By active work, I mean actually interacting with your computer - scoping, planning, developing or attending meetings etc.

The average based on the people I ask is 3-4 hours, but I’m curious to know if this is actually the standard in our industry.

Pm here, I know estimates are a fairy tale, but I'm wondering

Should I ask developers to estimate Raw coding time so then I can do simple math like add focus factor + buffers

Or ask them to estimate fully done, after deployment and qa? I'm worried that this question is too loaded and that their accuracy would be more precise if they only estimated raw code.

I did an informal poll across a few engineering communities asking people what's deployed in production, not what they're evaluating.

kong is the most common for pure api gateway workloads. Strong plugin ecosystem, predictable operationally, well-documented enterprise tier. kafka and ai agent governance require separate tools.

gravitee manages rest apis, kafka event streams, and ai agent traffic from one governance layer, which is the differentiator for teams that need all three without separate tooling per traffic type. Flat-rate pricing for unlimited api calls is one of the reasons many teams use it.

aws api gateway is in every aws-native stack but consistently described as a "routing layer" not a management platform. Works for lambda, limited for comprehensive governance.

apigee shows up mostly as an ongoing migration context. The product itself isn't the complaint, gcp lock-in is, and it surfaces later than procurement teams expect.

tyk has a dedicated following for self-hosted open-source deployments with lower operational overhead than kong. Smaller community, generally positive sentiment from users.

The teams with the least operational pain had committed to one platform regardless of which one it was. Running multiple gateways, even for documented legitimate reasons, correlates with higher operational overhead and slower incident response than the tool choice itself.

Not asking for a generic roadmap post 😭

I’m a 3rd year BTech student from a tier 3 college. I know Java, basic/decent DSA and a little Swift/iOS.

The problem is everyone online keeps saying completely different things:
web dev, AI/ML, DevOps, cloud, CP, open source etc and it’s honestly overwhelming af.

So I wanted to ask people who actually got placed recently in the 8–12 LPA range from tier 3 colleges:

What was the ONE main skill/domain you focused on apart from DSA that genuinely helped in placements/interviews?

And if you had to restart today in 2026, what would you focus on again?

Trying to avoid wasting time doing 10 things at once.

Every team I've talked to has some version of this problem. The developers don't have time to expand test coverage. But somehow they always find 15-20 hours a week to fix existing tests that broke because someone renamed a button or moved a field.

I've been building a mobile testing tool for the last year and a half. I talked to 40+ QA leads during that time. The pattern is always the same. Tests are tied to element IDs and selectors. A developer changes the UI. The selectors break. The tests fail. The app is working fine. The QA team spends two days at the start of every sprint repairing tests that were passing last week.

The fix we built is simple in concept. Instead of pointing tests at code level IDs, our tool uses vision AI to look at the screen the way a human would.

You write "tap the login button" and it finds the login button by seeing it. When the design changes, the test doesn't break because the button is still there on screen.

We've been running this in production with 14 paying companies for the last few months. Some of them have apps with 5 million plus downloads. The self-healing actually works. Their maintenance hours dropped by more than half.

We just launched on Product Hunt today. I'm not going to pretend this post isn't partly about that. just what to know for those of you dealing with this problem, what's your current approach?

Link in comments :)

We bill based on usage and recently crossed the 1M+ daily usage events. Not a milestone we expected to hit so soon and now we're seeing some DB degradation with our current setup. I'm not a DB expert so I'm struggling with how to handle this.

I'm looking to build something new. Are there any tools or services where -

• They are too bloated: You only use 10% of the features, but the other 90% ruins the UI and slows you down.
• They are too expensive: The pricing is geared entirely toward enterprise budgets, gatekeeping individual users or small teams.
• They just don't exist: You are currently forcing a bunch of different apps together with hacky workarounds or manual spreadsheets just to get a single task done.

I'm looking for an IDE alternative that doesn't use whatever I code for training AI models and sure I can turn off the permission to do that in the settings for VS code, but I wouldn't put it past a big company to do it anyways still. I've seen there are alternatives like OpenCode, Tabnine, and Void IDE but wanted to get some opinions as well since I'm still a beginner in all this. Thank you in advance.

We are looking for a software developer to join our team.

Requirements:

- Must be able to work remotely in the US time zone (US, Canada, South America only)

- Native or fluent English required

- Proven experience in software development

If interested, please send a message with your experience and background.

Hey there. I’m a creative director who has redesigned my website in Figma. It’s stunning— not your typical site/concept.

It features a homepage, a resources page and 10 case study pages that are all formatted the same way.

My site is currently on SS. But, I’m open to suggestions just as long as it’s as stunning when it’s produced as it is in Figma. Don’t have a ton of money to invest—however, I’m obviously more than happy to work with you to negotiate a good deal.

Please DM if you’re awesome, available, meticulous and somewhat affordable. Ty

I've always enjoyed learning about how systems work and how programmes operate but, in reality, I don't know syntax or specific file workflows.

I am still an amateur and all I really know how to do is write basic python with little or no libraries. The best thing I have every 'shipped' is a 2nd year winning python robot that used a competition custom built library that did all the action hardware for me. All we did in was plug in the motors and assigning 'R.motors[0] = 10' etc.

Not difficult, obviously. We just wrote navigation and logic.

I want to learn more and be able to make robots and programs but I don't know where to start with AI. Maybe 5 years ago, I'd know the route. Learn the syntax over months and build over years. But it's not like that anymore, it's not that simple because AI can do that anyway.

But it's also not "make this app" and then paste the errors into AI- that's vibecoding, right?

So far, with like 3 true but very unfinished projects under my belt, I have got AI to generate a tech stack based of inputs like 'this should be obtained from this API and then this should go to the frontend' rather than naming real libraries or packages because I simply don't know them.

People say, which I don't really believe is truly strong or sustainable advice, to get AI to generate it but then get it to explain it. When it generates an entire codebase, it can't really explain it within the size and window of a single reply, or even a full chat.

So, I suppose, the question I am asking is: Where do I actually learn in this day and age?

Thanks

Hey all! I’m looking for a tool that can automate a few smoke tests for us after a deployment. Effectively, I just want something that can tell me 1. If the site is up, and 2. if users can login. Has anyone used anything that fits the bill? I’d really rather not maintain a Playwright repo for something like this.

I’m looking for an Open Source alternative for our Infra Centre. We’ve been using Chargebee but the cost/quality that we’re getting from it isn't great for our current multi-dimensional usage (RAM + GPU + Storage) and projected growth for this year. Messed around with Kill Bill and its an oss dream but its pretty damn complex. We mostly want open source so we can have full control of the data but it’s not a deal breaker.

Also I know this is probably going to be a magnet for bot spam so please downvote any AI slop or links from “founders” who want to “help”. Thanks!

The amount of money providers pay for this software is insane, if we can get just a handful of hospitals we can make good money.

im a 4th year cs major student
im working on a web app which counts tress and re routes accordingly it

in order to calculate the trees i need good quality raw satelite images

what Options do i have??

I am 19 and a BTech student specializing in Computer Vision and Machine Learning, seeking freelance opportunities to fund a tablet for my academic notes. I have extensive experience building AI systems, including face recognition pipelines and image restoration projects using FaceNet and GANs. As a national-level hackathon finalist and competitive programmer, I am highly proficient in Python, OpenCV, and the Linux ecosystem. I excel at developing scalable solutions, from API integrations to terminal automation.

I am hardworking, technically versatile, and ready to deliver high-quality results for your projects. If you need assistance with development or research, let’s connect!

I've been an SAP developer for nearly two years and most of my job is spent working with the ABAP programming language. Some of the principles apply outside of the SAP ecosystem as well, however, it seems like it's hard to break out of that field for those who have been in it for a long time (I work at SAP itself and I've heard about people who've been developing in ABAP for 10+ years and they've never heard of version control because it doesn't exist there). So naturally, I'm trying to get out.

Despise that, I do have some experience because my thesis project for university was developed with a modern stack (NestJS + React), however, I'm trying to gain more "real" skills that I can actually use for switching jobs. I'm already in the process of developing an app of mine, that uses Spring, React Native and - while I don't know much about the topic yet as I'm learning on the go - I'd also like to develop a microservice or two for things like notifications and I wanna learn more about deployment as well (devops stuff).

Here's the problem though. I enjoy the process, I feel like I'm learning a lot but with all the noise around me about AI I feel like I'm making a huge mistake by not just using Claude Code to develop the entire thing. The original plan was to do it "the modern way", use Claude for everything and then read every single line of code, however, that did not work because Claude was not very flexible and wanted to strictly stick to a plan even if that meant writing a lot of code that "doesn't make sense yet". I felt like I didn't understand the code and the explanations weren't enough so I've decided to restart and do things manually. When I'm at the next step / when I run into a problem, I always try to think it through, try to solve it on my own, try to google and if I feel like this is taking too long then I ask Claude to help me figure it out myself which usually end up working. I feel like this process works for me but I keep wondering if I'm using outdated methods for learning especially when I keep seeing LinkedIn posts about how people developed a working app in 2 days that previously took a year to do and then I also got our team lead at work who keeps talking about how "in a few years there won't be software engineers, there will only be creative storytellers who speak their ideas into a microphone because at that point computers won't need a keyboard". I know that the industry is really gonna change by AI and I know that what I've read on LinkedIn and heard from our team lead is kinda bs, but it still takes a toll on me, I feel like I am doing something wrong.

For the record, I do find AI a useful tool, I use Claude Code at work, I just feel like there's a chance that what I'm doing right now is really gonna pay off in the long run if I'm consistent, espeically if I'm aware of all the principles and go into it.

With AI advancing so fast, what do you think is the best possible tech stack to learn today if the main goal is to stay employable and competitive in the job market over the next 5 years?

I’m not looking for hype or short-term trends, but for a stack that companies will still need, hire for, and consider valuable even as AI tools become more powerful.

What would you choose as the most future-proof stack for employability, and why?

I’ve been spending the last few weeks debugging why a client's legitimate outbound notification service has seen a 60% drop in pick-up rates. The answer is basically a wall called STIR/SHAKEN.

For those not in the weeds of telecom dev: the industry has moved so hard toward call authentication that even verified, "A-level" attested calls are being flagged as "Scam Likely" by carriers or simply silenced by iOS/Android's built-in filters. We’re reaching a point where the traditional "dial-and-ring" handshake is becoming a legacy protocol that users have collectively decided to block.

It feels like we’re fighting a losing battle of armor vs. shells. We optimize the SIP stack, we rotate numbers, we verify CNAM-and the result is still a 10% answer rate.

I’ve started looking into more "asynchronous" ways to handle voice delivery. Instead of trying to force a synchronous socket-like connection (a real-time call) where both parties have to be present, I’ve been experimenting with direct server-to-server injections.

The most interesting implementation I’ve seen recently is how companies are using ringless voicemail for debt collection and high-volume notifications. I've been testing the DropCowboy ringless voicemail API and technically, it’s much more elegant from a systems perspective. You aren't "calling" a number; you're essentially performing an API post to a voicemail box.

A few observations from a dev standpoint:

• Non-blocking I/O: You don't have to manage thousands of open SIP sessions waiting for a "pick up" or "machine" signal.
• Bypassing the Handshake: Since there is no "ring" event, you bypass the carrier’s real-time spam-scoring algorithms that trigger during the signaling phase.
• Infrastructure Cost: The compute power needed to drop 10k audio files into server-side mailboxes is a fraction of what’s needed to run a predictive dialer.

It’s making me wonder if we’re witnessing the end of the "calling API" for everything except personal P2P communication. Why struggle with the latency and overhead of traditional telephony when you can deliver the data (the voice message) directly to the user's storage?

Has anyone else here moved their outbound notification logic away from traditional VoIP/SIP? Are you seeing better delivery rates with RVM or are you just sticking to SMS/Push and hoping for the best?

What is one test you guys would use to determine if a dev is worthless or not? Some kind of challenge.

I'm just looking for a way to prove myself

I've been programming for nearly 4 years, in case it is valuable information