r/SoftwareTips

When I started at my current company, AI tools were still pretty limited. Our tech lead was an excellent engineer with strong problem-solving skills, and it was genuinely inspiring working with him on difficult tasks.

Over the last couple of years though, especially recently, I’ve noticed him relying on AI for almost everything — not just coding help, but also design decisions, architecture discussions, and even personal-life choices.

I’m not anti-AI and I use these tools myself, but sometimes it feels like critical thinking and skepticism are disappearing from the process. I’ve started trusting his technical judgment less because many decisions now seem to come directly from AI suggestions rather than deeper reasoning or experience.

Maybe this is just the direction the industry is heading, but I’m curious if anyone else has noticed a similar shift with senior engineers or mentors becoming heavily dependent on AI tools.

I think AI is cool but it takes so much creativity and problem solving skills away from people especially newer devs. I am in my final year of university and i have first hand experience when it comes to the effect AI has on the young mind. I have seen students just use AI for basic things or really complex questions in my first year to students using AI do to the most basic things for them like they can't even think for themselves anymore. I hope we come to a middle ground where AI helps us be more efficient but doesnt controll your every thought

I’ve been noticing this for a while.

Phones and laptops are way more powerful now, but a lot of apps somehow feel slower than before.

Some apps take longer to open, use a lot of RAM, and sometimes lag even for simple things. And almost everything needs updates every few days.

I know modern apps have more features now, cloud stuff, AI, animations, cross-platform support, etc. But still, sometimes it feels like performance is no longer the main focus.

For people who actually build software, what do you think is the biggest reason?

• Too many features?
• modern frameworks?
• pressure to release fast?
• less optimization?
• something else?

Just curious what developers think about this.

Hello folks,

I am in the middle of building my personal/professional website, and wanted to know from you guys what could be the simplest and more efficient way to do so.

I got little knowledge of HTML, and I got a background as a graphic designer, so front-end is my go to.
I actually have a draft of my website made on Wordpress with a simple theme called Minimalio, but I want to develop it even further or just starting from scratch with another theme (or service outside WP if it happen to be easier/cheaper.

It will have a simple blog page, a portfolio page (with the possibility to filter by sections), and the usual about, biography and stuff.

Here's some more things so you got the bigger picture

• Freemium themes and plug-ins are a big no. I hate to spend time learning things just to know, later on, that I need to pay to unlock certain stuff
• I always had trouble understanding how themes works, and if I have to pay for a theme or not
• I'd like to have flexibility: there's no problem in investing some time to learn new stuffs if it helps to achieve what I'm aiming for
• I found Wordpress to be relatively cheap. I don't want to add another expensive subscription to my wallet (I got spammed with Webflow and similar).

Any advice is welcome! Even if you think WP is not the right platform.
If something is not clear, just ask and I'll try to elaborate on that :)

Have a nice one!!

TL;DR: I am using WordPress dot org and want to know simple solution to build my portfolio/blog page.

Every time localStorage comes up, people say “don’t use it, use IndexedDB, it’s bad,” etc. I get the concerns, but in my case I’m just storing things like a theme preference and a couple of UI flags. No sensitive data, nothing critical. localStorage feels like the simplest option here, but it almost feels like I’m doing something wrong by using it.

Is most of the hate just about people misusing it as a database? Or are there real downsides even for small key/value stuff like this? Also, when would you pick sessionStorage instead?

Curious how people handle this in real projects without overengineering it.

Hola! Tengo 24 años (M) y mi novio 27 años, actualmente se encuentra estudiando la ingeniería en desarrollo de software multiplataforma.
Tengo entendido tanto por mi experiencia con el + lo que me ha contado que el mundo del software es muy demandante, muy exigente y pesado.
Así que vengo a pedirles su ayuda muy amablemente para que me den consejos para poder ayudarlo a impulsarlo en su carrera porque genuinamente es muy bueno en lo que hace, que términos debo de saber yo para poder acompañarlo y simplemente como puedo ayudarlo en general en términos de su carrera y empleo para hacerle mas liviana la carga que ya trae.
Saludos!

We built a data scraper that pulls publicly available information. One issue we keep running into is CAPTCHA/rate-limit protection.

We currently use CAPTCHA-solving software, but it only works for a limited number of requests (around 10 or so) before the site starts blocking or rejecting requests again.

We already use CAPTCHA-solving software, but it eventually gets blocked.

Would rotating proxies/VPNs help with this? Are there different types people use for scraping setups? Any advice on making the scraper more stable without constantly triggering anti-bot systems?

We’d also appreciate any advice on better practices for scraping public sites without constantly triggering anti-bot protections.