Alternatives
Products that do what My 20-year-long journey from Tester to Software Engineer does
Hello Dear HN Folks. I would like to share with you my journey from testing to software engineer in test, then build engineer, DevOps engineer, cloud engineer, and software engineer today. It took me from 2004 to 2024 today. It was quite the ride and I tried to write down my experience during this journey. I still have doubts, fears and everything. I wanted to inspire those who also wished to embark on this journey that it's not impossible. It is hard though. Not gonna lie. And I had some luck along the way for sure. But with passion and stubbornness and determination one can go to places.…
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- 2IL
Please check it out. I spent all of 2012 learning to code to launch what would eventually become Uncover. I'm super excited to announce that we're finally live. Here's a blog post I wrote on how we got there and a little story behind the startup: http://spencerfry.com/introducing-uncover
2013 · uncover.com
- 32G
4 months ago sucked. Our technical co-founder quit after 6 months and we still had no product. My co-founder and I had been 'working' on our startup for 8 months. I say 'working' because as the "business people" - there wasn't a whole lot we could do except philosophize. We had gotten really awesome intros to some of the top VCs and entrepreneurs, but had nothing to show. And now we felt stranded. Had we wasted 8 months of our lives? Identity crisis? Check. So we did what any rational person would do - we ran to the mountains. Literally. In Boone, NC - we talked about why we started Knowit,…
2012
- 4TF
Show HN: Experienced software engineers who want to change jobs after a few years need a service targeted at them, that won't make them chase ads nor swamp them with recruiter spam. We built FiveYearItch.com We're wondering: Does this meet a need for the stable, experienced, skilled, but non-rockstar programmers?
2012 · fiveyearitch.com
- 5FP
A little background. For the last 1.5 years I lost what could be considered an embarrassing amount of money hiring other people to work on a project that I thought had potential, I got some important people involved, had some great coders, but couldn't launch. The failure was depressing, rejection by YC didn't help.. I had to take a job, I didn't enjoy and I had a girlfriend who stood by me despite going into debt. But bouncing back over the last 45 days I've taught myself Rails some Jquery, and Javascript and built this www.hangout.io. It's empowering to build something myself because I'm…
2011
- 6FO
HN, I've been mostly lurking, semi-active on HN for over 4 years. For most of that time, I've been working on my startup, Learndot. I have always wanted to do a "Show HN" post, but I never thought it was ready. We've now finally launched web signup and using a freemium business model. I feel I can now post and offer something to the community (a new app to try out) and hopefully get good quality feedback. Here's the site: http://www.learndot.com Would appreciate any or all thoughts: From pricing/positioning, to design/performance. The app is written in Sproutcore and backed by an API written…
2013
- 7IM
I am a non-hacker "idea guy" with zero discernible talent. Like most, the story starts with me doing things the hard way. I dreamt of a tool that would save me countless hours. Like most of my ideas, it was supposed to die in a couple of hours, but this one had some legs.... "If I needed this, surely others did too" kept looping in my head. Could I get this built? Could I build it myself? Nah...too lazy to learn how, but before I did anything, I had to promise myself one thing: No more ideas! If ideas were sit-ups, I would have a six pack instead of this tire. It was a constant mental…
2012
- 8LS
Almost eight years ago I launched an online “Linux sysadmin course for newbies” here at HN. It was a side-project that went well, but never generated enough money to allow me to fully commit to leaving the Day Job. After surviving the Big C, and getting made redundant I thought I might improve and relaunch it commercially – but my doctors are a pessimistic bunch, so it looked like I didn’t have the time. Instead, I rejigged/relaunched it via a Reddit forum this February as free and open - and have now gathered a team of helpers to ensure that it keeps going each month even after I can’t…
2020
- 9IS
I’m starting a weekly newsletter writing about career advice for junior developers. I’m at the point in my career where I feel like I can share my experiences and give direction on what I learned and what junior engineers should focus on when it comes to the soft skills. I won’t be getting too technical but I may post every now and then about certain algorithms or design patterns I think junior developers should be familiar with. I'll mostly focus on what I had to learn about on my path to becoming a senior engineer. I had to figure it out along the way and there weren't a whole lot of…
2018
- 10MP
Hi I'm the developer of UX-App if you have any questions then fire away :) Just thought I'd give you all some background. I'm a high school teacher by day and developer by night. I was bitten by the start-up bug a few years ago and UX-App is my first product launch. In between a full time job and a 5 month old at home it has taken about 3.5 years to complete the project. I'd like to think its a unique product that holds its own against the existing competition and even has some features that no other tool has. My favorite aspect is the visual code builder which allows designers to easily…
2015
- 11IM
I'm documenting everything about my process. From learning to code, to building the app, and all the way to my outreach efforts. I'm learning as I go and sharing it with everyone who's not a programer, and is daunted to build a software on their own. Trust me. If I can do it, anyone can! You can find my updates on: https://Claritask.com ...as well as video updates on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdmqmifW4kIcPclXigay1dQ Would love to hear your feedback on my progress and if you have any suggestions on what I can do better. There's so many task managers out…
2017
- 12IG
Here's a video of it in action https://twitter.com/i/status/1667355251773526016 I didn't end up using it that much back then and no one else seems to have cared it existed, but it was a project I used to derust my programming skills and I'm to this day proud of the flamboyant design. To anyone reading this: you don't have to let your old code rot away in the graveyard of distant memories just because times change. With enough persistence and a little perseverance anything is possible. Code doesn't have an expiration date. -day
2023 · github.com
- 13BA
After about 10 years as a developer, interviewing many devs, and reviewing hundreds of resumes I decided to write a guide that I wish I had when I was first starting out. Completely free (just enter $0 as price) If you find it helpful, would love it if you: - Leave a review - Share it with a friend who might also benefit!
2022 · jkchu.gumroad.com
- 14MP
My weekly(ish) video logs tracking my progress of building a completely sound statically typed language and structural editor. The motivation is to make lots of invalid programs unrepresentable.
2022 · petersaxton.uk
- 151P
This project took me 1 year to complete, all by my lonesome self. What do you think? Comments appreciated! www.enrad.io
2016
- 16IB
Hi all, I'm sure some of the best engineers out here are having a hard time standing out nowadays. It's hard to evaluate and improve your skills, when AI is writing the code. Especially when a junior dev is sitting by your side and "accomplishing" 2x more than you. I didn't like this reality where the line between real talent and AI slop is blurring, so I decided to create a challenge, purely for the community, that is made to truly give a stage for talented devs to stand out in the age of AI. We encourage devs to bring their agents with them, because the challenge is built to not be…
May 2026 · theincidentchallenge.com
- 17OS
We did a "Show HN post" 6 months back of our startup and we're very excited to show everyone how far we've come as well as the lessons we've learnt so far! It's been a roller-coaster so far and we think there's lot more of the same to come! We did apply for Ycombinator funding but got turned down :( But may re-apply soon :) For those that don't know, our startup is called Scirra and we make Construct 2 which is an HTML5 game engine (http://www.scirra.com). Our engine allows anyone to make HTML5 games without knowing any programming. It's only me and my brother working on this and we're based…
2012
- 18IE
Hi HN! I spent the last year traveling and feeling purposeless after shutting down my last startup (Zage YC S’21) in Dec 2022. There were some obstacles I couldn’t overcome and decided to return investors 50% of their capital. To afford (and justify to myself) traveling, I started consulting as an engineer and product designer. I started (https://backspace.nyc) and it was a good time. I (and some friends) built a handful of AI experiences and learned a lot along the way. The hardest thing about running a services business shipping and selling AI experiences powered by LLMs was…
2024 · loom.com
- 19RI
Hi HN! I'm a developer who noticed that I haven't done much experimentation lately. I decided I wanted to change that this year. This month I built a simple resume builder with the main goal of practicing front-end development, and to scratch an itch I had when updating my resume. :) After it was functional enough, I casually shared with some friends to express my enjoyment of crafting something just for the sake of having some fun. To my surprise they ended up asking how they could send to others. So I went one step further, due to my pure excitement, and hosted it on Netlify to make…
2022 · resumecreator.io
- 20TB
Hello everyone, I have always loved coding and in the couple I was thinking of making an open source project and it turned out to be awesome I hope you guys like it. I present Explore Singapore which I created as an open-source intelligence engine to execute retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) on Singapore's public policy documents and legal statutes and historical archives. The objective required building a domain-specific search engine which enables LLM systems to decrease errors by using government documents as their exclusive information source. What my Project does :- basically it…
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 21RO
I wrote up a retrospective on my time working as a founder at DirectAI (https://directai.io). We learned a lot and I wanted to share some things I wish I had known ~18 months ago.
2024 · brooks.team
- 22IB
I've built a job platform for technical roles called "Cracked Engineers". If you want to land a job with some of the world's best AI/tech startups - my goal is to make this the go-to place for that. YouTube walk-through can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmuIOdES7mQ A huge thank you to Weaviate (Bob van Luijt & team), Unsloth AI (Daniel Han & Mike), OpenPipe (David Corbitt), Julius AI (Rahul Sonwalkar), Jimini AI (Luis F Voloch) for using the platform while in beta and posting first paid posts. So, why did I build it? Well, over the past period a lot of…
2024 · crackedengineers.com
- 23A2
Hey Hacker News, I have finished this after 2 months and made the entire thing free (up to 2 projects) for you all to try out, all you need is an account. Thansk and enjoy, Dan
2024 · flourishfreelance.com
- 24IB
Hi HN, I've been working on this for a while and it was hard to decide when to stop, either on the way information is presented or when to stop with adding entries. It's not meant as a blog, but rather as a reference that keeps growing. Link: https://thehardparts.dev Currently I've created 4 main section: - Failure Modes: ways project go wrong - Red Flags: early signals that are worth taking seriously - Tech Decisions: common and not so common trade-offs for hard choices - Playbooks - guided approach for situations that repeat I've also focused on creating links between them to…
Apr 2026 · thehardparts.dev
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