DEV Community: CatNight A

What a Summer Job Taught Me About Being a Developer

CatNight A — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:39:05 +0000

Hey everyone, I'm ACatNight.

I've posted a few things here about learning, side projects, and programming, but I realized I never really introduced myself.

So yeah, I guess I'll do that now.

I'm a software engineering student from China. I started programming with Minecraft server development, and later I started making my own plugins and working on different projects.

One of my main open-source projects is WorldScript, a Minecraft RPG region and event framework.

During my second semester, I spent most of my time working at a small startup that had just started not long before.

It was probably one of the most different experiences I've had so far.

I worked on real projects, fixed real bugs, and had to deal with things that I never really had to deal with at school.

I also made a mistake at work, and I was eventually let go because of it.

That honestly sucked.

But looking back, I still got a lot out of that experience. I learned a lot from actually working on projects, and it changed how I think about software development.

Before that, I mostly thought being a developer was just about writing code and making things work.

After working on real projects, I realized there was a lot more to it.

You have to think about how things are designed, how to find problems, how to work with other people, how to deal with deadlines, and what to do when something goes wrong.

It also made me think more about what I actually want to do in the future.

After the semester, I came back to school and started working on my own projects again.

Right now, I'm mainly learning:

C#
.NET backend development
AI applications

I'm also working with things like ASP.NET Core, databases, Redis, RabbitMQ, Docker, Linux, and async programming.

I'm also rebuilding my main side project, StudyTree.

It's an AI learning reflection project built around a simple question:

What do I actually know, what am I missing, and what should I learn next?

I still have a lot to learn, but for now, I just like building things, breaking them, fixing them, and seeing where it goes.

That's pretty much where I am right now.

Nice to meet you.

Why I'm Simplifying My Side Project Instead of Adding More Features

CatNight A — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:18:42 +0000

A few days ago, I got laid off.

Not exactly how I expected July to go.

For the first couple of days, I wasn't in the mood to build anything. I opened my laptop a few times, stared at my editor for a minute, then closed it again.

Eventually, I went back to a side project I started in June.

It's called StudyTree.

How It Started

When I started it, the idea was simple.

I wanted a place to record what I learned each day.

At the time, my learning notes were all over the place—course notes, documentation links, ChatGPT conversations, browser bookmarks, random files, and unfinished todos.

I didn't really need more information.

I needed a better way to look back and understand what I had actually learned.

Then It Started Growing

The project didn't become complicated overnight.

It happened little by little.

A learning goal feature made sense.
Then came tasks.
Then AI reviews.
Then progress tracking.
Then skill profiles.

Each idea felt reasonable on its own.

None of them felt obviously wrong.

But together, they made the project harder to explain.

This week, I looked at StudyTreeOnline again and realized I couldn't describe it clearly in one sentence.

That bothered me more than any unfinished feature.

Cutting Features Instead of Adding Them

So instead of adding more, I'm doing the less exciting work first.

Rewriting the documentation
Cutting features from the first version
Making the product simple enough that I can explain it without a diagram

Right now, the workflow I want to keep is:

Learn something
      ↓
Write a learning record
      ↓
Get AI feedback
      ↓
Find weak spots
      ↓
Decide what to learn next
      ↓
Review progress later

Everything else can wait.

No course marketplace
No community
No giant dashboard
No complicated gamification

At least not for the first version.

The Real Question

I'm not trying to build another all-in-one learning platform.

I'm trying to answer a much smaller question.

After I study something today, how do I know whether I actually made progress?

Honestly, I don't know if this is a good product yet.

I might be completely wrong.

Maybe people don't want another thing to update after studying.

Maybe they just want to watch the next tutorial and move on.

Maybe AI feedback sounds useful until people actually try it.

But I'd rather test one small idea than keep building a big learning app that tries to do everything.

What's Next

For now, the plan is simple.

Rewrite the docs.
Cut the scope.
Rebuild the core workflow.
Let a few people try it.
See what breaks.

I'll keep sharing what I learn along the way.

If you're teaching yourself programming, AI, or any other technical skill, I'm curious.

Do you keep track of what you learn?

If you do, what actually works for you?

My Pomodoro timer was not really a timer

CatNight A — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:56:35 +0000

I broke my Pomodoro timer in a boring way.

I thought the timer was simple:

start at 25 minutes, run setInterval, subtract 1 second each time.

It worked until I left the tab in the background.

Then I realized the browser was throttling the page, so the timer was not really a timer. It was just a UI pretending to be one.

The fix was to stop trusting the interval.

Instead of storing “seconds left”, I store a real deadline:

const deadlineAt = Date.now() + duration * 1000;

Then the UI just calculates the remaining time from the current clock.

That fixed the browser tab issue.

But it also made me realize something else.

The real problem wasn't accuracy.

It was visibility.

A Pomodoro timer is easy to ignore when it's hidden behind ten browser tabs.

So now I'm experimenting with a small Electron always-on-top clock for StudyTree.

Funny how a tiny timing bug ended up changing the product direction.

Have you ever built something that started as a web feature, but later felt more like a desktop feature?

I stopped counting tutorials as progress

CatNight A — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:34:53 +0000

I used to feel pretty good whenever I finished a tutorial or a chapter.

It felt like progress.

But a few days later, if someone asked me to explain the idea, I would often get stuck.

That made me realize that finishing something and understanding it are not always the same thing.

So lately I've been measuring learning a little differently.

Instead of asking:

"Did I finish it?"

I ask myself:

"Can I explain it in my own words?"

"Can I use it without copying everything from the example?"

"Do I know where I would actually use this?"

Honestly, it feels slower.

Sometimes it even feels like I'm making less progress.

But it feels more real.

This helped me a lot while learning Java. I stopped trying to memorize every keyword, method, or pattern. Instead, I
focus on understanding one idea well enough that I can explain it simply.

Not mastery.

Just understanding.

For me, that's what progress looks like now.

How do you know when you've actually learned something?

Learning Java Became Easier When I Stopped Memorizing Code

CatNight A — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 03:37:29 +0000

I’m a software engineering student, and when I first started learning Java, I thought I had to remember a lot of code
examples.

Classes, methods, syntax, collections, constructors, interfaces.

I tried to remember the exact code.

But the problem was simple: if I forgot one line, I felt like I forgot everything.

Later I found that what helps me more is remembering the structure behind the code.

For example, when I look at a Java class now, I do not start by memorizing every line.

I ask myself:

What data does this class hold?
What behavior does it provide?
What should be private?
What should be public?
What is created in the constructor?
What other class depends on it?

That helps me understand the “shape” of the class.

The same thing happens with collections.

I do not try to memorize every method first.

I try to remember the idea:

List: ordered data
Set: no duplicates
Map: key-value relationship
Queue: processing order

After I understand that, the methods are much easier to search and use.

For backend Java, I think in layers:

Controller receives the request
Service handles the logic
Repository talks to the database
DTO moves data
Entity represents stored data

When I understand the flow, the code becomes less scary.

I still forget syntax.
I still search method names.
But I feel less lost, because I can rebuild the code from the structure.

For me, the difference is:

If I memorize code, I can only repeat it.

If I understand the structure, I can recreate it.

Do you also learn programming this way, or do you prefer memorizing examples first?

I think I track learning too much like a todo list

CatNight A — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:29:33 +0000

Lately I realized I track learning almost the same way I track tasks.

Watch this video.
Read this doc.
Finish this course section.
Build this small thing.

I check things off, and it feels good for a minute.

But a few days later, I still have the same question:

Did I actually get better, or did I just finish some stuff?

For coding, this feels especially weird.

I can spend a week jumping between docs, bugs, tutorials, Stack Overflow answers, and little experiments. By the end of the week, I definitely
did things. But it is not always clear what improved.

Maybe I understand async a bit better.
Maybe I got faster at debugging CSS.
Maybe I learned one database concept.
Maybe I just watched too many videos.

A todo list does not really show that.

I have tried notes, Notion pages, spreadsheets, and GitHub commits. They all help in some way, but they still feel more like a record of
activity than a record of skill growth.

I am not sure what the better system is yet.

Maybe it is a weekly review.
Maybe it is tagging learning by skill.
Maybe it is some kind of visual map.
Maybe it is just writing better notes.

Curious how other people think about this.

When you learn something technical, do you track what you finished, or do you try to track what you actually got better at?

How do you track your learning progress as a developer?

CatNight A — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 08:33:28 +0000

When learning as a developer, I find that "I studied today" is easy to know, but "I am getting better at the right things" is harder to see.

I have seen people use very different systems:

GitHub commits
Notion databases
spreadsheets
Markdown journals
Anki stats
project milestones
issue trackers
no tracking at all

I am curious what actually works after the initial motivation fades.

For developers who are self-learning or learning alongside work:

What do you track?
Where do you track it?
Do you review it weekly or monthly?
What made you abandon previous tracking systems?
Do visual systems like heatmaps, skill trees, or progress bars help?

I am exploring this problem for a small tool, but this post is mainly to understand real workflows. I would rather learn from how people already do it than assume another dashboard is the answer.