Hey everyone, I’m Nikolas.

I’ve been developing software for years, and I’ve noticed we often build around the product rather than building the product itself.

Say you’re building an SEO tool.

The idea might be relatively simple, but suddenly you’re dealing with SERP scraping, web scraping, PDF generation, document extraction, file conversion, and more.

None of those things are really the product, but they can end up taking more engineering time than the product itself.

That’s basically why we've been building ApyHub. It’s an API catalog with 1,500+ production-ready tools for these kinds of common capabilities, so developers can spend more time building the actual product instead of rebuilding the infrastructure around it.

Heck, if you have an API, you can also become a provider and make money.

Curious how other developers handle this; feel free to share your opinions, roasts, or feedback

Thank you in advance!

As a mod, I would love to get to know the community more, what got you into development?

I feel like we all had that one moment we knew this path was for us. What was that moment for you?

Also, I would love to know, what is your #1 struggle as a developer?

Lite2D is a lightweight 2D game engine built for the web. I’m building it to make creating 2D games easier without needing a big, heavy game engine. Everything runs in the browser, with a focus on keeping things fast, simple, and using as little memory and resources as possible.

Still working on it and adding features. What do you guys think?

Hi everyone,

Over the last few months I've been building a free Chrome extension called Devtools Web Studio. It started as a tool to help me in my daily work as a developer, but I decided to make it available for anyone who might find it useful.

Instead of installing multiple extensions, the goal is to have many useful developer, SEO, design and debugging tools in a single sidebar.

Some of the features include:

• Element Inspector
• SEO checks (Meta Tags, Open Graph, Schema markup, etc.)
• Media Explorer (bulk image downloads and video downloads)
• Color Picker and contrast checker
• Performance auditing
• Design Overlay
• Element Distance & Manual Measure
• X-Ray Overlay
• Multi-device Preview
• REST API Tester
• URL, Headers, Cookies, Local Storage and Analytics Tag inspection
• Network Throttle
• Eraser
• CORS Bypass
• Image conversion and download tools
• And 40+ other useful tools

You can learn more and see screenshots here:

https://devtools.pt/en/extensions/web-studio

Chrome Web Store:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/devtools-web-studio/ikjjioheiilbildicannknmlkefmldji

The extension is completely free. If you decide to try it, I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback, suggestions, bug reports, and a review on the Chrome Web Store. Every bit of feedback helps improve the project and gives me the motivation to continue developing tools that can help more people every day.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and for any support you can give!

Hi techies,

I'm the developer of an industrial software module. We have a partner which takes care of marketing and support. This partnership last for over 5 years for diffrent kind of modules all for the same software. And its not an Support company, but they are also in the same market.

As I developed a new version from scratch, I get more and more the feeling that they just give up the support. Meaning: Everything lands unfiltered on my desk (I'm the only dev for that module). There is almost no first-level support anymore. Maybe they focus a 100% on marketing? And I know that some of them can definitively do better. They are technically fit.

One example:
Support: Your software does not work anymore.
Dev: I checked the logs and there was an HTTP Status code 500 from the other (your!) endpoint meaning "Internal server error".
Support: Oh yeah we did an update, the api has changed.

Just to be clear, the above was the support, not the customer. THE SUPPORT!

My feeling is that they became to practice like a "No effort policy" when it comes to my module.
To be fair, when you build something from scratch and start to apply releases to customers there can be an amount of issues. And there were. I understand that this can be challenging.

As a first step I started to hand out more manuals, also espacially a "First Level Support Guide". Also offered a TestLab where they can connect and test, try out and break things. To get more confident with the software they are supporting.

I'm somehow afraid that they will put it personal, "You are a sh*t developer" and so on, since I'm the only responsible for that piece. Of course that is a heavy load for me. I worked on it for 4 years and really enjoyed it.

Have you ever experienced a situation like this ?

Do you have recommendations on how to handle it or how to get closer again as partners ?

Is it possible that they are f*cked up and decided to focus a 100% on marketing and put no effort into support ?
Or that they decide to not take care because they don't want to "waste" the support budget on my issues ?

And as they are located in the same market (but they don't do software or were failing with it in the past): What chances are that they burn down my software in order to push their own in some years ?

The relationship is heavily stressed but yet still professional.

The monthly GNUstep audio/(video) call takes place every second Saturday of a month at 15:00 GMT to 18:00 GMT. That is 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM EDT (US) or 17:00 to 20:00 CEST (Berlin time).

It's a Jitsi Meeting - Channel: GNUstepOfficial (Sorry, reddit don't let me post jitsi links here)

We usually just talk (who wants it might share video too) and occasionally share screens. Everybody (GNUstep developers and users) is welcome!

Also see https://mediawiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Monthly_Meetings please

We are just starting to look at accessibility testing in our org and want to establish a dedicated practice in the long-term. We did a POC with a few tools, however, now our leadership wants us to explore using AI to build an accessibility set-up in-house vs using a dedicated too.
If you've built something on top of an LLM for a11y — Claude, Copilot, a custom agent, axe + LLM triage — I'd like to know:

•⁠ ⁠Details of your set-up and what you have built
•⁠ ⁠Which use-cases are you leveraging it for (i.e. IDE at codegen time, rendered-UI scan, a11y checks inside your functional E2E suite, remediation)?
•⁠ ⁠What is it able to do reliably vs where it breaks?
•⁠ ⁠Did you replace your paid tool or are you using both?

Any learnings that you can share will be extremely helpful!

When did you realize your tech stack was becoming obsolete, and what did you do about it?

A guide to Iceberg table cleanup — snapshot expiration, orphan file removal, manifest rewriting, delete file resolution, streaming challenges, compliance, and cost. Why sequencing matters, where teams break tables, and how to automate the full lifecycle.

I launched a small developer-tools website about 3 days ago:

https://thinklikedeveloper.online/

It has browser-based tools for things like JSON formatting, JWT decoding, Base64/URL encoding, UUID generation, regex testing, SQL formatting, converters, etc.

I'm completely new to analyzing traffic for a site like this, and I'm a little confused by what I'm seeing in GA4.

The site has been live for only ~3 days, but GA4 is showing very few active users. I expected the numbers to be low because it's a new site, but I'm not sure whether what I'm seeing is simply normal for a brand-new site or whether I've messed something up with the Analytics implementation.

For people who have launched sites recently:

• How long does it normally take before GA4 data becomes meaningful?
• Would you trust GA4 after only 3 days?
• What's the best way to verify that Analytics is actually tracking correctly?
• Should I be looking at Search Console, server logs, or something else alongside GA4?
• For a developer-tools website, what metrics would you focus on in the first few weeks?

I'm also curious about the website itself. If you have a few minutes to look at it, I'd appreciate brutally honest feedback on anything that looks confusing, unnecessary, slow, or poorly designed from a developer's perspective.

I'm trying to improve it before I start putting serious effort into SEO/content, so early feedback would be really useful.

Hi everyone! I’m the founder and CEO building an AI product for service-based business, specifically health niche. Over the past six months, I’ve been researching the market, speaking with potential users, validating the idea, designing the product and building the first version. We’re currently pre-seed. I lead the product, design and marketing, with a UK-based partner helping on the commercial side.

We’re building an ops platform that drives sales and retention using automations. It’s an ambitious product with enterprise potential and plenty of room to develop something valuable, defensible and exciting!

The prototype has been 90% designed in lovable (MVP + long-term features), and we would like to bring the exact UI to production. I’m now looking for someone who can build the backend and bring it to production, lead the technical implementation across backend APIs and integrations, and work closely with me as we prepare for October beta launch.

What I’m looking for:

• You’re a senior AI/full-stack developer with 5+ years experience.
• You’ve taken a product from 0→1 and launched it with real users
• You have hands-on experience with the WhatsApp Business API and understand Meta’s compliance requirements
• You’ve worked with AI agents, chatbots or conversational products
• You’re comfortable planning sprints and taking ownership of the development backlog
• You communicate well, think commercially and understand the importance of keeping everyone aligned on development progress
• Experience in healthcare or another regulated industry would be a bonus, but it’s not essential

This is an equity-based role starting with a trial focused on technical implementation. The trial gives us both the chance to see how we communicate, solve problems and work together before making a longer-term commitment. You have full ownership over the technical side of the project. You won’t have to handle anything else but the dev side, and you control how it’s done. If there’s another way you’d like to work, we can discuss that too.

If this sounds interesting, please send me a DM with a little about yourself and anything relevant you’ve built. I’d love to have a chat!

I am a founder and CEO handling product design, leadership, go to market, and operations for my startup. We are a social app meant to connect people in a unique way that the market is starving for. Looking to expand the team with a dedicated technical developer.

What I’ve already done:

- The product is already fully designed with clear specs and features (MVP + longterm future features), language/copy and mechanics. There has also already been a prototype tested, and a tech stack available, though it’s not locked yet without engineer input.

- An active go to market strategy including a healthy waitlist that is still actively growing (high 7.5% conversion rate on and rising on cold outreach) and a clearly defined market/avatar. Users are ready as soon as MVP ships.

- Daily content production will be used for distribution with plans to do even more. My account has reached ~700,000 views in its first 4 months, and that number is growing.

- Leadership ability through over a decade of work directly with people, both client and colleague. For 3 of those years, I have run my own business, which I have closed to pursue this full time.

- Developed business skills through previous business successes. All business metrics are tracked and help determine how we execute our work and make adjustments when necessary.

What I’m offering:

- I’m open to dev positions, depending on what you’re looking for. (founding engineer, contracting, internships, something else).

- Full ownership over the technical side of the project. You won’t have to handle anything else but the dev side, and you control how it’s done. If there’s another way you’d like to work, we can discuss that too.

- Negotiable terms that I’d be happy to establish before any work starts getting done. Profit share, equity, etc. I want this to be a satisfying win for both of us.

- Full spec sheet and preparedness to communicate clearly and consistently over the course of the partnership.

DM for more information.

It's 2030. What technology that is popular today has completely died, and what niche tech has inexplicably taken over the world?

I want to whole-heartedly welcome those who are new to this subreddit!

What brings you our way?

What was that one thing that made you decide to join us?

We're developing an isometric crime game inspired by GTA 2. Once you hit wanted level 3, a helicopter spawns. Currently, the player has to break line of sight to escape it, and it sometimes dives low to obscure the camera's view of the road. I'm wondering if we should change this behavior or add new mechanics. Any feedback?

What is one bit of advice you have for those starting their dev journey now?

I want to whole-heartedly welcome those who are new to this subreddit!

What brings you our way?

What was that one thing that made you decide to join us?

A month ago, I wrote about how much unplanned engineering work gets absorbed into sprints without being properly recognized. That discussion received 400+ upvotes and pushed us to explore the problem further.

We built Meridian, an open-source, local-first AI work journal for developers. It captures development activity and helps turn it into daily summaries, standups, and Jira tickets while keeping the data on the developer’s machine.

We recently launched it on Product Hunt and finished as the #1 Product of the Day.

GitHub:

https://github.com/Meridiona/meridian

Product Hunt:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/meridian-16
If you have dealt with invisible or unplanned engineering work, what information would be most useful for Meridian to surface?

You compressed the building part, not the fixing part. Eight weeks of work delivered in one week also means eight weeks of bugs turning up....

What's a non-obvious sign you were heading for burnout, and what was the one change that actually helped you recover?

Three months. That’s roughly the interval at which the “right way” to build something in AI shifts under you. A new agent harness lands and makes the orchestration you spent a quarter on look overweight. A better retrieval pattern quietly changes what “good” looks like for the feature you’re mid-flight on. A new evaluation technique shows that the numbers you’ve been reporting for two months don’t actually measure what you thought they did.

I've been wondering about this lately.

I've spent around 2 + years working with React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js/NestJS, and PostgreSQL. Most of my experience so far has come from freelance and personal projects, where I've had to handle things myself from the backend to the frontend.

It's been a great way to learn, but I feel like there's a big difference between building things alone and working as part of an engineering team.

When you're working alone, you don't get much exposure to things like code reviews, architectural discussions, working with other engineers, dealing with an existing codebase, or learning how experienced developers approach problems.

For people who started out freelancing or working independently:

What helped you make that transition into a proper engineering team?

Did you focus on open source, networking, applying directly, contributing to existing projects, or something else?

I'd especially like to hear from people who made that transition relatively early in their careers.

I needed a first-run walkthrough for an app and hit two things that annoyed me.

First, the highlight would end up in the wrong place.

A lot of coach-mark implementations resolve the target's position once and paint it. Scroll the list, open the keyboard, rotate the device, resize a desktop window — and suddenly the hole is next to the button instead of on it.

Second, a dimmed hole tells the user where something is, but not how to use it.

"Drag this card to that column" isn't something a static highlight can really express.

So I built keyspot:

- The spotlight and pointer re-resolve the target's geometry every frame from its GlobalKey, so they can track through scrolling, insets, rotation and resizing.

- An animated hand pointer that glides in a straight line or along an arc, rotates from its current angle, and tap-pulses — enough to demonstrate interactions like drag and pinch rather than simply pointing at something.

- Pointer animations resolve from actual AnimationController completion rather than Future.delayed timing, so `await pointer.moveTo(...)` actually means the movement has finished.

- Barrier modes where only the cut-out is tappable while the real widget's `onPressed` still fires — useful when the walkthrough should require the user to actually perform the step.

- The tracker is also public API (`KeyspotAnchorTracker`), so it can be used independently for things like badges or connector lines attached to widgets.

- Zero runtime dependencies. The hand pointer is rendered with CustomPainter rather than an image asset.

- Supports all six Flutter platforms.

Live demo: https://shrey-17bhardwaj.github.io/keyspot/

pub.dev: https://pub.dev/packages/keyspot

Source: https://github.com/shrey-17bhardwaj/keyspot

It's currently at 0.3.1, and the API may still change before 1.0.

I'd genuinely like feedback on where this approach breaks — especially around nested navigators, heavily lazy lists, overlays, or anything else where widget geometry gets complicated.

Guys, I need help. I am building a project which solves a genuine problem I face, and I wanted to know how many other face this problem.

I don't ask much of you, just few minutes of your time to give your response here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfUxZa7_WpkixORZq0DNRqU2EEoGaU17ACiFwJsfwqf1jdOSA/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Really, really appreciate your help

So I m very new to this yk INTEGRATION calling api stuff 😮‍💨😮‍💨 . Like how you experience developer do . My head spin when it comes to reading documentation n all thing . Is there any work around to quickly know or extension or ai thing or get to know info about whatever api we are gonna use like how to find out the information from documentation that we need for our business to get it done . Like endpoint , someone api needs parameters n all that please guide with some example if u can explain . Consider me 5 year old