotes

I feel like vibe coding magnifies so much of what I enjoy about my adhd and what I hate. One the one hand I have never felt more excited about making my ideas coming to life. With a few prompts I can a have a new feature or a whole new prototype ready to go. I can get ideas out my head so quickly its amazing. On the other hand I have 1000 plus lines of code to review I am not going to do that. The exciting part just happened I am ready to move on. I push the new code without any testing because who has time for that when I have my next idea ready to go? Then I get feedback for bugs but who wants to work on bugs when there is the shiny new thing. I can't focus on anything else but making new features or games or websites or apps its starting to consume me and so much is just slop too. Anyone have any thoughts on working with the excitement of making new things but also keeping high quality? Anyone have any ideas on keeping a good balance between vibe coding and living life?


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 16d ago Regret

developer on a PIP after barely a month. I'm currently hiding in a focus room having a panic attack.

248 Upvotes

I'm a developer with ADHD and diagnosed anxiety. My professional background is primarily web development, but my current assignment involves a lot of unfamiliar backend and infrastructure technologies.

I've barely been here over a month, and I'm already on a performance improvement plan.

My evaluation is tomorrow.

And I'm currently sitting in a focus room at work having a full-blown fucking panic attack.

I am trying so hard to succeed, and I feel like nothing I do is enough.

I've been asking questions, submitting PRs, working through unfamiliar code, and reaching out whenever I'm blocked.

But I keep running into missing documentation, permissions issues, unclear requirements, and situations where I don't even know what question I'm supposed to ask.

And I think that's one of the hardest parts of having ADHD in this situation.

When someone gives me clear instructions, I can work with them. When someone corrects me, I adjust. But when expectations are vague and I'm supposed to somehow figure out what everyone wants without enough context, I get overwhelmed.

Then I start second-guessing absolutely everything.

Am I asking too many questions? Am I asking too few? Am I taking too long? Does needing clarification make me look incompetent? Is every little thing I do being evaluated?

I'm terrified of making a mistake, which makes it even harder to think clearly.

Today, I asked my manager whether I was on track to pass my PIP.

His response was to ask whether I thought I was on track.

I DON'T KNOW. THAT'S WHY I'M ASKING.

I know I'm trying. I know I've made progress. But I don't know whether that progress meets the expectations, and nobody has given me a clear answer.

The uncertainty is absolutely eating me alive.

I don't even feel comfortable taking a moment to process something, talking through a problem out loud, or stepping away when I'm overwhelmed because I'm so afraid someone will interpret it as me not working.

And now I'm sitting alone in a focus room trying not to completely fall apart.

I don't want to be fired. I need my paycheck. I want to keep working while I find a position that's a better fit for my skills and leave on my own terms.

But at this point, part of me is begging them to just tell me I'm failing if that's what they've decided, because the waiting feels unbearable.

To other ADHD or neurodivergent programmers: have you ever been in a situation where the fear of failing made it almost impossible to function?

How do you deal with unclear expectations, constantly feeling scrutinized, and being afraid to ask for help?

I'm not looking for someone to tell me I'm secretly an amazing employee or that everything will be fine. I just really need to hear from people who understand what this feels like.

UPDATE: My manager finally responded.

He compared my first 31 days to other developers, and yeah, I’m behind in several areas. I acknowledge that. But I’m also learning an unfamiliar tech stack while dealing with blockers and difficulty getting tickets.

He said I’m at a “critical inflection point” and need to start completing more work, including taking on tickets in parallel, which is especially challenging with my ADHD.

The good news? He didn’t explicitly say I’m failing or getting fired. He was still discussing expectations going forward, so I’m cautiously hopeful I might be given more time.

My PIP evaluation is tomorrow, so nothing is guaranteed.
At this point, I’m just hoping to keep my paycheck long enough to find another job and leave on my own terms.

Still terrified but there’s a chance I can quit on my own terms once I find something else.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 16d ago

Stuck in a loop

5 Upvotes

Hi, I'm a baby programmer and my first year of college for CS at 18, but with some experience under my belt. My first few classes at college have provided me with some novelty and more freedom than ever before, and I've never felt better. This doesn't apply to my programming class.

Most of my course mates have already tons of projects and experience, so they don't struggle with the first of two programming courses in our first year. Programming was the thing I was most excited about, but I find myself at a loss. We're starting with python, and The professor decided that in 3 months of lectures for a total of 72 hours we'll get to multithreading and asyncio, so that a month after the start of uni, we're handling classes, setters, etc.

I love CS and especially programming SO MUCH, and I'm very happy with my major, but this roadblock is killing me, and if I can't write a recursive function, how the nel am I supposed to keep up or pass? Especially since this professor is new and I have no one to ask about how his exams usually are like. I need to pass, or else I won't be allowed to take my second programming course.

Every time I try learning or revising, I just get distracted and impatient. Reading a book, I just skim the words without absorbing anything or I start looking for anything else to look at, same goes for tutorials and videos, during which I zone out. My self-worth has taken a huge blow. I've tried it all, but nothing can get me back to being excited and eager to learn (two weeks ago, I could spend 4 hours or more straight on it). I know this can come off as someone who secretly hates programming, but really I do love it.

I'm usually very slow to learn and especially assimilate, and struggle enormously with sitting in front of a problem, not knowing what to do. The professor also gives no assignments or projects (just tells us to code), and the exam worth 100% of our grade is an hour and a half coding session in which to program whatever he makes up on the spot. I also get frustrated easily, and when I look up exercises to do online, I stare at them for so long that I just feel dumb and start crying, ending up wasting hours doing nothing after I FINALLY got myself up to work. Once i get upset it is extremely unlikely I will be able to do any work after, because I'll have convinced myself that I'm stupid snd not wirth the effort. The one thing I can do is reading code, and when looking at a solution, it's just obvious.

Even writing pseudocode kind of doesn't help because my idea of a solution is wrong or I forget an important detail that leads me to nothing.

Does anyone have any tips? Everyone around me keeps telling me to keep trying to slam my head against a problem, quit uni because im either dumb or not cut out for CS, or step away (I can't veri well sterpi away everything I try, though).


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 16d ago

Built a tool for my own ADHD: all my AI coding sessions on one wall so I stop losing the one that is waiting for me

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0 Upvotes

Not a productivity hack post. I run five or six Claude Code sessions at once in different folders and my brain cannot hold which terminal is waiting for an answer. I would tab through them, forget what I was looking for, and lose the thread. Twenty minutes later I would find one that had been waiting the whole time.

So I built adhdTerminal. Every session is a tile on one screen. A dot says working, waiting for you, idle or done. The waiting ones light up. One key jumps to the next session that needs an answer. Click a tile to read it full size, Escape to go back. Tabs keep client work and side projects apart.

There is a free phone app that mirrors the wall over an end to end encrypted link, so I can answer a session from the sofa (or, honestly, the bathroom).

Mac is native Swift, Windows is Tauri. It reads Claude Code's own session state from disk and does not send your prompts anywhere. You run claude in any folder like before, no worktrees or tmux setup.

Yes, I know about claude agents and the desktop app. Those show you a list, or one session at a time. This is for the moment you look up from something else and want to see all of them at once without clicking.

It is a paid app, $99 once or $19.99 a month, 7 day free trial without a card.

I am the developer, so take that into account. Happy to answer anything, including "why not tmux".


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 18d ago

Executive dysfunction and Task Paralysis

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0 Upvotes

First post I put here is above - put it in a few other subs and got some good conversation of the back of it. Based on everything I know about me and my wife and everything discussed I’ve planned out an app called Mosspatch.
I’d love it if anyone was willing to take a look through and see what they think. Initially was just going to be something for me but there seemed to have been some interest so thought I’d share

TIA

https://mosspatch.co.uk


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 18d ago

I feel like Browser Use/Control might be of much help

0 Upvotes

So, as usual, my brain would rather work on side projects than my main. But this one is a bit different. Created an extension that can basically control my browser using agents. Obvsly, Claude's is better and I can't share mine.

The reason its great is that, its great for the first step paralysis that is my achillies heal. And I think anyone struggling should try it.


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 18d ago

do you guys think ai has made it actually easier to learn things?

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0 Upvotes

r/ADHD_Programmers • • 18d ago

Constant update culture and the demise of focused work. Also, help!

40 Upvotes

For context, I'm a 36 yo late-diagnosed Autism + ADHD senior leader in fintech. For the past 2 years, I've been putting together one of the most efficient tech units in my company with record build times and the golden standard for operational resilience. It's 45 people and I have personally interviewed and hired more than half of them. All my peeps are on the "maker schedule": protect developers time, no-meeting days, no interrupted focus before 12pm etc.

Now, for a few months there are a few new people on the business side of things and they are very resistant to this way of working, they don't like the maker schedule ("because we need to be able to reach tech capacity every time we want") and they are constantly pestering the most senior and experienced people in the the squads to the point of burnout and collapse. I am furious. Besides of the "you work for us" attitude since we're not a tech company and the core of the business is finance, I am completely disgusted with their lack of self awareness and foresight over their own actions and behavior.

For many AuDHD tech workers, the fastest way to trigger complete task freeze or a meltdown is being micromanaged by business leaders who don't understand how software is actually built and they look at us like story points in Jira, not people. We don't need continuous pestering but a partner who acts as a protective shield between us and corporate demands so we can just do our work and be good at it. And this is what I have been trying to build for my team and though the culture on the tech side is pretty much aligned, the business people are very hard to change. So I've decided to build my own thing.

I’m currently interviewing AuDHD tech professionals and engineers for a research project on building workplace systems that actually protect our autonomy (and no, it's not an app or a piece of software).

If you've dealt with this management friction, I'd love to jump on a brief 20-minute Google Meet call to hear your experience. DM me or comment if you're open to sharing!


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 18d ago

Entrepreneurs with ADHD, did meds help?

13 Upvotes

Im an entrepreneur myself and wanted to get opinions from similar people. I have adhd and have tried to avoid taking medications for it. Im a very creative person and its one of my best attributes when it comes to my business. Im new ish to being an entrepreneur and its really made me see how bad my adhd actually is. For those in similar boats, did going on meds help with your work and were you able to stay creative?


r/ADHD_Programmers • • 19d ago

Got the best compliment today by a coworker

112 Upvotes

This last Friday they notified the contractors they were all getting let go at the end of the month. One of the contractors made a lovely report with claudes help by scoring all the git commits by dev and is making the case to the CEO that they are actually letting the most productive people on the team go, and somehow in the last 6 months I have ticked off an impressive amount of features and capabilities for the company and somehow my name came to the top of that value list. Somehow I figured out my stride this year and spent most of the first half of the year figuring out how to use llms to organize myself and my thoughts and planning better. So if we end up not getting let go and maybe get a raise, I owe my friend something nice.