When Debugging Became Belonging: What Nearly 15 Years of Helping Developers Taught Me

Niels — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:54:16 +0000

The first time code made me question my place in tech, it was not elegant.

It was not cinematic either, unless your favorite genre is “junior developer stares at legacy JavaScript while silently bargaining with the universe.” Mine happened on a gray Monday morning, the kind of morning where even coffee feels underqualified. I had just been given my first real bug on my first real project at a company paying me real money to write code. That should have felt empowering. Instead, it felt like being handed a fork and asked to repair a jet engine.

The instruction was almost offensive in its simplicity: “Just fix this bug.”

Anyone who has worked with old code knows that “just” is one of the most dangerous words in software development. I opened the file and found the usual archaeological layers of logic, half-decisions, mysterious comments, and code that looked like three different developers had fought each other and the code had won. I tried to run the app. Errors. I changed something. More errors. I changed something else. New errors, different font, same emotional damage.

For a while, I did what many early-career developers do but rarely admit out loud: I mistook confusion for incompetence.

I was not only debugging the application. I was debugging my confidence. I wondered whether I belonged in tech, whether the recruiter had emailed the wrong person, whether my future career path might somehow involve leaving software altogether and becoming a professional yodeler in Switzerland. It felt dramatic at the time. In hindsight, it was dramatic. But it was also real.

And then I did the thing that scared me most.

I asked for help.

I still remember how big that tiny sentence felt: “I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do.”

What changed me was not just that someone answered. It was how she answered. A senior engineer walked me through the logic without making me feel small. She did not treat my confusion like a personal failure. She treated it like part of the craft. She showed me where the code bent, where it broke, and where I could safely touch it without summoning six new production incidents. Less than an hour later, I fixed the bug.

That should have been the victory. But it was not.

The real victory was learning that asking for help was not proof that I was weak. It was proof that I was still in the fight.

That lesson stayed with me far longer than the bug did. Since then, I have met deadlines that felt like punishment, APIs that behaved like they had a private grudge against me, and merge conflicts that probably qualify as spiritual warfare. But I have also learned that growth in this industry rarely arrives looking polished. Usually it arrives wearing panic, carrying a stack trace, and asking whether you have tried turning your assumptions off and on again.

That is one reason the idea of WeCoded matters to me.

Too many developers, especially those from underrepresented and marginalized genders, spend part of their careers being made to feel that uncertainty is something shameful. That not knowing is a flaw. That asking questions is a weakness. But the healthiest technical spaces I have ever seen were not the ones full of people performing brilliance. They were the ones full of people practicing generosity.

The engineers who changed my life were not always the loudest people in the room. They were the ones who made room. They explained without humiliating. They corrected without performing superiority. They understood that inclusion is not a slogan you put on a company page. It is a daily engineering practice. It is visible in code reviews, in mentoring, in who gets heard, in who gets interrupted, in who feels safe saying, “I don’t understand this yet.”

That word matters: yet.

Because “yet” has carried a lot of developers farther than talent alone ever could.

For me, that journey did not stop at surviving hard moments in code. Over time, it turned into a habit of showing up for other developers too. For nearly fifteen years, I have been active on Stack Overflow under the name Niels, where I have built a record of more than 50,000 reputation, 680 answers, and 40 questions, with strong activity around JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, HTML, and PHP.

User Niels - Stack Overflow

stackoverflow.com

My profile still describes the same practical mix of technologies and the same instinct to help others that shaped me early on.

And honestly, that long Stack Overflow chapter taught me something important about community: most of software is not built by isolated genius. It is built by people answering each other’s questions on ordinary weekdays.

One person asks why their URL parameters are breaking. Another asks how to reset an auto-increment value in MySQL. Someone else is fighting jQuery, as humanity has done for generations. The problems are rarely glamorous, but the act itself is powerful. Every answer is a small vote for access. Every explanation says, “You do not have to stay stuck here alone.”

That same spirit is exactly why I wanted my first real Dev.to post to be more than just another article sitting in a browser tab.

So I built something around the reading experience itself.

The project I prepared is Always with Dev.to — Desktop Client, a cross-platform Electron desktop application designed to wrap Dev.to into a more native, focused experience. It uses vanilla JavaScript, HTML, and CSS inside Electron, with an embedded Express backend that proxies the Dev.to public API, handles authentication, and manages caching, all packaged into a single portable executable with no installation required.

What I love about that project is that it reflects how I now think about software: not just “Does it run?” but “Does it make the experience kinder, simpler, and more useful?”

The interesting part was not only the interface. It was the engineering behind the convenience. I embedded the backend directly into the Electron main process rather than forcing a separate backend service and extra orchestration. I packaged the app as a single portable .exe while carrying the backend resources with it. I added in-memory LRU caching with TTL and pattern invalidation to avoid hammering the Dev.to API. I used retry logic with exponential backoff for transient failures, added lazy Supabase initialization for authentication, and documented lessons from painful but useful issues like response-shape mismatches, temporal dead zone crashes, and a later layered-architecture refactor.

Embedding a backend server inside Electron

The challenge: Electron apps typically need a separate backend process, requiring IPC, process spawning, and port management. Instead, the Express server runs directly inside the Electron main process.

// frontend/main.js
function startEmbeddedBackend() {
  try {
    process.env.PORT = '3000';

    const isDev = !app.isPackaged;
    const envPath = isDev
      ? path.join(__dirname, '..', 'backend', '.env')
      : path.join(process.resourcesPath, 'backend', '.env');

    require('dotenv').config({ path: envPath });

    const serverPath = isDev
      ? path.join(__dirname, '..', 'backend', 'server.js')
      : path.join(process.resourcesPath, 'backend', 'server.js');

    require(serverPath);
    console.log('Backend server started on port 3000');
  } catch (err) {
    console.error('Backend failed to start:', err.message);
  }
}

app.whenReady().then(() => {
  startEmbeddedBackend(); // server starts before window opens
  createWindow();
});

require(serverPath) loads the Express app into the same Node.js process Electron is already running. No child process, no IPC, no port negotiation. The .env path switches between dev (source tree) and production (process.resourcesPath) automatically.

Building a single portable .exe

The challenge: packaging an Electron app with an embedded Express backend — including all backend node_modules — into one file that runs without installation.

// frontend/package.json (build config)
"build": {
  "win": {
    "target": [{ "target": "portable", "arch": ["x64"] }],
    "icon": "icon.ico",
    "signAndEditExecutable": false
  },
  "extraResources": [
    {
      "from": "../backend",
      "to": "backend",
      "filter": ["**/*", "!*.log"]
    }
  ],
  "files": [
    "**/*",
    "!node_modules/.cache",
    "!**/*.map",
    "!**/*.md"
  ],
  "directories": { "output": "../dist" }
}

extraResources copies the entire backend/ folder (including its node_modules) into the packaged app's resources/ directory. At runtime, process.resourcesPath points there. The original config had !node_modules/** in the filter — that excluded backend deps and broke the embedded server at runtime.

Bypassing Windows symlink restriction during build

The challenge: electron-builder downloads winCodeSign-2.6.0.7z which contains macOS symlinks (libcrypto.dylib, libssl.dylib). Extracting it on Windows without Developer Mode fails with Cannot create symbolic link: A required privilege is not held by the client.

// frontend/node_modules/electron-builder/node_modules/
//   app-builder-lib/out/binDownload.js  (patched)

function doGetBin(name, url, checksum) {
  // winCodeSign archive contains macOS symlinks that fail to extract
  // on Windows without Developer Mode. Return the already-extracted
  // cache folder directly to skip the download+extract entirely.
  if (name === 'winCodeSign') {
    const path = require('path');
    const os   = require('os');
    const cacheBase = process.env.ELECTRON_BUILDER_CACHE
      || path.join(os.homedir(), 'AppData', 'Local',
                   'electron-builder', 'Cache');
    return Promise.resolve(
      path.join(cacheBase, 'winCodeSign', '014093675')
    );
  }
  const args = ['download-artifact', '--name', name];
  if (url)      args.push('--url',    url);
  if (checksum) args.push('--sha512', checksum);
  return executeAppBuilder(args);
}

This patch was applied to all three copies of binDownload.js across electron-builder, dmg-builder, and electron-builder-squirrel-windows. Combined with "signAndEditExecutable": false in the build config to skip the rcedit step that also triggers the same download.

In-memory LRU cache with TTL and pattern invalidation

The challenge: Dev.to API has rate limits. Every page load hitting the API directly would be slow and risk throttling. Need a fast in-process cache with automatic expiry and the ability to bust related keys when data changes.

// backend/server.js
class LRUCache {
  constructor(maxSize = CACHE_MAX) {
    this._store  = new Map();
    this._maxSize = maxSize;
  }

  get(key) {
    const entry = this._store.get(key);
    if (!entry) return null;
    if (Date.now() > entry.exp) { this._store.delete(key); return null; }
    // LRU: delete and re-insert to move to end of Map iteration order
    this._store.delete(key);
    this._store.set(key, entry);
    return entry.data;
  }

  set(key, data, ttl) {
    if (this._store.size >= this._maxSize && !this._store.has(key)) {
      // evict the oldest entry (first key in Map)
      this._store.delete(this._store.keys().next().value);
    }
    this._store.set(key, { data, exp: Date.now() + ttl });
  }

  invalidatePattern(pattern) {
    const re = new RegExp(pattern.replace(/\*/g, '.*'));
    for (const k of this._store.keys()) {
      if (re.test(k)) this._store.delete(k);
    }
  }
}

// Usage: bust all article list caches when a reaction is posted
cache.delete(cacheKey.article(id));
cache.invalidatePattern('articles:*');

Map preserves insertion order, so the first key is always the oldest — O(1) LRU eviction without a doubly-linked list. TTL is stored per-entry as an absolute expiry timestamp, checked on read.

Dev.to API proxy with exponential back-off retry

The challenge: network calls to Dev.to can fail transiently. Retrying immediately hammers the server. 4xx errors (bad request, unauthorized) should never be retried — only transient 5xx and network failures.

// backend/server.js
const devtoAxios = axios.create({
  baseURL: API_BASE,
  timeout: parseInt(process.env.DEVTO_TIMEOUT || '10000', 10),
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', ...API_HEADERS },
});

// Per-request api-key injection without polluting the instance defaults
devtoAxios.interceptors.request.use(cfg => {
  if (cfg._apiKey) { cfg.headers['api-key'] = cfg._apiKey; delete cfg._apiKey; }
  return cfg;
});

async function withRetry(fn, retries = RETRY_COUNT, delay = RETRY_DELAY) {
  let last;
  for (let i = 0; i <= retries; i++) {
    try { return await fn(); }
    catch (e) {
      last = e;
      // never retry client errors — they won't succeed on retry
      if (e.status && e.status >= 400 && e.status < 500) throw e;
      if (i < retries) await sleep(delay * Math.pow(2, i)); // 500ms, 1s, 2s
    }
  }
  throw last;
}

async function devtoGet(url, params = {}, apiKey = null) {
  return withRetry(() =>
    devtoAxios.get(url, {
      params,
      ...(apiKey ? { _apiKey: apiKey } : {}),
    }).then(r => r.data)
  );
}

The _apiKey trick lets each request carry its own Dev.to API key (from the logged-in user's header) without overwriting the shared Axios instance's default headers.

JWT authentication with Supabase as user store

The challenge: the app needs user accounts (to save API keys, bookmarks, etc.) but can't bundle a database. Supabase provides a hosted Postgres. The client must initialise lazily — if env vars are missing, the app should still run for unauthenticated browsing.

// backend/server.js
let _supabase = null;

function getSupabase() {
  if (_supabase) return _supabase;
  if (!SUPABASE_URL || !SUPABASE_KEY) return null; // graceful degradation
  _supabase = createClient(SUPABASE_URL, SUPABASE_KEY, {
    auth: { autoRefreshToken: false, persistSession: false },
  });
  return _supabase;
}

async function authLogin(req, res) {
  const { email, password } = req.body;
  const sb = getSupabase();
  if (!sb) return sendUnavail(res, 'Database not configured');

  const { data: user } = await sb
    .from('users')
    .select('id, username, email, password_hash, devto_api_key')
    .eq('email', email.toLowerCase().trim())
    .single();

  if (!user) return sendError(res, HTTP_UNAUTH, 'Invalid email or password');

  const valid = await bcrypt.compare(password, user.password_hash);
  if (!valid) return sendError(res, HTTP_UNAUTH, 'Invalid email or password');

  // fire-and-forget — don't block the login response
  sb.from('users')
    .update({ last_login: new Date().toISOString() })
    .eq('id', user.id)
    .then(() => {}).catch(() => {});

  return sendOk(res, { token: buildUserToken(user), user });
}

bcrypt.compare is timing-safe — it takes the same time whether the user exists or not, preventing timing-based user enumeration attacks.

Response envelope compatibility

The challenge: refactoring introduced a { success, data } wrapper around all responses. The frontend's api.js does const data = await res.json() and immediately uses data as an array — data.filter(...), data.map(...). The wrapper broke every single page with "Unexpected response".

// BROKEN — frontend does data.filter(...) which fails on { success, data }
function ok(res, data) {
  return res.status(200).json({ success: true, data });
}

// FIXED — return raw data, frontend gets the array directly
function ok(res, data) {
  return res.status(200).json(data);
}

// Error shape stays as { error: '...' } — frontend checks data.error
function sendError(res, status, msg) {
  return res.status(status).json({ error: msg });
}

// frontend/js/api.js (unchanged — this is what it expects)
async function cachedFetch(url, ttl = 60000) {
  const res  = await fetch(url);
  if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`${res.status}`);
  const data = await res.json();
  // data is used directly as array — no .data unwrapping
  fetchCache.set(url, { data, exp: Date.now() + ttl });
  return data;
}

The lesson: when adding a backend in front of an existing frontend, match the existing API contract exactly. Changing the response shape is a breaking change even if the status code is still 200.

ReferenceError from temporal dead zone

The challenge: `server.js` grew to 1200+ lines with code added in different sections. `app.use(loggerHelper.logRequest)` was placed at line 284 during an edit, but `const app = express()` was at line 991.

// line 284 — CRASHES: const is not hoisted, TDZ throws ReferenceError
app.use(loggerHelper.logRequest);
// ReferenceError: Cannot access 'app' before initialization

// ... 700 lines later ...

// line 991 — app is declared here
const app = express();

app.use(cors({ ... }));
app.use(express.json({ limit: '1mb' }));
app.use(express.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(requestLogger);
app.use(loggerHelper.logRequest); // FIXED: moved here, after app exists

var would have hoisted and silently been undefined at line 284, causing a different error (TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined). const throws immediately and clearly. The fix is always to keep all app.use() calls in one place, after const app = express().

Layered architecture refactor

The challenge: a single 200-line server.js with routes, auth logic, caching, and HTTP client all mixed together. Adding features meant scrolling through everything. Testing any piece required the whole file.

Before:                          After:
backend/                         backend/
  server.js  (200 lines,           config/
  everything mixed)                  app.config.js    (env vars)
                                     constants.js     (HTTP codes, keys)
                                     database.config.js (Supabase client)
                                   controllers/
                                     article.controller.js
                                     auth.controller.js
                                   services/
                                     devto-api.service.js (all API calls)
                                     auth.service.js      (register/login)
                                     cache.service.js     (TTL wrappers)
                                   middleware/
                                     auth.middleware.js
                                     error.middleware.js
                                   routes/
                                     article.routes.js
                                     auth.routes.js
                                   utils/
                                     cache.util.js
                                     http-client.util.js
                                     token.util.js
                                   server.js  (slim entry, ~40 lines)

Each layer has one job. Controllers handle HTTP in/out. Services contain business logic with no req/res knowledge. Utils are pure functions. This means devto-api.service.js can be tested without Express, and auth.middleware.js can be swapped without touching routes.

Tech Stack & Skills

Category	Technology	Usage in This Project
Runtime	Node.js v18+	Server runtime embedded inside Electron main process
Desktop	Electron 28	Cross-platform desktop shell, window management, IPC
Backend Framework	Express 4	REST API server, middleware pipeline, route handling
HTTP Client	Axios	Dev.to API proxy with interceptors and retry logic
Authentication	JWT (jsonwebtoken)	Stateless session tokens, Bearer auth middleware
Password Security	bcryptjs	Salted password hashing, timing-safe comparison
Database	Supabase (Postgres)	Hosted user store, lazy client initialization
Caching	Custom LRU + TTL	In-memory cache with pattern invalidation, O(1) eviction
Build Tool	electron-builder	Portable single `.exe` packaging, extraResources bundling
Frontend	Vanilla JS / HTML / CSS	No framework, direct DOM manipulation
Environment	dotenv	Runtime env switching between dev and packaged paths

Architecture Skills

Skill	Detail
Layered architecture	config / controllers / services / middleware / routes / utils separation
Embedded server pattern	Express running inside Electron main process — no child process or IPC
Cache-aside pattern	Check cache → miss → fetch API → populate cache → return
Exponential back-off retry	Transient failures retried with `delay * 2^attempt`, 4xx never retried
Graceful degradation	App runs without Supabase configured — auth disabled, browsing works
API contract preservation	Backend response shape matched existing frontend without changes
Middleware composition	Auth, logging, validation, error handling as independent Express middleware
Build pipeline patching	Patched `binDownload.js` in 3 locations to bypass Windows symlink restriction

Problems Solved

Problem	Root Cause	Solution
Single `.exe` with embedded backend	`node_modules` excluded from `extraResources`	Removed `!node_modules/**` filter in build config
Build fails on Windows	`winCodeSign` archive contains macOS symlinks	Patched `doGetBin()` + `signAndEditExecutable: false`
"Unexpected response" on all pages	Response wrapped in `{ success, data }` envelope	Returned raw data — matched existing frontend contract
`ReferenceError: Cannot access 'app'`	`app.use()` called before `const app = express()`	Moved all `app.use()` calls after app initialization
Dev.to API rate limiting	Every render hitting the API directly	LRU cache with per-resource TTLs (1–10 min)
Stale reaction counts after like	Cache not invalidated on mutation	`cache.invalidatePattern('articles:*')` on POST/DELETE
User enumeration via timing	Login returning early on unknown email	`bcrypt.compare` always runs regardless of user existence
Monolithic server hard to maintain	All logic in one 200-line file	Refactored into 6 layers, 20+ files
Backend path wrong in packaged app	Dev path `../backend` invalid after packaging	`process.resourcesPath` used in production, `__dirname` in dev

That project is technical, yes. But to me it is also personal.

Because underneath all the implementation details is a very human belief: developers deserve tools that meet them with less friction, not more. We spend enough time wrestling complexity. Good software should not add ego to the burden.

That is also what I think gender equity in tech should look like in practice. Not just opening the door and walking away, but designing better rooms once people get inside. Rooms where curiosity is not punished. Rooms where beginners are not treated like inconveniences. Rooms where expertise is shared in a way that multiplies confidence instead of hoarding status.

I did not stay in tech because every experience was welcoming. I stayed because enough people, at crucial moments, chose to be generous.

A patient senior engineer.
A stranger answering a question online.
A community that reminds you that even experienced developers still get stuck, still learn, still rewrite the same thing three times before pretending it was intentional.

So when I think about the “echoes of experience,” I do not think only about the painful moments. I think about what answered them.

Patience.
Humor.
Persistence.
Community.

And yes, sometimes coffee.

I still have hard days. I still meet code that looks like it was written during a minor electrical storm. I still occasionally open a file and feel my soul leave my body for a second. But I no longer confuse that feeling with failure.

Now I recognize it for what it usually is:

the start of learning,
the invitation to ask,
and another chance to make this industry more human than I found it.

Try the project yourself

If you want to experience Always with Dev.to — Desktop Client directly, you can check the project here:

https://github.com/wvalencs/devTo-electron

Run locally

1.Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/wvalencs/devTo-electron.git
cd devTo-electron

2.Install dependencies

Install dependencies for both the frontend and backend parts of the project.

cd backend
npm install
cd ../frontend
npm install

3.Start the application in development mode

Run the Electron frontend, which will start the embedded backend automatically.

cd backend
npm start
cd frontend
npm start

4.Build portable executable

To generate the portable desktop app:

cd frontend
npm run build

After the build is complete, the packaged app will be available in the dist folder.

If you want, next I can turn this into a true Dev.to-ready version with a stronger hook, cleaner section headers, and final tags.

DEV Community: Niels

When Debugging Became Belonging: What Nearly 15 Years of Helping Developers Taught Me

User Niels - Stack Overflow