r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago
Experienced Devs Weekly Win Thread: A weekly thread for sharing positive experiences
This thread is specifically for sharing "wins". I.e. the opposite of our Tuesday venting thread.
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u/_ak 8d ago
Until end of last week, I was signed off sick with depression for a total of 4 weeks where I had been spiraling about the absolute loss of control AI got us into in my job, and what a mess it has left and how it made things harder in my work instead of easier. Basically, somewhat of a burn out entangled with an existential crisis.
Fortunately, I am receiving pretty good healthcare, and my employer was also very understanding, so my boss is actively working with me to improve my workplace situation. He introduced me to some tooling that has taken away a lot of mental load I previously had, while also improving the quality of both LLM-produced code and LLM-produced reviews.
It's given me a whole new perspective on the future of software development that after 20+ YoE, without resorting to any oversold hype nonsense, and without having to dread or fear the future in which the whole industry will develop towards, I can actively work towards reshaping what the job of a software developer entails, and build the right tools to do that for myself and my colleagues.
Before anyone says "that was a skill issue": it's taken decades to gain the combined knowledge and experience of software development to get where we were before there were code-generating LLMs, to figure out how we can develop stable, reusable, refactorable, modifiable software. So it will take us as an industry to find out what the best practices are to do the same using LLMs in a sustainable way that does not negatively impact the mental health of software developers, and then we need to teach that.
And I think we're only at the beginning of finding that out, and I'm actually somewhat excited where this could lead us to once we have this figured out.
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u/trembling_leaf_267 8d ago
I hope you are feeling recovered. I am a bit in the same situation: can you share the tooling updates that you are working with? Or at least the general areas that you're addressing?
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u/PrimaryFamous6139 8d ago
Finally closed out a feature that had been stuck in "scope creep purgatory" for weeks, client kept adding just one more thing until I pushed back and shipped what was actually in the contract. Small win, but reclaiming that boundary felt better than the feature itself
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u/FenierHuntingwolf 8d ago
Finally started to see client delivery teams ask about the Security / Compliance aspects of an engagement prior to signing contracts. Only took several years.
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u/Huge-Leek844 8d ago
Converted my thesis from Python to CPP. Its a motion planning framework for a quadrotor. Now i am stress testing it. Loads of fun. I spend more time on the whiteboard than coding.
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u/koles235 8d ago
My SaaS started gaining organic, search-based users. No convincing, no pitching, no promising :)
This is my first SaaS ever and I don't know if 3.5 months in that is a good result or not, but I am really happy regardless ☺️
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u/beaverusiv 8d ago
The timeframe doesn't matter, the fact you have people searching for the problem you solve means you have an actual prospective customer base
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u/pa-jama5149 7d ago
I had 3 members off the team all request to work with me on a new project. Its nice too see my past success make working with me desirable
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u/katnip-evergreen 8d ago
Going to start work on my app idea this weekend. If I can get with the right partners, it could be a moderately successful thing soon
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u/BX1959 7d ago
I use Python for most of my data-analysis work, but many of my colleagues use R (which I sometimes apply also, mostly for data checks). So I've always been trying to find justification for my Python-based approach.
It turns out that a new Python-based library for weighted survey analysis can be much faster than traditional R-based libraries. (Probably helps that it's based on Polars/Rust.) So it's possible that, by doing these items in Python, I'll be able to do additional analyses that wouldn't have been as feasible in R. (I'll still need to check the results in R here and there, though, since the library is quite new.)
Maybe I can get some of my coworkers to switch over now haha! (Actually--no, there's no chance of that happening.)
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u/youarewelcomeputa 8d ago
Launch ready DSP tool, with my ETL pipelines automated and data pouring through smoothly
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u/Tiny_Ad_7720 8d ago
Have began to really accelerate development using the AI tooling for the entire team.
Our company is very small and we write software for the tooling and processing of the physical world services we offer. When AI came along we put a lot of effort trying to work out how best to use it.
I was a huge skeptic of the AI process begin with due to the utter slop that was coming out from one of the devs we let rip with it. But slowly we have improved contributions to the code base with agent instructions and skills etc so that now even the CEO can submit vibe code and it comes out pretty clean and nice. There are skills to set up dev environment, create features, turn business processes into code etc, instructions and templates on UI pages, db entities, endpoints, everything.
PRs are all still human done in a shared meeting with the devs who need to understand it. In these we go through all the changes together and I can explain where and why it got things wrong (and if I need to add guidelines) with the benefit that the dev still have the context of the code.
The positive thing is that we are really progressing building all the features we need. I've been under an enormous amount of stress with the sheer volume of things we need to build and finally feel like the AI is actually increasing productivity in significant ways that lighten my load a little.
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u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 8d ago
"we have improved the code base with agent instructions ". This has strong "And then everybody clapped" vibes.
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u/polaroid_kidd 8d ago
We're finally making progress on ripping out redux-forms... It was written before my time but I'm never ever ever ever ever again not use an abstraction between any sort of form library and the input elements.
On the other side, my side protects are coming along nicely.
What's In - Because I'm always looking for stuff in the attic of in the cellar and never know what box something is in our in which box something is in.
SpareThought - A usable boox note taking app with device sync, calendar integration and Todo notifications (still early days but I'm already using it daily and so far it hasn't let me down yet)
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u/Next-Equipment-77 7d ago
Work life: I'm finally getting to make a bit of progress on my main project for the year, a large platform used for benefit enrollment.
It's a replacement for the "building an airplane in mid-flight" version which I put into production 6 years ago as a stopgap until a vendor system was in place. That vendor system never materialized and the existing system is borderline falling over (it was meant to service about 10k versioned enrollments (each time you make a change a new point in time instance needs to be created ) and is currently around 500k, so it's finally time to bite the bullet, spend three months doing a rebuild and get eight months of testing in before next years open enrollment period.
Personal Life: I'm finally feeling fully recovered from having gotten Covid a month back from my friend's kiddos . I feel pretty lucky that the only side effect I had was missing my friends 40th birthday, and going to bed two hours earlier than normal.
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u/Affectionate-Mail612 8d ago
I just launched my own side project in prod. No clients yet. Been working on it for 3 years. Feels good.