Software engineering & continues learning
Morocco
Joined August 2011
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يصبح حل المشكلات problem-solving عقبة نفسية وعملية بالنسبة لنا إذا وضعناها كهدف وليس كوسيلة لتطوير أنفسنا كمبرمجين لإيجاد أفضل الحلول للوضع الذي نواجهه.
Mohcin Bounouara retweeted
- Thinking about now and this evening, not tomorrow
- Doing less coding at work and make more use of AI.
- Coding for fun as a hobby from time to time.
- Focusing on becoming a solid software/backend engineer, not just a developer.
- Reading/listening/watching something related to software engineering for at least 30 minutes per day.
- Building things with AI and learn how to improve my AI workflow.
- Connecting with others and participate in software-building discussions as much as I can.
- Improving my English communication skills.
Note to self,
I think there’s too much code to read and review these days, but not necessarily too much complexity to understand.
If you take a specific feature and read its generated code file by file, you’ll probably understand more than 70% of it, especially if you’ve been in the field for a while. And I think that’s enough to get a good understanding of what’s going on.
I also believe that, in this era of AI generated code, understanding the overall flow of a feature is more important than understanding every single line of code.
I think good code nowadays, with AI being part of the development process, is code that’s readable, follows established best practices, aligns with the development team’s coding standards, and delivers good business value to the project.
AND it should also be easy to understand, maintain, and modify by AI first and by humans second.
First kudos for you for TAKING ACTIONS.
The illusion of perfection is something many of us experience in different areas of our lives.
The best approach? Be kind to yourself. Start small. Take action. Learn as you go, and keep moving forward.
Whether it's learning a new skill, working on a project, or improving yourself, stop waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect conditions. Take action, learn from the experience, and improve along the way.
This is how you will calm your mind, overcome overthinking bit by bit, and start making real progress.
There's a famous Islamic saying: "When morning comes, do not wait for evening; and when evening comes, do not wait for morning."
In other words, live in the present. Focus on what you can do today -NOW-, and again take ACTIONS.
Hi, I'm Szymon from Poland.
And I am overthinker.
Next month I'll turn 46 and just this year I'm finally able to name and connect with this condition.
Overthinking, perfectionism, never ending preparations to make the best possible decision. Like I have just one shot for everything in my life.
I'm turning everything into this linear full of suffering process where I need to achieve some kind of checkpoints to be able to move forward.
It always starts with a very simple idea, that suddenly grows into enormous complexity, full of conditional requirements.
I spent thousands of hours past 2 years, building projects that never got published. So many big ideas that would be even too big for a team of several people.
Even with this post it took me weeks of keeping it in my head, waiting until I'm ready. But this post most likely will hear crickets, so why do I stress so much? That's so stupid!
Screw this! I'm not ready, but I'm doing it. There is no functional app. No landing page. No waitlist to sign up. No logo. No deployment pipeline. No business plan. No sophisticated marketing plan.
Just a name to overcome my overthinking disease: Untitled Notes
Yep, I wanted to stop the spiral of finding "the best" note-taking app name, so I called it Untitled Notes and suddenly it becomes a synonym for the way I want to take notes. Just write down a thought, a task, a bookmark without all those complex systems behind.
Just a single place to put them down and organize later or never. One never-ending page with a simplicity on the surface, but with amazing capabilities under the hood.
I tested the concept with a prototype and confirmed that I love the UX and that's what I want to exist. Now I'm at the stage of rebuilding it into an actual app.
This time the approach is completely different:
- find if anyone is interested in testing it
- ship it no matter how unpolished and "not ready" it feels
- improve based on actual feedback
- find more users
- keep going
I'm building it for myself, but believe there are some people who might like it too and I'd like to connect with them.
Are you one of them?
I don't usually like these kinds of debates, but have you really considered whether #PHP is actually dead as a programming language? And it might remain relevant for years to come.
Around 70% of websites with a known server-side programming language use PHP.
WordPress, Laravel, Symfony, Drupal, Joomla, legacy PHP systems, internal tools, CRMs, and countless other applications still rely on it.
What do you think, especially after all the things happened over the past two days?
I’m not exactly new to the web dev field, I was around in the days of Dreamweaver, simple HTML pages with barely any styling, and layouts built entirely with HTML tables.
But I find this new era of technology really exciting. It’s a great time to be in a company that embraces these changes, experiments with new ideas, or gives you the freedom to build something just because you want to explore and test it.
The PHP incident brings all of this to my mind.
PHP two current vulnerables simply explained;
Imagine someone being able to switch off the electricity in your home remotely, from outside, and control everything connected to your electrical system however they want, whenever they want.
That’s how serious a vulnerability like this can be.
Mohcin Bounouara retweeted
Successful implementation of artificial intelligence requires clear metrics, iterative experimentation, and continuous evaluation in emerging economies.
Server errors are where we get better as backend developers.
Understand the error. Guess the fix. Search the web. Hit the wall. Panic if it’s production.
That’s how we learn.
Don’t let AI take these learning moments away. I’m fighting the urge to use it until I’ve exhausted my own attempts.
Important announcement for PHP developers and maintainers!
PHP maintainers have announced some very important updates, and we need to pay attention.
If you maintain websites running PHP 8.2 or older, it's time to review your PHP versions and plan your upgrades, on SERVER and in the CODEBASE.
Don't wait until an outdated version becomes a security risk. Check your websites, review your dependencies, and plan your upgrades!
AI can speed up the POCs, MVPs... But to sustain the project you need developers, teammates, reviewers.. And iterations.
The requirements and specs are the new things that needs more attention and review in the agentic dev era.
A reminder for anyone working in software development;
Don't judge your teammates based on one piece of - you feel that is a negative - feedback or a quick reply on Slack or Teams.
Don't create scenarios in your head based on a short message or a moment when someone doesn't act the way you expected. They're human, just like YOU. They can have bad days, make mistakes, or communicate poorly sometimes, just as YOU can.
Start by looking at yourself before judging others.
Try to be someone who's easy to work with, even during overwhelming times. Your attitude under pressure matters just as much as your technical skills.
We're all humans trying to do our best. Give people the same understanding you'd want them to give you.
Note to self;
Put your phone aside. Bring an old-fashioned notebook and a pen.
Open the resource you want to learn from in fullscreen.
Try to write down what you understand as you go.
You might be surprised by how positively you spend those 20/30 minutes.
And yeah, 20 minutes of focused learning in this era is already a huge win.
Note to self first;
While scrolling through Twitter and Linkedin, I've seen a lot of people talking negatively about software engineering as a career because of AI.
Constantly consuming this kind of content can make you feel like you're falling behind, no matter how much you're learning or improving.
So, my personal advice; use AI heavily. Use it in your daily work, your personal projects, and your learning process. Take advantage of what it offers today.
But, at the same time, keep improving your software engineering fundamentals, bit by bit. Learn how things work under the hood. Improve your communication skills. Understand the concepts behind the code. Improve your ability to make good engineering decisions.
That's what will help you become a better developer and a better software engineer, with AI or without it.
And one more thing, unfollow people who constantly make you feel that you're nothing without AI, that you'll achieve nothing without it, or that you're already falling behind simply because you're using it.
Stay curious. Keep learning. Use the tools available to you, but never stop investing in yourself.
You don't have to keep up with everything on social media. Focus on your own growth.
Set boundaries for yourself, finish work within your working hours and don’t overwork. Use weekends to work on side projects, but with less intensity.
Go out for walls, runs..
Put Allah first as much as you can..
I think these are some of the things that work for me personally. Otherwise, we’ll end up living with constant anxiety and stress in this era of AI.
I stopped *everything*...for a month! 😵💫
My brain was fried trying to keep up with all the latest things going on in our field for months after months 🙃
It was super fun, adrenaline spikes were high, I was always awake and thinking about how to keep my agents busy, and whatnot!
Until it was not anymore...anxiety all the time, FOMO all the time, life was becoming hell!
So I took a break!
I did not fire up any agents, did not work on a side project, did not clone another SaaS to save $$...just some occasional chit-chat on ChatGPT!
Results? I have a great mood, great energy, great focus!
Time to get back at it again, but with less anxiety 😌
Spent two hours this morning dealing with a deployment issue, finally resolved it.
And that's software development.
We face challenges, investigate problems, try different approaches, make mistakes, and eventually find solutions. That's part of what we love about this field.
AI is changing how we work, but the scenario I described isn't going anywhere, with AI or without it.
The tools may change. The engineering challenges, the responsibility, the planning, and the need to solve problems will remain.
#software #AI