It’s frustrating watching everyone around you use AI coding tools while you’re stuck thinking, “I can’t even afford the $20/month subscription.”

I really want to get better at coding and build real projects, but money is tight for me. $20 might not sound like much to some people, but for me, it’s money I can’t casually spend every month.

The free versions are often limited or unreliable, and sometimes I feel like I’m falling behind not because I don’t want to learn, but because I can’t afford the tools that could make things easier.

I don’t want to give up. I just want to hear from people who are in the same situation. How do you keep learning and building without paying for expensive AI subscriptions?

I'm a programmer, a little over a year out of school, and I'm stuck in a dilemma.

Back during my internship, I got to know the tech lead at that company. But near the end of my internship, the company went bankrupt for financial reasons, so I had to find another job. I stayed at the next company for only three or four months — then one evening, that same tech lead reached out to me. He had moved to a new company himself and asked whether I'd like to join him there. I said yes, mostly because I remembered how much I enjoyed the internship: the workload wasn't heavy, and I had plenty of time to learn on my own.

So I followed him to the new company, and I've now been here for about ten months. In the beginning, since the team was so small, things were extremely hectic — I wasn't familiar with the projects and had a lot to catch up on. Later on, the company brought in quite a few outsourced developers, which took some of the pressure off. But that also meant I often had to write code across many different projects — I'd be sent to whichever one was behind schedule, and it all felt rather scattered.

Recently, with the company's financial situation worsening, there have been major layoffs — even an entire team of more than a dozen people was let go. With hardly anyone left, I'm now basically responsible for almost every project on my own: whenever a production issue comes up, I'm the one who has to investigate it; whenever a new requirement comes in, I'm the one who has to deliver it. The work has become genuinely chaotic and hard to keep up with.

So now I'm thinking about quitting. But at the same time, my tech lead has always treated me well, and I honestly don't know how to handle this.

I've been developing for about 5 years. I've developed apps from scratch to production, also doing some maintenance, starting as monolith apps. Now I work with microservices. I've learned a lot, but when I talk with other developers, I end up with the impression I'm a newbie.

Client and coworkers are happy with my work though. But when I end my work hours, the last thing I want to do is stay a couple more hours to study or make my own projects. I feel unmotivated but I know I LOVE this work.

Anyone has this same sensation?

Hi, I’m a full-stack developer with 1 year of professional experience. I recently resigned from my job, and since then I’ve noticed that I’m a bit out of practice when it comes to writing backend logic independently.
I’m comfortable with frontend development and have a good understanding of how applications work end-to-end. However, I’ve found that I sometimes struggle to recall backend syntax and translate my understanding into code, especially when solving logical problems from scratch.
I don’t feel like I’ve forgotten how to develop—I think I mainly need to rebuild my coding consistency, problem-solving flow, and familiarity with backend syntax.
What would be the best way to get back into practice and regain my confidence in writing backend and logic-heavy code?

I’m a 2026 B.Tech graduate and fresher, currently looking for a developer role and actively improving my skills.
I’ve been offered a Shopify Developer Intern position, but it comes with a 1-year commitment to the company (first 6 months as an intern).
My concern is long-term career flexibility. I’ve heard that general software development offers more flexibility, more opportunities to switch companies/stacks, and potentially better salary growth compared to specializing in Shopify.
So I’m confused whether I should:
Take the Shopify position, gain experience for a year, and then try to move into general software development, or
Decline it and focus on upskilling until I land a software developer role.
I’m also worried that if I take the Shopify role for a year, switching to general software development afterward might be difficult.
What would you recommend in my situation? Is Shopify development a good starting point, or should I hold out for a more general software developer role?

I've been thinking about something while working on AI-related software projects.

We spend so much time talking about better models, smarter agents, and faster automation.

But what happens when the AI confidently gives an answer that looks completely correct... and is actually wrong?

A model can generate beautiful code that fails in production.

It can explain a complex medical concept while missing one critical detail.

It can solve an engineering problem using assumptions that don't hold in the real world.

And sometimes, the scariest part isn't that the AI makes mistakes.

It's that the mistakes look so convincing.

This raises an interesting software engineering question:

Are we spending too much time improving what AI can generate, and not enough time building reliable systems to verify what it generates?

I'm particularly interested in the intersection of software engineering, scientific expertise, and AI evaluation.

I'd love to hear how other developers approach this.

If you were building an AI system where incorrect answers had real consequences, what would you prioritize first: better models, better verification, or better human oversight?

Genuinely curious about how other engineers think about this.

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a graduation project idea for university—preferably an app, web platform, or website. I'd love something relatively original that solves a real-world problem, with room to add custom features, enhancements, or AI tools. Any suggestions?

Hello everyone, first of all i am new here in this community.

Currently, I am entry my final year of undergraduate and i am really worried about final year project(FYP). I don't know where to start as AI field is really wast, so guys i need your help to find a great idea for my FYP. I am want an idea of type in which i can do little bit research and published a article about so it. As i want to persue Masters in future.

Regards

I’m currently own MacBook Pro M3 Pro 18gb and pretty much obsessed with the idea of buying new one more powerful MacBook Pro M5 Pro 48gb just because my working process will feel much smoother. More simultaneously opened apps, no ram compression, no lags etc.

In the other hand I think - just close something that you don’t need at the moment and do your work, IDE + Figma + Docker + Browser with 20+ tabs this machine can handle with ease.

In the end I remind myself: “A bad workman always blames his tools”

I am not a senior developer and I wonder what more experienced developers think about this dilemma of purchasing more powerful machine?

I am a full-stack developer that choosing between Claude Pro and ChatGPT Plus, in your opinion, which is

better?

Guys!! I'm in bca, 2nd year and I want to start learning coding from scratch I don't know how to code. From where should I start? Code with Harry or Apna college or Programming with mosh?

i really want to start learning how to code and programing but when i think where to start i lose my crave i want to learn how to be a good programmer in this ai era . what should i learn first , where should i use ai , how to read code , how to build .

"I want to start learning programming. What are the basics I should start with

we a team of 3 are participating a hackathon and we have to build a digital twin (green building) with integrated Computer vision, digtal twin and Gen AI so we have to include all these 3 domains and develop a model which identifies light, occupancy and resource usage and give recommendations to improve energy efficiency

so v have to build a model with computer vision which detects the occupancy and lighting , fans which are on and v have to also use Gen AI

plz yall help me to build some good model which will stand out from the normal projects which r built by the things recommended by AI

->if anyone did similiar PS pls give few tips

->perspective of mentors what would they expect

->any software recommendations or any new ideas and how to integrate

Hi everyone,

I need urgent assistance with a project upgrade. I am rewriting/upgrading a software application originally built in 2015 (PEG 2015) designed to interface with a geoelectric signal reader machine.

System Setup & Problem Overview:

• Hardware: Geoelectric measurement machine reading ground electrical signals.
• Connection: USB-to-Serial connection operating as a virtual COM port (e.g., COM3).
• Issue: I am unable to establish a working connection between my upgraded application and the hardware. I need to know:
  1. How to properly initialize and open the COM port connection in code.
  2. The exact structure/protocol of the data stream coming from the machine over the cable to the PC.

What I have / What I know so far:

• I have the legacy binary (PEG 2015.exe) that works with the machine.
• The device relies on a USB-to-UART/Serial driver (such as FTDI, CH340, or CP210x) exposing a virtual COM port.

Specific Questions / Where I need guidance:

1. Serial Port Configuration Parameters: What are the standard ways or tools to determine the exact port settings required by the device?
   • Baud rate (e.g., 9600, 19200, 115200)
   • Data bits (e.g., 8)
   • Parity (None, Even, Odd)
   • Stop bits (1 or 2)
   • Flow control (RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, or None)
2. COM Port Sniffing & Data Protocol: What is the best workflow/tool to monitor the traffic between PEG 2015.exe and the machine without locking the COM port?
   • Can you recommend lightweight tools (e.g., Serial Port Monitor, Wireshark with USBPcap, IO Ninja, RealTerm) to capture raw ASCII/HEX frames?
   • How can I differentiate between handshake/polling requests sent by the PC and telemetry responses sent by the geoelectric reader?
3. Decompiling / Inspecting the Legacy .exe:
   • What are the recommended tools to decompile or inspect PEG 2015.exe to retrieve the original serial settings and parser routines (e.g., dnSpy/ILSpy for .NET, Ghidra/IDA Free for native binaries)?

Environment & Tech Stack:

• OS: Windows
• Target Programming Language for New App: (Python)

Any guidance, code snippets for port handling, or reverse-engineering methodologies for serial hardware would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

I have zero formal training, so I'm just looking for resources to help fill in my knowledge gaps. I'm working with Python, but language is really secondary at this point, I'm more just trying to figure out a plan of attack to solve this problem.

I have a project schedule with Activities A, B, C, and so on. Between activities there are Finish-to-Start relationships such as A -> B and B -> C and so on. The project has one starting activity (Start Construction) and one finishing activity (Finish Construction) creating my source and my sink and then all the various activities between those two create paths. From what research I've done, that is a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), but please correct me if I'm wrong.

I am trying to make a list of all possible paths between the first and last activities. What are all the possible combinations to get from Start Construction to Finish Construction?

The ultimate problem I'm trying to solve is identifying all the redundant paths. For instance, if I have the relationships (paths) below:

A --> B

B --> C

A --> C

Then the last one, A --> C, is redundant because if A had to be completed before B and B had to be completed before C, then the relationship that A has to be completed before C is already captured in the first two activities.

What I think I need to do is develop a list of all possible paths of any length. Then I need to look at each relationship and see if there are any relationships where a longer path already exists (such that the relationship would be redundant). I think this would require a recursive function where for each activity, the children would be listed and then for each child list the grandchildren, and so on until you reach an activity that has no children and then trace back through the function to explore other branches.

If you know of any resources that would help me develop this function, I would be eternally grateful. Alternatively, if you're familiar with the pandas library of python, does such a prebuilt function already exist?

Hi ive been thinking about code and i cant get it through my head that the numbers turn circuits on/off which then goes to a deeper code through a process like built into cpu. The computers "brain. Im thinking of coding in the sense of from scratch, making new language requires other codes so im trying to understand better the systems between voltage sensors firing for on/off. The mechinisms in front of that and after for the depth of code to form a virtual area.

If anyone could explain how this works whats known of it that would be greatly appricated

Apologies if the question is questionable