Testing & QA

why on earth does the Claude logo still look like a sphincter?

I need to talk about the Claude logo. Seriously. It's 6 in the morning on a random Monday and this thought won't leave my brain. Not the model. Not…

Tell Me About You

After sixty-seven published posts here, the comments have become one of the best parts of the work. Some of you have run my code, found things I mis…

The Joy of Old-School Coding After a Stupid Mistake

The other day, it happened again. I had an error message that made me scratch my head . For a moment, I thought, "God, why am I doing this? I should…

If you can't answer "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" — you're not broken"

TL;DR If you freeze when asked "Where do you see yourself in five years?", it doesn't mean something is missing in you. I believe there are three ty…

We Will Get You Through It!

There is a comedy sketch from Bob & Tom that starts with a hilariously impossible promise: overnight delivery by train, from New York to Los Ang…

A Meteorite Fell Into a New Jersey Bedroom. Inside Was the Chemistry of Life

On the afternoon of 16 July 2024, a fireball crossed the sky over the northeastern United States and ended its journey in the ceiling of a home in H…

Physicists Pulled Energy Out of a "Black Hole" on a Tabletop

Fifty years ago, Roger Penrose sketched an idea so audacious it sounded like a trick. Drop an object into the swirling region just outside a spinnin…

What Makes a Software Engineer: The Essence of the Job

Every so often someone asks me what software engineering actually is. A kid thinking about majors, someone considering a career switch, a relative w…

The Sword of Damocles at Work: The Human Cost of Delayed Layoffs

Over a decade ago, my employer announced layoffs that would happen in waves. Every few months another round arrived. Nobody knew the criteria, who w…

Hi Dev.to friends! I’ve spent years looking for a place to belong. I’ve loved programming since I was 12, and I recently turned 23. I’m excited to join this community, contribute, help others, and hopefully make a positive impact. Thanks for reading!

The Silent Panic of Being Asked "Can You Just Quickly Fix This?"

There are four words in the English language that can instantly raise a developer's heart rate faster than a production outage at 5:58pm on a Friday…

What I Learned Switching Between Swift and AI Studio in the Same Week

This past week I did two very different kinds of "building." On one side: continuing my Swift series, writing functions, testing them in the playgro…

How Traveling Shaped My Mind and Helped Me Respect Other Cultures

Traveling is more than moving from one place to another. It is not only about seeing new places, taking pictures, or trying different foods. For me,…

The Irony of AI Development: How Context Engineering Is Taking Us Back to Waterfall

The Irony of AI Development: How Context Engineering Is Taking Us Back to Waterfall And Why That's Not Necessarily a Bad Thing For three decades, th…