This is my cry for help.

I'm a newer programmer who just got hired for my first actual programming job a few months ago. Before now the only things I really made were simple python scripts that handled database operations at my last job. I live in an area with no opportunities, and so this new job I got is my saving grace at this point. For the first time in my life I can have actual savings and can actually work on moving to an area with opportunities. However...

Everything is falling apart. I have no idea how this place has survived this long. There is no senior dev for me to go to. There are no code reviews. There is no QA. There is a spiderweb of pipelines with zero error handling or data-checking. Bugs are frequent and go undetected. The database has no keys or constraints, and was designed by a madman (so it's definitely not normalized whatsoever). I already have made a bunch of little scripts handling data-parsing tasks that are used in prod, and I've had to learn proper logging and notifications on errors along the way, and have still yet to learn how to do real tests (I ordered a book on pytest that I plan on going through). I am so paranoid that at any moment something I made does something unexpected and destroys things (which... kinda actually happened already).

We're in the long and arduous process of moving away from this terrible system to a newer, better-designed one but I'm already just so lost and... lonely? There's a few separate dev "teams" but one is outsourced and the other is infamously unapproachable and works on a completely different domain. There's no one there to catch me if/when I make mistakes except myself. The paranoia I have over my programs is really getting to me and already affecting my health.

I guess I just want advice on what I should do in this situation. Is this a normal first experience? I care deeply about making sure the things I make are good and functional but I also don't have the experience to forsee potential issues that may come up due to how I'm designing things. And how can I cope with the paranoia I'm feeling?

EDIT: It takes me a while to write responses, but I want everyone to know that I really appreciate all your advice and kind words. It does mean a lot to me! I'm doing my best to take in what everyone has said and am working on making the best of an atypical situation. I'm chronically hard on myself, but I'm gonna try to give myself a bit more grace here. Again, thanks so much for all the thoughtful replies from everyone. :)

Hello all, was inspired to fish for responses after seeing another user request resume feedback. Apologies if the background is on the longer side.

TLDR: Dropped out 10 years ago; have only a high school degree and university transfer credits. Conflicted between finishing my degree online while working full time, vs. specializing in a niche tech stack (Salesforce) via current employment. Looking for any input because I'm prone to decision paralysis.

Hello everyone.

I am planning to get back into Linux development after working with Mac only for almost a decade. On Mac, one of the most important lessons that I learned was to always use Homebrew. Using various package managers (e.g. Homebrew, NPM, Yarn, Pip, etc.) creates situations in which you don't know how to uninstall or upgrade certain pieces of software. Also, it's hard to generate a complete overview.

How do you Linux folks handle this?

Bonus question: How do you manage your dotfiles securely? I use Bitwarden, and it's a bit clunky.

If that helps, I want to try Mint and always use Oh My ZSH!.

Hi,

I'm curious if anyone in this group has achieved success in game development, whether that's carving out a career or earning any amount of income from it.

I'm currently working as a software developer, but my passion lies in game development. I'm all too aware that achieving any measure of success in this field is next to impossible. Hence, I'm reaching out here, hoping to gather insights and advice from those who have walked this path in the past, or those who are currently walking alongside/behind me.

One of my specific questions is about the types of games I should focus on creating. Specifically, I've heard differing opinions on whether it's more advantageous to develop a series of small games with advertisements for mobile platforms or to invest in larger, premium games for platforms like Steam. Can anyone share their insights or experiences regarding this dilemma? Is there a clear advantage to one approach over the other?

Currently I am using godot to make a larger scale game, but I am considering switching to defold and making smaller scale games with ads.

I saw some folks here discuss making games for the playdate. How much should one consider targeting niche platforms like this? Some of the users I saw discuss this seem to have had good success.

Some general questions: How did you break into game dev? What were you doing before? Do you see game dev as a viable career, only as a source of side income, or is it just a hobby?

Any guidance or experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated.

Web devs: what's up with this trend? For enterprise apps, I get it…single sign-on needs to detect what your email domain is to send you to your identity provider. For consumers, I feel like it's gotta be one of these reasons:

• Users don't know about the tab key being able to move to other fields on a page
• Mobile users don't really have a tab key, despite there being "previous/next field" arrows on the stock iOS keyboard since its inception (Android users, help me out please)
• Users tend to hit Enter after typing in their username, leading to a form submission with a blank password
• Security, maybe? In the past I have sent a link and a password in separate emails or separate communication methods entirely. Are you hashing/salting these separately for better MITM mitigation?

Did your UX team make a decision? Are my password managers forever doomed to need a "keyboard combo" value for every entry from now on?

Non-devs: do you prefer one method over the other? If so, why?

Tildes maintainers: selfishly, thanks for keeping these together :)

I've been trying to set up a dev enviornment for Tildes, mainly so that I can actually test my MR (!136), and I've been running into a few issues.

However, since we also have a new influx of people who might be interested in contributing to Tildes, it seems like a good time to collect resources on setting up the dev environment, as well as helping anyone running into issues.

So, if you have issues or advice, post them here! I'll be adding my questions in a comment shortly.

Relevant wiki pages:

• Development / Initial Setup
• Development / General Development Info

Edit: A more recent post on setting up the dev environment on Apple Silicon / M1 Macs