Building in Public while Job Hunting: My January Dev Update

#career #opensource #webdev #discuss

Between building a versioned Redis implementation and getting screened by AI recruiters, January has been... a lot.

Let's begin with the cool new stuff.

New Projects

mdspace - easily paste and share markdown files.
- I built this tool because I got tired of sharing markdown files with my peers. Either the formatting is not properly supported by the messenger or the text/file is too big. With mdspace - you paste the contents or upload the file and directly get a share link for viewing it.
- The tool also supports reviewing/commenting via highlighting a line in the file itself. Overall a nice personal problem I've solved for myself and I'm sure others can benefit from.
verdis - a versioned Redis.
- I'm co-developing this Go project - an implementation of Redis with versioning as a core feature: key value store with multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and historical data access.
- Ideal for applications that need audit trails, collaborative editing, or the ability to query data as it existed at any point in time.
ShaRPC - robust RPC (Remote Procedure Call) framework for C# projects.
- Since 2021, I've been dealing with RPCs in multiplayer game systems and backend services. But a thought recently came to my mind - does C# have a good RPC framework?
- Sure, there's gRPC but codegen is a build step, not compile-time. There's SignalR, a great alternative which meshes well with ASP.NET Core, but still comes with its own drawbacks - supporting only JSON serialization and the WebSocket protocol, with runtime codegen. A full comparison chart between frameworks is here, if you're curious.
- ShaRPC is built different. It's transport-agnostic, with source generator-based code generation, designed for Unity and .NET Core interoperability. As a result, you get a high-performance RPC framework for all kinds of C# projects.

Open-Source Contributions

Made some pretty hefty pull requests to big repositories this month. Some are yet to be finalized... 💀

But I can proudly say that I'm an active contributor to the open-source community. Here are some of the repositories I've been resolving issues for:

Next AI Draw.io (19.4K+ stars, TypeScript)
Repo Health (100+ stars, TypeScript, active maintainer)
ReMinecraftPE (400+ stars, C++) - this one has been a fun (nightmarish) experience.

Why Open-source?

I'm pretty sure I answered this in my last podcast video, but I just think it's the best way to grow as a developer. You not only contribute to a project, you learn, you communicate, you collaborate. You research the repository, what technical decisions were made and why.

To fellow beginner software devs out there - I'm telling you, it's an easy way to get real "hands-on" experience, familiarize, experiment with new tech stacks. If the project is big enough, where it's actively maintained, has real users, and your pull request gets merged - consider that your code in production.

The community is mostly welcoming, with developers being eager to help. Heck, I have several open-source projects out there - if someone tackles an existing issue in them, I would only be down to get it fully resolved and help if needed.

Now, while I've been productive on the code front, I've also been seeking new job opportunities. And as you may already know, or have heard, the job market isn't great.

The Job Search

I can't say much but describe how daunting it is to apply to jobs these days and scroll through LinkedIn. Bunch of AI slop posts, fake comments... It has truly become a misery of a place.

Fortunately, I am at least able to get a few interviews going for me right now, but I am literally competing with a 100 more developers. So sometimes I can't help it but wonder if I'm just wasting my time. It feels like a rat race...

I hate it.

The state of AI usage isn't making it any easier. I've been invited to interviews with no people present - just an AI with a robotic voice that you talk to. I would rather talk to myself, than have an LLM form an opinion about me.

To my fellow job seekers

Hang in there. Times are tough. Don't think that just because you didn't pass an interview, you weren't qualified. Even if you're skilled enough, you might not be the right fit attitude-wise. That's why it's important to stay resilient and persistent.