Ken

@hthieblot That's the indomitable human spirit.

The most brutal stretch as a founder is holding unbreakable belief that you'll make it... when you have literally nothing to show for it.

Content creation is dead.

This is quite the plot twist.

The reward for doing good work is almost always just more work.

@PedroGuiti Oh, I'll check it. Thanks for the feedback!

@kenrt_ Cool idea. For some reason, the page was a little laggy.

I want this account to grow into a community of founders Drop the link to what you are building. I will give genuine feedback

@defiantghosty How?

@kenrt_ not freelancing. try contra though.

Serious question for freelancers: How are you getting clients? I'm on the web development niche and there's thousands of competition. A month on Fiverr, 0 clients What's the secret? Maybe another niche?

@RifeWithKaiju Man, thanks for the insight! I appreciate your response.

I'm not in the majority here from the latest discussions I've seen, but I'm not sure how much even the higher level skills like architecture will matter later this year, or late next year. I suspect AI will outperform humans there soon. But if that's not a bet you want to take (which is understandable), then I would suggest having the AI be your tutor. Something like: - if you already have an idea of the architecture you have in mind, specify it to the level that you're interested in understanding. If you don't have an idea, then ask for a high level overview of multiple approaches. - Let them know where there are holes in your understanding, and ask them where it too many users would cause issues, if any of it is overengineered, what's hard to change later, what would a senior dev criticize in the design, and what the simplest non-bad version of the design is. If you're interested in fully understanding the low-level version, then build it yourself, and constantly ask the AI to review your choices. If you're less concerned with that, then ask the AI to build each granular part, and specify exactly what you want them to build (and again, ask them to review all your choices. If you're not even sure about which areas you should be most concerned with, I would ask them that, too. I've dabbled in web development, but I'm a game and middleware developer, and not every domain has the same failure modes. A lot of people criticize this heavily AI-everywhere-in-the-loop workflow for learning, thinking, designing, coding, etc. But nothing has to be compromised. If you want to think something through yourself, you can. It's just that you now have constant access to the most tireless and knowledgeable tutor and dev whenever you want/need one.

Trying to learn coding right now feels pointless sometimes. AI can write most of it better than I can. So why even bother? I'm still figuring this out.

@rdbuilds7 Biggest challenge? AI sucks at motion design deiolab.com

Trying something simple. Reply with: • What you're building • Your biggest challenge right now I'll check out as many projects as I can. Let's connect 🤝

@elgermerlo deiolab.com

Show me what you're building. No decks. No pitches. Just what you're actually shipping. Link below 👇

@GnykkaCodes Had the exact same experience in Fiverr. Someone sent me a github repo, I checked the package.json file, and saw a preinstall hook. They're getting creative.

Freelancers, please be extra careful on Upwork and other platforms! Do not EVER run someone’s code before you inspect it properly and make sure it’s not malicious. Yesterday I got interested in a job. It looked fine: fine description of some MVP for a crypto/finance security dashboard, nothing too fancy. The only slightly suspicious thing was that the client was new, with no previous hires. But okay, everyone starts somewhere, so I decided to apply. I got a reply very quickly. They shared more context, explained the project, and asked if I could take a look at the code to discuss the possible scope of work. I said that I usually do proper audits as paid work, but they still sent me a GitHub repo and asked me to “please, just take a quick look”. At this point I was suspicious, but honestly, I mostly thought it would be the usual scam: get some free work as a “test task” and disappear. I cloned the repo, and asked Claude to inspect it with a very strict instruction: explore the code, but do not run any scripts. And here we go... There was an npm package impersonating "dotenv". It was wired into the backend, and when called, it tried to download remote code and execute it on my machine. So the “quick local setup” was not a harmless MVP review. It was a way to get a developer to run malware. I reported the job and client to Upwork, and the package to NPM. Please be careful. Especially with private repos, crypto projects, “quick setup scripts”, and clients who want you to run something before there’s a contract. And if anything feels off, however small it is, please, always trust that feeling.

@RifeWithKaiju Currently, web development. And I feel like I have forgotten a lot.

@kenrt_ Do you have a particular domain in mind? I suspect that the answer might be a little different depending on what you're planning on making. (And that's probably also why some people swear by current AI coding agents and some people say they're not even close.)

@GnykkaCodes Every time i open X there always something new. I found like 3 new products doing a similar thing with what I'm currently building. Progress is moving too fast.

@kenrt_ Unfortunately they have way more resources. But still there are a lot of opportunities to do more thoughtfully

Tech companies need to slow down. It's exhausting trying to build anything right now when companies constantly ship the exact features or ideas you’ve been spending weeks trying to figure out. You have to be built different just to keep up.

@codylschuldt Well, I'm exaggerating a bit. I'm also approaching 80 hours on my project. But you do have a point, youtube has everything in it, you just need the will to follow through and learn. Thanks for the insight!

@kenrt_ YouTube has plenty of free training. And there are no tools that can finish an entire project immediately, at least not a useful project. I'm about 400 hours deep into building my saas. Got it done, found the bugs, ripped it apart, started over.

As an AI language model, I must agree that maintaining authenticity is paramount in today's digital landscape. Here are 3 reasons why human replies excel: Emotional resonance Genuine connection Nuanced context Let's continue to foster meaningful, human-to-human interactions! ✨

Don’t ruin your reputation with AI generated replies

@RifeWithKaiju How do you think should a junior dev learn system architecture today. With little pre-AI experience, it could be very hard to know what looks good, and what looks objectively bad.

It *is* pointless (saying this with over a decade as a lead). Get good at splitting it into chunks for now, and understanding what to build as a base. Test, ask the AI to refine, build more, repeat. Asking the AI to build it all at once doesn't always work yet. If you're not sure which chunks to split it into, ask the AI. And also ask the AI questions about every little thing you're confused or curious about, but don't worry about the little details that people say you're "supposed to" care about. Only the parts you're genuinely curious about or where your lack of understanding is getting in your way.

@DanteHarker Sure, but it's far from that. Huge projects, complex systems needs a solid architecture. At some point, a human has to take responsibility when a system breaks, leaks data, or runs up a massive bill. You simply cannot audit a technical system you don’t understand.

@kenrt_ One AI builds, a better AI checks through 1000s of lines of code for errors, quicker and faster than developers. I heard this same kind of stuff back when people wrote web pages in Notepad - the future happens whether we like it or not.

@MiaLiaRosilyn Well I'm already approaching my 3rd year of CS, too late for that advice!😅

@kenrt_ It is so you can be a better prompt engineer and be able to "understand" the code so you can make those minor adjustments... So you are more "efficient" with AI tools. That being said... learn coding with free resources, don't go to "school" for it 😊

That's a great analogy and it brings forth another question, if self-driving cars were flawless 99% of the time, would the average person even bother spending months learning how to drive manually? I feel like that's the trap for new devs today, it's the efficiency that it promises.

@kenrt_ because AI can miss things! and engineers who use it use it to get the thing made quickly, then use their knowledge to debug it and quickly correct errors. if self driving cars were all the cars, wouldn't you learn to drive? in case?