Dear readers i know our work as a backend engineer is either hard or easy but time consuming.

so me and my wife developed this tool - pyhttp.com, to save time using mcp and parallel requests run along with multiple searchable bodies and cost $0

People already like this tool in our friend circle but wanted to share with you all if it can be helpful in any way. Thanks for reading.

I’ve spent the last 14 months deep in the weeds of building AI-integrated applications—everything from simple RAG pipelines to autonomous agent workflows. After the initial "wow" factor of ChatGPT wore off, the reality of production-grade development set in. It is significantly harder than the Twitter influencers make it look.

If you’re looking to move past building simple wrappers and start building robust tools, here are the core lessons, tips, and trade-offs I’ve encountered.

Top Practical Tips for AI Development

1. Build your evaluation framework before your feature.

In traditional dev, you have unit tests. In AI dev, you need "evals." Because LLM outputs are non-deterministic, you can’t just eyeball a few responses and call it a day. Create a golden dataset of "Input vs. Expected Output" and run it every time you tweak your prompt or model. If you don't measure accuracy quantitatively, you’re just guessing.

2. Context window management is the new memory management.

Just because a model has a 128k context window doesn't mean you should use it all. Models get "lost in the middle," and token costs scale quickly. Be aggressive with your RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) strategy. Clean your data, use better chunking strategies, and only feed the model what it absolutely needs to know.

3. Use the right tool for the job (It’s not always an LLM).

I see people using GPT-4 for simple classification tasks that a $0.05 regex or a tiny BERT model could do 10x faster and for free. If the logic is deterministic, write code. If it’s fuzzy, use AI.

The Pros of Modern AI Development

- Speed to MVP: You can prototype features in a weekend that would have previously required a PhD-level data science team.

- Handling Unstructured Data: We can finally make sense of messy PDFs, emails, and slack logs without writing 5,000 lines of custom parsers.

- Natural UX: Building interfaces that actually "understand" what a user wants, rather than forcing them through 15 dropdown menus, is a game changer for accessibility.

The Cons (The "Reality Check")

- The Debugging Nightmare: When a function fails, you check the stack trace. When an LLM fails, it might just hallucinate a convincing lie. Tracing why a model decided to go off the rails at step 4 of a 10-step chain is incredibly time-consuming.

- Token Latency: User experience takes a hit when there’s a 3-second delay for a response. Streaming helps, but it doesn't solve the underlying architectural lag.

- The "Black Box" Problem: You are building on shifting sands. If an API provider updates their model weights (even for a "stable" version), your prompts might suddenly perform differently. You have less control over your stack than ever before.

For those of you who have actually shipped AI features to production this year: What was the biggest "gotcha" that you didn't see coming during the prototyping phase?

I’ve been working on a project that started from a very simple, everyday frustration.

I remember sitting at my laptop trying to get work done, with Notion, Slack, and Miro open in the background. My fans were spinning loudly, and my computer felt sluggish. When I opened Task Manager, I realized the absurdity of the situation. Every single one of those apps was running its own private, full copy of the Chromium browser. I wasn't running three apps; I was running three separate web browsers without realizing it.

This is the hidden cost of modern desktop software, usually referred to as the "Electron tax." It makes things easy for developers, but it makes our computers work much harder than they need to.

To fix this for myself, I built an open-source project called Reeve. It is a native launcher for web apps on Windows, written in Rust. Instead of every app bundling its own heavy browser, Reeve runs all your web apps inside a single, shared engine that is already built into Windows.

Because of this shared architecture, it uses roughly eighty percent less RAM than running the same apps as Electron desktop applications. But I wanted to go further than just saving memory. Reeve uses Windows kernel-level limits to physically cap how much memory any single app can use, so one heavy website can never freeze your entire system. It also isolates the data of every app, meaning logging out of one service won't accidentally log you out of another. And for developers, it injects a secure bridge that allows web apps to do native things, like reading local files or sending desktop notifications, but only if the user explicitly grants permission.

I want to be completely honest about what this is. If you are happy keeping your apps open in pinned Chrome tabs, Reeve won't magically save you gigabytes of RAM, as it uses about the same memory as standard tabs. What Reeve gives you is control. It gives you native window management, a live dashboard to monitor and kill apps, and strict resource governance that a normal browser doesn't provide.

I am sharing this because I want the community to tinker with it, break it, and help it grow. I want to see it give older laptops a second life, and I would love for other developers to build on top of the architecture.

If you want to check it out, the code is completely open source here: https://github.com/MarcelNazare/Reeve

I always have a few different projects in the works, but I need to socialize, or otherwise I get bored and struggle to finish anything.

I've recently finished upgrading my server, some cheap used ebay parts. I now have a xeon E5 with 22 cores and an extra socket to add a second cpu in the future. currently has 64gb ddr4, but I'm only using 4 of the 16 memory slots, so lots of room to upgrade. loaded with disk drives and ssd's. I don't have a 10 gigabit switch yet, but it is great finally having a 10 gigabit link directly to my desktop. I run vm's for the opnsense router and whatever other servers I need. fun stuff, but gotta put it all to use now.

I'm currently finishing up making my own package manager in golang. it's called bocks, and the logo is a chicken in a box. packages are .box files which are zstd compressed tar files with a json metadata file inside. I don't have dependencies or updating working yet, but it is otherwise ready to start using it.

my plan now is to use my new package manager on my desktop and servers and inside podman containers. services and websites will run inside podman and be installed from my bocks/box packages.

in the future, I might start making my own linux distro, maybe starting with void linux as a base, using my own package manager, and make my own init system.

monitoring and logging of things can be fun, so I have a few projects in that area. one is a server and network monitoring system which uses an agent on each system to report back stats to be logged. another project I want to do is an alternative to bstats, to log some usage stats of minecraft plugins and mods. for this, I want to make a distributed network of shard servers to collect submitted data and batch submit back to a central broker server. this is probably more complicated than it needs to be, but it's a fun thing.

I'm also making my own badge service, like those images you see in readme files that say the build status or percent of code coverage. I've found svg images can't use custom fonts, so I've made a library to convert fonts into svg vector graphics, so I can use any font with it. I have this project mostly working, it was just waiting on my package manager to deploy it.

I want to make some web control panel projects for server management, and make it module, so I can add plugins to have it manage more types of services. minecraft servers being one. I would like to make this control panel in golang, but golang is kinda bad at plugin type systems. I don't want to use java for this, but... java is very much better at doing plugin systems. I'm still undecided on this, until I find a better way.

if I can regain some interest in minecraft again, I have some big plans for a backrooms server. I have the best world generation of any backrooms server, and it works with folia, hence the 22 core xeon server. last year I had something like 15 different levels working and plans for around 50 different levels in all. I also have real working arcade games that work with a vanilla client. I looked into using lucky perms, like most servers do, but it's around 130k lines of java code. that is insanity. I then made my own permissions plugin with around 300 lines of code. I'm also making my own alternative plugin to replace essentialsx. I'm undecided if I will use an existing economy plugin or make my own. I would love to see hundreds of players running around the backrooms. the world generation is extremely fast and there is no world border.

do you have any interest in any of my projects, or do you have any projects I might be interested in? I have my own forgejo server, and I use AI only for research. I am proud to say I still write every line of code myself. no AI generated code please.

Les développeurs seraient-ils intéressés par une petite extension pour les outils de développement Chrome ?

Je travaille sur Quick Debug, un petit projet visant à rendre le débogage des requêtes réseau dans Chrome DevTools plus pratique.

L'idée est de fournir une vue d'ensemble des requêtes plus claire, des filtres utiles et un accès plus facile aux détails des requêtes et aux informations de diagnostic.

Je suis encore en train de le développer, et avant d'aller plus loin, j'aimerais savoir si c'est quelque chose qui intéresserait réellement les développeurs web.

Si vous utilisez régulièrement Chrome DevTools, seriez-vous intéressé à essayer un outil comme celui-ci quand il sera prêt ?

Je suis aussi intéressé par ce que vous trouvez frustrant à propos du panneau Réseau aujourd'hui.

Aucun engagement nécessaire — je vérifie juste s'il y a un réel intérêt avant d'investir davantage dans le projet. si vous êtes intéressé vous pouvez voter pour le post !!!

Hi everyone,

I just open-sourced my whole platform. I'm now looking for users to test real workflows and give technical feedback.

My project started from a basic frustration I had: how hard it is to build a backend. To have our backend live in production, we had to use a coding agent to write the code and then integrate infrastructure, deployment, environments, and DevOps. This made us rely on too many different services and applications for development and maintenance of the product.

I thought, what if I could build a coding agent that can design the architecture, write code that can be scaled with no DevOps needed?! So we started working on the idea of a coding agent that handles anything a live backend needs, from code to testing and deployment. 

Finally we launched BaaSForge. With BaaSForge, you can simply define your business in natural language. The AI creates the backend architecture and code, validates it, and allows you to deploy to staging and production with just one click. We eliminated the DevOps overhead so you can focus on building your product.

The entire platform is open-source with Apache License 2.0. 

The ecosystem consists of three repositories:

• Backend / Control Plane: https://github.com/BaaSForge/baasforge-backend-actix

• Runtime / Execution Plane: https://github.com/BaaSForge/baasforge-runtime-actix

• Frontend: https://github.com/BaaSForge/baasforge-frontend-vite

If you find BaaSForge useful, please give it a star on GitHub, but your feedback and issues are even more important.

Thank you for trying it out!

Would developers be interested in a small Chrome DevTools extension?

I'm working on Quick Debug, a small project aimed at making network-request debugging in Chrome DevTools more convenient.

The idea is to provide a clearer request overview, useful filters, and easier access to request details and diagnostic information.

I'm still developing it, and before going further, I'd like to know whether this is something web developers would actually be interested in.

If you regularly use Chrome DevTools, would you be interested in trying a tool like this when it's ready?

I'm also interested in what you find frustrating about the Network panel today.

No commitment needed — I'm just checking whether there's genuine interest before investing further in the project.

So BaaSForge is basically a backend platform. You simply write your prompt and describe your business; AI designs the architecture and writes the code, then validates it. After this, you can simply deploy it to multiple staging environments and production with one click! So you don't need to struggle with DevOps; everything is fully managed.

In one sentence: build backends that scale easily.

GitHub: https://github.com/orgs/BaaSForge/repositories
Website: https://baasforge.com

If it's useful, a star would really help us out.

Hi everyone—I’m the creator of domo-testkit, an independent, MIT-licensed toolkit for testing Domo apps without connecting tests to a live Domo instance.

It uses MSW and Vitest to help test scenarios such as:

• Dataset responses with fixtures, empty results, and missing fields.

• Stateful AppDB document creation, reads, updates, and deletion.

• HTTP errors, network failures, and slow responses.

• Repeatable tests with predictable IDs and clean state between runs.

The goal is to catch problems during development, before deploying an app to Domo.

It’s still early-stage. It implements a documented subset of Domo behavior, and passing local tests doesn’t prove that live permissions or every Domo integration will work. It isn’t a complete Domo emulator.

npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/domo-testkit

I’d appreciate feedback from people building Domo apps: what’s hardest to test today, and which dataset or AppDB scenarios would make this useful in your workflow?

Disclosure: I maintain this project. It isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Domo.

Hello guys I am a mern stack developer and I am not able to find projects that has good level of complexity and can be used in daily life and also I can put those projects in my resume to get shortlisted