DEV Community: Hemapriya Kanagala

Your Career Matters. So Does the Person Building It.

Hemapriya Kanagala — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:50:31 +0000

TL;DR

Tech has taught me many things over the years. It taught me how to learn new technologies, build projects, apply for opportunities, and keep growing. What it didn't teach me was something that turned out to be just as important: how to take care of myself while doing all of those things.

For a long time, I believed I would slow down later. Later, when life became less busy. Later, after the next project. Later, after the next opportunity. The problem was that "later" never seemed to arrive.

It took an unexpected pause in my own life to realize that building a successful career means very little if we forget to take care of the person trying to build it. Looking back, I don't see that experience only as a difficult chapter. It changed the way I think about success, growth, and what it means to build a career that's sustainable.

Today, I still love learning, building, writing, and chasing opportunities. None of that has changed. What has changed is the realization that taking care of myself isn't something separate from my career. It's one of the reasons I'll be able to keep building it for years to come.

Along the way, I also realized that many of the things that truly support us are easy to overlook. Rest, movement, nourishing ourselves well, meaningful relationships, and simply checking in on the people around us often receive far less attention than the next framework, project, or milestone, even though they make everything else possible.

More than anything, I wanted to write this because I care deeply about this community. I hope none of us have to wait until life forces us to slow down before remembering to take care of ourselves. I hope we build careers we're proud of, but I hope we also build lives we're able to enjoy.

This isn't an article about productivity or health advice. It's simply a reflection on something I wish I had understood earlier.

Your career matters. So does the person building it.

I'd also love to hear your story. Has there been a moment that changed the way you think about your career or your health? Or is there a habit that's helped you build a career that's both meaningful and sustainable? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments.

The Conversation I Wish We Had More Often in Tech
The Pause I Never Expected
The Career I Was Building
The Small Things I No Longer Take for Granted
Why I Wanted to Share This
I'd Love to Hear Your Story
🤝 Let's Stay Connected

The Conversation I Wish We Had More Often in Tech

One of the reasons I love tech is that there's always something new to discover. Every week brings a new framework, another AI model, an interesting research paper, an open-source project, or an opportunity to learn something I didn't know yesterday. That constant sense of growth is one of the things that drew me to this field in the first place, and it's still one of the things I enjoy most about it.

As exciting as that is, I've noticed something over the years. Throughout my journey, I've heard countless conversations about becoming a better developer. I've learned how to prepare for interviews, improve my projects, write cleaner code, build a stronger portfolio, stay relevant, and keep learning. Those conversations have helped me tremendously, and I'm genuinely grateful for them.

Looking back, though, I realize there was another conversation I rarely heard.

We spend so much time talking about how to build better developers, but much less time talking about how to stay healthy enough to enjoy the careers we're working so hard to build.

I don't think that's because people don't care. Rather, I think it's because the pace of tech rarely slows down on its own. There's always another technology to explore, another project to finish, another opportunity to apply for, another skill to learn, and another reason to tell ourselves that we'll rest once this one thing is over. Without realizing it, we begin to believe that slowing down is something we'll eventually get around to.

I certainly believed that. I kept telling myself "later" would come on its own. I never stopped long enough to question whether it actually would.

Eventually, life chose that pause for me instead.

The Pause I Never Expected

When I say that life chose that pause for me, I don't mean I suddenly decided it was time to slow down. It wasn't part of my plan. If anything, I probably would have kept going. I genuinely believed that I could keep pushing for a little longer. There was always something waiting for my attention, another opportunity to prepare for, another project I wanted to build, another article I wanted to write, or another goal I wanted to reach. Like many people in tech, I had convinced myself that taking a break was something I would do after I had accomplished just one more thing.

Instead, life had other plans.

Without sharing too much, I went through a period that forced me to stop and look at everything differently. It wasn't something I expected, and it certainly wasn't something I wanted. For the first time in a long time, I couldn't keep running at the pace I had become used to. At first, I saw that pause as an interruption. I kept thinking about everything I wasn't doing, the opportunities I might miss, the projects that would have to wait, and the plans that suddenly felt uncertain. It was frustrating because it felt like life had pressed pause while everyone else was still moving forward.

But something unexpected happened during that time.

As the weeks passed, I started noticing things I hadn't paid attention to before. I realized how easy it had become to measure my progress only by what I was building, learning, or achieving. Somewhere along the way, I had become very good at taking care of my projects, my work, and my career, but I hadn't been nearly as intentional about taking care of myself.

Looking back now, I don't see that period as time I lost. In a strange way, I think it gave me something I didn't know I needed. It reminded me that there's a person behind every project, every article, every application, every opportunity, and every late night spent learning something new.

That person deserves the same care and attention as the career they're trying to build.

I sometimes wonder whether I would have learned that lesson if life hadn't forced me to stop. Honestly, I'm not sure I would have. As difficult as that experience was, I'm grateful for what it taught me, and I just wish I hadn't needed a forced pause to understand something so important.

The Career I Was Building

After that experience, I found myself thinking about something I had never really questioned before.

What kind of career was I actually trying to build?

For a long time, my answer would have been simple. I wanted to keep learning, build meaningful projects, contribute to the community, write more, and make the most of every opportunity that came my way. Those goals haven't changed. They're still important to me, and I still enjoy working towards them. What changed was how I started defining success.

Somewhere along the way, I had convinced myself that making progress always meant doing more. Learning more, building more, applying for more opportunities, and saying yes whenever something exciting came along. I rarely stopped to ask whether I was building a career that I would actually be able to enjoy years down the line. That question stayed with me because, when I looked back, I realized something surprisingly simple.

What is the point of building something meaningful if we don't take care of ourselves enough to be there and enjoy it?

Looking back, I don't think I was intentionally neglecting my health. I simply wasn't paying enough attention to it. It wasn't a conscious decision. It was just a pattern that slowly became normal, and I didn't notice it until I was forced to.

That experience changed the way I think about growth. I no longer believe that constantly pushing harder is the only way to grow. Instead, I want to build a career that's sustainable, one where I can keep learning and creating without forgetting to take care of myself along the way.

I don't think I've found the perfect balance, and honestly, I'm not sure there is one. I'm still learning, just in a different way now.

I'm learning that taking care of myself isn't something separate from my career. It's one of the reasons I'll be able to keep building it for years to come.

The Small Things I No Longer Take for Granted

One of the biggest changes wasn't that I suddenly became an expert at taking care of myself. It was that I started paying attention.

Before all of this, I rarely stopped to think about the small things that quietly supported everything else in my life. I assumed my body would simply keep up with whatever I asked of it. If there was another deadline, another article to write, or another project I wanted to finish, I would find a way to make it work.

Looking back, I don't think I was doing anything unusual. I think I was doing what many of us in tech do. We become so focused on building our careers that we slowly stop noticing the foundation those careers are built on.

Today, I think about those things very differently. I try to move a little more during the day because I've realized how much of my life happens sitting behind a screen. I pay more attention to what I'm eating, not because I'm chasing some perfect routine, but because I want to give my body what it needs to keep showing up for the things I care about. I try to protect my sleep because I've learned that I'm not doing my best work when I'm constantly running on empty.

None of these habits are extraordinary, and I certainly don't get them right every day. I'm still learning, and some days are better than others. What changed wasn't that I found the perfect routine. What changed was realizing that taking care of myself isn't something I do after work is finished. It's something that allows me to keep doing the work I love in the first place.

Another change surprised me just as much.

I became more intentional about checking in on the people around me. One thing that experience taught me is that we rarely know what someone else is carrying. The person celebrating a new opportunity online might also be dealing with something they'll never post about. The colleague who always seems positive might be quietly having a difficult week. The friend who says they're "fine" might simply need someone to ask again.

That's why I've come to believe that a simple message asking, "How have you been?" can matter far more than we realize. It's easy to assume everyone is doing okay because that's often what we see online. The truth is, many of the hardest battles are invisible, and sometimes the smallest act of kindness is simply letting someone know they're not alone.

More than anything, I stopped seeing health as something I would think about later. I started seeing it as something that makes everything else possible. The ability to learn, create, write, solve problems, build projects, and chase opportunities doesn't exist separately from our health. It depends on it.

The more I reflected on that, the more I realized that taking care of myself wasn't taking time away from my career. It was one of the most important investments I could make in it.

We're often encouraged to invest in new skills, better tools, and continuous learning, and I still believe those things matter. But I've come to believe that one of the best investments we can make is in the person who's trying to learn those skills, use those tools, and build that career.

Without that person, none of the rest is possible.

Why I Wanted to Share This

One of the reasons I wanted to write this article is because I genuinely care about this community.

Over the past few years, I've met so many incredible people through tech. Students taking their very first steps, experienced developers with decades of experience, researchers, open-source contributors, writers, mentors, and people who simply enjoy learning and sharing what they know. Watching people grow, celebrate one another, and support complete strangers has been one of my favorite parts of this journey, and it's one of the reasons I'm so grateful to be part of this community.

That's exactly why I hope we start having more conversations like this.

Not because learning new technologies is any less important, or because ambition is somehow a bad thing. I hope we never stop building, creating, learning, and dreaming big. Those are some of the qualities that make tech such an exciting field to be part of.

I just hope we remember that the person doing all of those things matters too.

If there's one thing my own experience has taught me, it's that our health is surprisingly easy to take for granted until it asks us to pay attention. I genuinely hope none of us have to learn that lesson because life forces us to slow down. I hope we choose to slow down every once in a while instead.

I hope we get enough rest, not because someone tells us to, but because we deserve to wake up with the energy to enjoy the work we love. I hope we make time to move our bodies, even if it's just a short walk after spending hours behind a screen. I hope we remember to nourish ourselves well, because our bodies and minds are carrying us through every project, every challenge, and every opportunity we chase.

I also hope we stop treating stress like a badge of honor. Tech moves incredibly fast, and it's easy to feel like we always need to keep up. There will always be another framework to learn, another AI model to explore, another project to build, and another opportunity to apply for. But chronic stress is real, and over time it can affect us in ways we don't always notice until we're forced to.

More than anything, I hope none of us try to carry everything alone. If you're struggling, please don't isolate yourself. Reach out to someone you trust. Talk to a friend. Spend time with your family. Lean on your community if you can. And if you're in a position to do so, check in on someone else too. Sometimes a simple "How have you been?" can mean far more than we realize.

One of the greatest gifts this community has given me has never been a project or an opportunity. It's been the people. The people who encouraged me, answered my questions, celebrated my small wins, and reminded me that we're all figuring things out together. Those conversations have meant more to me than I can put into words.

If you've read this far, I hope you don't walk away thinking this article was simply about slowing down. It isn't. I still love learning. I still get excited about discovering new technologies, writing articles, building projects, and finding opportunities I never imagined I'd have. I still have goals I'm working toward and dreams I hope to achieve one day. None of that has changed.

What has changed is how I want to get there.

I no longer want to build a career that constantly asks me to sacrifice the person building it. I want to build one that I can actually enjoy. I want to look back years from now and remember not only the projects I built, but also the life I lived while building them. I want learning to remain something that excites me instead of something that leaves me exhausted. Most of all, I want to reach my goals without forgetting that I'm a human being before I'm a developer, a writer, or anything else.

If I could go back and tell an earlier version of myself one thing, it wouldn't be to learn another programming language sooner or contribute to more open source projects. It wouldn't even be about building a stronger portfolio or applying for more opportunities.

It would simply be this: take care of yourself while you're building the life you dream about.

Not because it will make you more productive. Not because it will help your resume. And not because someone on the internet told you to. Take care of yourself because you matter. Your health, your relationships, your peace of mind, and the life you build outside your career all matter just as much as the work you're so passionate about.

The career you're building is important, and I genuinely hope it becomes everything you've dreamed of. But I hope something even more than that. I hope that years from now, when you look back on your journey, you're proud not only of what you built but also of the way you lived while building it. I hope you're surrounded by people you love, healthy enough to enjoy the opportunities you've worked so hard for, and able to look back knowing you didn't lose yourself along the way.

Because careers are important. Dreams are important. Success is important. But none of them are more important than the person trying to achieve them.

Your career matters. So do you.

I'd Love to Hear Your Story

Writing this article reminded me that every one of us has a different journey. Some of us are just getting started, while others have spent years or even decades in this field. Some are chasing their first opportunity, and others are helping the next generation find theirs. Our experiences may be different, but I think many of us have reached moments where we've become so focused on building our careers that we've forgotten to take care of ourselves along the way.

That's why I'd genuinely love to hear your story.

Has there been a moment that changed the way you think about your career or your health? Is there something you wish someone had told you earlier, or a habit that's helped you build a career that's both meaningful and sustainable?

If you're comfortable sharing, I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments. One of my favorite parts of writing isn't publishing the article itself. It's reading the conversations that happen afterward. Time and time again, I've learned just as much from the experiences, reflections, and stories people share as I have from writing my own.

I truly believe that every one of us has something valuable to contribute. Your story, your perspective, or even a lesson you've learned along the way might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.

🤝 Let's Stay Connected

Place	Find me here
GitHub	building things → hemapriya-kanagala
LinkedIn	resources & updates → hemapriya-kanagala
X	random dev thoughts → @KanagalaHema

Wherever you are in your journey, I hope you keep learning, keep building, and keep believing in yourself.

Just don't forget to take care of the person who's making all of it possible ❤️

Transparency note: The banner image for this article was generated using DEV Community's built-in AI image generation feature. I wrote the prompt, generated multiple variations, and selected the final image used in this post.

Dev Opportunity Radar #6: Y Combinator Startup School, Open Source AI Grants, and a $60K APAC Hackathon

Hemapriya Kanagala — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:52:14 +0000

TL;DR

Welcome back to Dev Opportunity Radar.

This is a weekly series where I share opportunities, resources, communities, and interesting finds that I come across, with the goal of helping people discover things they might otherwise miss.

This week's edition includes Y Combinator's Startup School, the Sentient Open Source AGI Grant Program, the APAC Stellar Hackathon, a structured cloud learning resource, and a Community Find shared by a reader.

If you're new to the series, or missed a previous edition, you'll find the Dev Opportunity Radar Archive at the end of this article, where every edition, Community Find, and helpful link is collected in one place.

As always, if you've discovered an opportunity through the radar, applied to something, joined a community, attended an event, or simply found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd love to hear about it. With your permission, I may feature your experience in a future 💙 Reader Updates section and tag you.

And if you've come across an opportunity, resource, community, program, or event that deserves more attention, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature one of your Community Finds in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

Quick Scan
Still Open From Previous Editions
This Week's Opportunities
- Y Combinator Startup School
- Sentient Open Source AGI Grant Program
- APAC Stellar Hackathon
Resources Worth Checking Out
- Learn to Cloud
Community Finds
- CALEC Volunteer and Internship Opportunities
Reader Updates
Until Next Friday
Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

⚡ Quick Scan

Opportunities

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline
Y Combinator Startup School	Y Combinator	Builder Event	Rolling
Sentient Open Source AGI Grant Program	Sentient Foundation	AI Grant & Investment	Rolling
APAC Stellar Hackathon	Stellar	Online Hackathon	July 15

Resource Highlight

Resource	Type
Learn to Cloud	Free structured cloud learning roadmap with hands-on projects

Community Find

Shared By	Find	Type	Format
Francis (@francistrdev)	CALEC Volunteer & Internship Opportunities	Volunteer & Internship Opportunities	Remote

📝 A quick note: I spend a lot of time researching and verifying every opportunity before featuring it in Dev Opportunity Radar. However, deadlines, eligibility, and program details can change after publication. Before applying, please take a few minutes to check the official program page for the latest information and requirements.

🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions

Before we get into this week's opportunities, here are a few from previous editions that are still accepting applications.

I've already covered these in detail, so I won't repeat everything here. If any of them catch your attention, you can find the full overview, eligibility details, and application links in the original edition.

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline	Featured In
FR8	FR8	Builder Residency	Rolling	Edition #2
Anthropic Fellows Program	Anthropic	AI Research Fellowship	Rolling	Edition #4
LeapYear	LeapYear	Founder Program	July 9, 2026	Edition #4
AWS All Builders Welcome Grant	AWS	Fully Funded Conference Grant	July 14, 2026	Edition #5
Leaders of Today Award	Leaders of Today	Builder Award	July 5, 2026	Edition #5

📍 This Week's Opportunities

Here are a few opportunities I came across this week that I thought were worth sharing.

📌 Y Combinator Startup School 2026

Who it's for: Technical builders, software engineers, machine learning engineers, researchers, and undergraduate or graduate students with strong technical projects, open-source contributions, research, or other hands-on work.

What stands out: Y Combinator is bringing together a hand-selected group of technical builders in San Francisco for a free, two-day event on July 25-26.

Rather than focusing only on talks, Startup School is designed around meeting other builders. Alongside talks from founders and industry leaders, attendees take part in curated small-group sessions, research poster presentations, hands-on demos, networking events, and discussions with YC partners.

I wanted to include this because I think the experience itself is what makes it interesting. The focus isn't just on listening to speakers, but on spending two days surrounded by people who are actively building, researching, and experimenting with new ideas.

Accepted attendees also receive over $25,000 in AI and cloud credits from partners including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, xAI, AWS, and Azure. Graduating seniors can also explore internship and job opportunities with YC companies during the event.

It's worth noting that this isn't an open-registration event. YC reviews applications and is looking for people who can demonstrate technical ability through projects, research, open-source contributions, or engineering experience. If you fit that audience, I think it's worth checking out.

Cost: Free

Dates: July 25-26, 2026

Travel Support: A limited number of $500 flight credits are available for accepted attendees traveling from outside the Bay Area.

🔗 Learn More & Apply

📌 Sentient Open Source AGI Grant Program

Who it's for: Open-source developers, AI researchers, startup founders, and builders creating AI tools or infrastructure that are openly accessible and designed to solve real-world problems.

What stands out: Sentient Foundation is supporting builders through two different tracks: a no-strings-attached grant program for open-source and public-good projects, and an investment track for startups looking to scale.

I wanted to include this because the support goes well beyond funding. Selected teams can receive engineering support from the Sentient team, compute credits, distribution opportunities, and access to a community of open-source AI builders.

The foundation is particularly interested in projects that make AI more accessible, private, and useful for people who are often underserved. They also published a detailed list of ideas they're excited to fund, ranging from AI education and accessibility tools to AI security, agent infrastructure, and privacy-focused applications. Even if you're not planning to apply, I think it's an interesting read if you're looking for inspiration on real-world AI problems worth solving.

Funding: Grants (no equity) or founder-friendly investment, depending on the track

Application Deadline: Rolling

Best for: Open-source AI projects, AI infrastructure, research, developer tools, and startups building AI products with real-world impact.

🔗 Learn More | 🔗 Apply

📌 APAC Stellar Hackathon

Who it's for: Developers, student builders, startup founders, and teams across the Asia-Pacific region who are interested in building financial applications on Stellar.

What stands out: This fully online hackathon brings together builders from across APAC to create real-world financial applications, with up to $60,000 in prizes, technical mentorship, workshops, and opportunities to connect with the broader Stellar ecosystem.

I only came across this recently, but registration is still open, so I wanted to include it while there's still time. If you're interested in blockchain or Web3 and have been looking for a hackathon to build something meaningful, this looks like a solid opportunity.

The program also includes developer workshops, mentoring sessions, Demo Day, and continued support for selected teams after the hackathon, including pathways to additional grant opportunities.

Prize Pool: Up to $60,000 USD

Format: Fully online

Who can apply: Developers, student builders, startup founders, and teams across the APAC region

Registration Deadline: July 15, 2026

🔗 Learn More & Register

📚 Resources Worth Checking Out

Not every useful find comes with an application deadline.

Here's one resource worth checking out this week.

Learn to Cloud

If you've been thinking about learning cloud computing but aren't sure where to start, Learn to Cloud is a resource worth checking out.

Rather than being a collection of random tutorials, it provides a structured roadmap that takes you from the fundamentals all the way to cloud deployment, DevOps, security, and interview preparation. Along the way, you'll build practical projects, complete hands-on challenges, and use GitHub to document your progress.

I wanted to share this because it's something I'm planning to work through myself. I like that it starts with the basics before gradually moving into more advanced topics, making it feel approachable without sacrificing hands-on learning.

The roadmap covers Linux, networking, Python, cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, DevOps, cloud security, and even interview preparation. Each phase builds on the previous one, so you're learning by doing rather than just watching videos.

One feature I found particularly interesting is the built-in hands-on verification. Instead of simply completing lessons, you'll submit projects and other practical work through GitHub, encouraging you to build a portfolio as you learn.

Cost: Free

Best for: Anyone looking for a structured, hands-on path to learning cloud computing from beginner to job-ready.

🔗 Learn to Cloud

🌟 Community Finds

One of my favorite things about this series has been seeing people share opportunities, communities, and resources that others might not have discovered otherwise.

CALEC Volunteer and Internship Opportunities

Shared by Francis (@francistrdev).

The Center for the Advancement of Languages, Education, and Communities (CALEC) is a nonprofit organization that offers fully remote volunteer and internship opportunities for people interested in using their skills to support multilingual literacy and education.

One thing I liked is the variety of roles available. Whether you're a student looking for practical experience or a professional wanting to contribute to a meaningful project, there are opportunities across software development, content creation, publishing, outreach, marketing, and grant writing.

Most roles require around 10 hours per week, making them easier to balance alongside work or university. CALEC also welcomes international volunteers and can provide verification for university community service requirements and CPT/OPT hours where applicable.

If you're interested in gaining experience while contributing to an educational nonprofit, this looks like a worthwhile opportunity to explore.

Who it's for: Students, graduates, and professionals interested in volunteering or gaining nonprofit experience

Format: Fully remote (~10 hours/week)

Cost: Free

🔗 CALEC Volunteer & Internship Opportunities

Thank you to Francis (@francistrdev) for thinking of the radar and sharing this with the community. It really means a lot 💙

I'd love for this section to keep growing.

If you've come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

One small request: If you're sharing an opportunity, please avoid posting raw URLs directly in the comments. DEV sometimes filters them before I get a chance to see them.

A short description alongside the link makes it much easier for me to review and potentially feature it in a future edition.

💙 Reader Updates

One of my favorite parts of writing Dev Opportunity Radar has been hearing from people who discovered something they otherwise might have missed.

If you discovered an opportunity through the radar, applied to something, joined a community, attended an event, or simply found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

You don't need to have been accepted or have a big success story to share. Sometimes simply discovering the right opportunity at the right time is already a win.

If you'd like to share an update, feel free to leave a comment on this edition. With your permission, I may feature it in a future 💙 Reader Updates section and tag you so other readers can celebrate your journey too.

I hope this section gradually becomes a place where we can celebrate those stories together, one update at a time.

👋 Until Next Friday

Before I go, I just want to say thank you.

Six editions ago, this started as a simple idea: to help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed.

Since then, people have shared Community Finds, suggested opportunities for future editions, and helped make the radar better each week.

Seeing people contribute, recommend opportunities, and help others discover things they might have otherwise missed has been one of the most rewarding parts of putting this series together. It reminds me that the radar is becoming more than just a weekly roundup. It's gradually becoming something we're building together.

If you come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, I'd love to hear about it. Every Community Find starts with someone taking a moment to share something they think others might benefit from discovering.

And if you discovered something through the radar, whether you applied to an opportunity, joined a community, attended an event, or simply found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd love to hear about that too. With your permission, I may feature your experience in a future 💙 Reader Updates section and tag you so other readers can celebrate your journey as well.

The goal of this series hasn't changed:

Help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed.

My hope is that this slowly becomes our radar, not just mine.

Thank you for reading, for sharing, and for being part of the journey.

If you'd like to catch future editions, consider following me on DEV and bookmarking the series.

I'll be back next Friday with more opportunities, resources, and Community Finds.

See you next Friday 👋

🗂️ Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

If this is your first time discovering the series, you can browse previous editions and Community Finds here:

👉 Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

Every edition, Community Find, and helpful link is collected there, so if you ever miss an edition, you'll know exactly where to find it.

Reading Anthropic's "When AI Builds Itself" Changed How I Think About AI and Software Engineering

Hemapriya Kanagala — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:15:56 +0000

TL;DR

Anthropic recently published When AI Builds Itself, an essay explaining how AI is increasingly helping build the next generation of AI. Today, more than 80% of Anthropic's production code is written by Claude, and engineers are shipping around eight times more code than they were in 2024.

I went into the essay carrying the same quiet anxiety I think many developers have right now. I came out feeling less scared.

Not because the numbers are small. They aren't.

It's because after reading the entire essay, I realized the thing AI is getting better at is not the thing that makes developers valuable. Execution is getting faster and cheaper. Judgment, the ability to decide what's worth building, whether a result actually makes sense, and when to question an answer instead of accepting it, is not. That distinction gets lost in most of the conversations happening online, and once you see it, the whole essay reads differently.

If you'd like to read the original essay before reading my thoughts, here's the link: When AI Builds Itself by Anthropic.

I Want to Start With Something Honest
How It Started and How Fast It Moved
The Numbers, Because They Matter
The Difference Between Execution and Judgment
What I Think About This as Someone Early in My Career
Three Ways This Could Go
- The trend slows down
- Humans stay in the loop, but the way we work changes
- Recursive self-improvement
My Honest Takeaway
I Would Love to Hear Your Thoughts
References
🤝 Stay in Touch

I Want to Start With Something Honest

Over the last few months, I have probably read hundreds of posts about AI replacing developers.

Some were thoughtful. Some were obviously written just to get clicks. But after a while, they all started blending together, and I noticed something interesting.

The loudest opinions almost never came from people discussing the original source material. They came from summaries of summaries, screenshots of tweets, or headlines that focused on a single statistic while leaving out everything around it.

So when Anthropic published When AI Builds Itself, I decided to read the whole thing instead of waiting for someone else to explain it.

I expected to come away more worried. Instead, I came away thinking the conversation online had become much more dramatic than the essay itself.

The numbers are real. The pace is real. The changes happening inside companies like Anthropic are real. None of that should be ignored. That doesn't mean the essay is reassuring on its own. Some of the numbers are genuinely astonishing. But the overall picture is much more nuanced than the internet often makes it sound.

This isn't meant to summarize every page. It's simply how reading the essay changed the way I think about the conversation around AI and software engineering.

One piece of context is worth mentioning before getting into it. Anthropic didn't publish this essay as a prediction about what software engineering might look like someday. They wrote it to explain what they were already seeing inside their own engineering and research teams as AI became a much larger part of their development process. That distinction matters. The essay is mostly describing changes they have already observed, not changes they simply hope will happen.

How It Started and How Fast It Moved

One thing I wasn't expecting was how little time the essay spends making predictions about the future. Instead, it starts by looking backward.

The authors walk through how AI gradually became part of Anthropic's own engineering workflow, and that context matters because it changes the way you read everything that comes after it. The essay isn't saying "this is what might happen one day." It's saying "this is how we got here."

In the early years, around 2021 to 2023, things looked much like they would at any other software company. Engineers wrote code, reviewed pull requests, fixed bugs, and made technical decisions. AI wasn't really part of the development process yet.

Then it started helping with smaller tasks. At first, it looked a lot like how many of us use AI today. Generate a function. Explain a piece of code. Suggest a refactor. The engineer was still driving every step, while AI acted more like another tool sitting beside the editor.

Around 2025, that relationship began to change. Instead of only suggesting code, Claude started handling much larger parts of the workflow. It could write files, run them, inspect the output, fix errors, and repeat that cycle several times before a person needed to step in again. The role of the engineer wasn't disappearing, but the amount of hands-on implementation they needed to do was already changing.

By 2026, according to the essay, those workflows had become even more autonomous. AI agents were capable of working for much longer periods of time and, in some cases, coordinating work with other agents.

One example from the essay makes that progression much easier to picture. A routine software upgrade unexpectedly caused tens of thousands of AI training jobs to fail. An engineer gave Claude access to the environment along with some context about the problem. Within roughly two hours, Claude identified an obscure configuration flag that was responsible for the failures, verified the fix, and resolved the issue. According to the authors, the same investigation would likely have taken an experienced engineer two or three days.

Stories like that are impressive on their own, but they're still just one example. What convinced me was that the essay backs them up with data. The numbers suggest this wasn't a one-off success but part of a much broader shift inside the company.

The Numbers, Because They Matter

Before talking about what all of this means, it's worth looking at the numbers themselves. They're easy to exaggerate. They're also easy to dismiss. Neither reaction is particularly helpful.

The headline statistic is the one that has probably already made its way around social media. As of May 2026, Anthropic says that more than 80% of the code merged into its production codebase was authored by Claude. Before Claude Code launched in early 2025, that figure was only in the low single digits.

The effect shows up in productivity too. Engineers are now merging roughly eight times more code than they were in 2024. According to the essay, that happened in two noticeable jumps. The first came when Claude moved beyond simply suggesting code and started running it. The second happened when AI agents became capable of working autonomously over much longer periods.

The research side tells a similar story. Anthropic shared results from an internal survey of around 130 researchers. The median response was that people felt they were producing roughly four times as much output when using AI compared to working without it.

The capability benchmarks have also moved quickly. One benchmark measures whether an AI system can successfully reproduce the results of published research papers. Success rates reportedly increased from around 20% in 2024 to nearly saturating the benchmark only fifteen months later. Another measure estimates how long AI can reliably complete real-world tasks on its own, and according to the essay, that window has been doubling roughly every four months, growing from tasks that took only a few minutes to tasks lasting around twelve hours.

Those numbers are impressive. What gave me more confidence in them was how openly the authors discussed their limitations. They repeatedly point out the gaps in their own measurements. Lines of code are an imperfect productivity metric. Survey responses can overestimate real productivity gains. Benchmarks don't always capture what happens in real engineering work.

That actually made the data more convincing. It felt less like marketing and more like a team trying to explain what they're genuinely seeing inside their own organization.

The Difference Between Execution and Judgment

The most important part of the essay comes after all the numbers. After reading through them, I found myself asking a much simpler question.

If Claude is writing most of the code, what are the engineers doing?

The answer, at least from how I read the essay, is that the work developers do isn't disappearing. It's changing.

Claude has become exceptionally good at execution. Give it a clearly defined task, enough context, and the right tools, and it can move through implementation remarkably quickly. It can write code, run experiments, debug issues, test different approaches, and iterate far faster than a person could on repetitive engineering work.

But software engineering has never been only about writing code.

Someone still has to decide which problems are worth solving. Someone has to recognize when an experiment is answering the wrong question, even if it technically succeeds. Someone has to look at a result that seems correct and ask whether it actually makes sense within the larger system. Those decisions are much harder to measure than lines of code or benchmark scores, but the essay suggests they remain an important part of where engineers create value.

The authors even tried to measure part of this. They looked at real research sessions where a human made a decision that later turned out to be inefficient or simply wrong. They then showed Claude everything up to that point and asked what it would do next. Their best model improved from choosing the better next step about 51% of the time in late 2025 to around 64% only a few months later.

That is meaningful progress. At the same time, it also means the model was still not choosing the better direction in every situation. On more open-ended decisions, there is still a noticeable gap.

One comparison in the essay helped put that into perspective. The authors describe how responsibilities change as engineers gain experience. Early in a career, much of the work involves implementing tasks that someone else has already defined. With experience comes more responsibility for deciding how those tasks should be approached, and eventually which problems deserve attention in the first place.

I don't think that comparison means AI is simply replacing junior engineers while senior engineers stay untouched. Software engineering doesn't work that neatly, and neither does AI. What it suggests is that as implementation becomes easier, the skills around understanding systems, evaluating trade-offs, reviewing work, and making good decisions become even more valuable.

That ended up being my biggest takeaway from the essay.

I don't think the discussion is really about whether developers become unnecessary. It's about how the balance of the job changes as one part of software engineering becomes dramatically faster. That's a much more useful way to think about what's happening than reducing the conversation to "AI writes most of the code."

What I Think About This as Someone Early in My Career

I know a lot of people around me who are genuinely worried about AI. Sometimes that worry comes from social media, sometimes from conference talks, and sometimes simply from seeing how quickly these tools are improving. When you read that more than 80% of the production code inside one of the world's leading AI companies is now written by AI, it is difficult not to wonder where that leaves everyone else.

I have had those thoughts too. Reading the essay did not make those questions disappear, but it did change the way I think about them.

The biggest difference for me was that I stopped focusing on the number itself. 80 percent sounds enormous until you start asking what that eighty percent actually represents. The essay made me realize I had been measuring software engineering mostly by the amount of code being written, when in reality some of the most valuable work happens long before anyone opens an editor. That shift in perspective made the essay feel much less like a story about replacement and much more like a story about changing workflows.

The more I thought about that, the more it reminded me why we spend so much time learning computer science fundamentals. When you are studying operating systems, networking, databases, algorithms, or distributed systems, it is easy to wonder when you will ever use some of those ideas. They can feel abstract compared to building an application or shipping a feature. But those subjects are not only teaching syntax or APIs. They teach you how to reason about systems. They teach you how to think about trade-offs, understand complexity, identify bottlenecks, and explain why something behaves the way it does. Those skills become more valuable as implementation becomes easier, because they are the skills that help you evaluate whether the implementation is actually correct.

That was the point where my perspective really changed. The fear that developers are being replaced often comes from imagining that writing code is the entire job. Software engineering has never really worked that way. Writing code is important, but so is understanding the problem, designing the system, reviewing solutions, communicating with other engineers, and making decisions when there is no obvious answer.

I am still early in my career, and I know people with much more experience will have different perspectives on this. That is perfectly reasonable. This is simply the conclusion I reached after reading the essay carefully instead of reacting to the headlines surrounding it.

Three Ways This Could Go

The essay avoids something I see a lot in AI discussions. The internet often talks about AI as though there are only two possibilities: either everything changes overnight, or nothing really changes at all. The essay takes a much more measured approach. It lays out several possible directions and is honest that nobody knows with certainty which one we are heading toward.

The trend slows down

The first possibility is that today's rapid progress eventually begins to slow. Every technology reaches limits somewhere, whether they come from hardware, energy, data, research challenges, or simply the fact that the remaining problems become much harder to solve. Anthropic acknowledges that possibility, but based on the evidence they currently have, they do not think they are seeing those limits yet. Across the different capability measurements they track, the curves are still moving in the same direction. That does not mean progress continues forever at the same pace. It simply means they have not yet seen convincing signs that the improvements are flattening out.

Humans stay in the loop, but the way we work changes

This is the scenario that felt the most believable to me, partly because it doesn't require a dramatic leap from where we already are today. The essay doesn't argue that developers suddenly disappear or that AI takes over software engineering overnight. It describes a future where AI gradually becomes a bigger part of the workflow while people continue making the decisions that require context, experience, and responsibility.

Over the last couple of years, AI has become another tool in many developers' workflows. We use it to explain unfamiliar code, write tests, generate boilerplate, debug issues, or help us think through a problem from a different angle. None of that has removed the need for developers. If anything, it has changed where we spend our time. We've seen this kind of shift before too. High-level programming languages didn't eliminate programmers, they just moved the work up a level. AI handling more of the repetitive implementation work looks like the same kind of shift, not a different one.

Recursive self-improvement

The final possibility is the one that attracts the most attention. This is the idea that AI eventually becomes capable of contributing so much to AI research that each new generation helps create an even better one with very little human involvement. Progress starts depending less on human research effort and more on available compute, infrastructure, and resources.

The essay discusses this possibility seriously, but it is careful not to present it as an inevitable outcome. There are still many unknowns, and the authors openly acknowledge that they do not know when, or even if, this point is reached. I think that honesty makes the essay much more credible. It is easy to write bold predictions about technology. It is much harder to admit where uncertainty still exists.

My Honest Takeaway

When I started reading When AI Builds Itself, I thought I was trying to answer one question. Is AI really replacing developers?

By the time I reached the end of the essay, I realized I had started asking a completely different question instead. How is software engineering changing as AI becomes part of the development process itself?

Those are very different conversations. One is mostly driven by fear. The other is driven by curiosity. That shift in perspective is probably the biggest thing I took away from reading the essay.

The numbers Anthropic shares are real, and they are difficult to ignore. More than 80% of their production code is now written by Claude. Engineers are shipping significantly more code than they were only a couple of years ago. AI systems are becoming capable of working independently for much longer periods of time. None of that feels like hype.

But neither does the essay read like the internet often talks about it. Throughout the article, the authors repeatedly acknowledge uncertainty. They talk about the limitations of their own measurements. They discuss multiple possible futures instead of presenting one inevitable outcome. They are surprisingly careful about separating what they have observed from what they think might happen next.

Before reading the essay, I had mostly been reacting to headlines, short clips, and posts that focused on a single statistic without much context. Reading the original source did not make every concern disappear, but it replaced a lot of vague anxiety with a clearer understanding of what is actually changing and what is still very much uncertain.

I am still early in my career, so I am not pretending to have all the answers. Maybe five years from now I will look back and realize I underestimated how much AI would change software engineering. Maybe I will realize I worried more than I needed to. Right now, I honestly do not know.

What I do know is that reading the original source felt very different from reading everyone else's interpretation of it. And if there is one sentence that sums up what I took away from the essay, it is this: the thing being automated is not the skill I am trying to become better at.

I Would Love to Hear Your Thoughts

Writing this article forced me to slow down and think about where a lot of my own anxiety was coming from. For me, it was not really the technology itself. It was the constant stream of headlines telling me what the technology supposedly meant without encouraging me to read the original source.

After reading the essay, I feel like I have a much clearer picture of both the opportunities and the uncertainties. I am still excited about AI. I am still cautious about where it is going. But I no longer think those two feelings have to contradict each other.

I would love to hear what you think. If you have read the essay yourself, did you come away with the same conclusions, or did something completely different stand out to you? If you are also early in your career, has AI changed the way you think about becoming a software engineer? And if you have been in this industry for much longer, I would be especially interested in hearing how you see these changes from your perspective.

Drop a comment below. I read every one, and I would love to continue the conversation.

References

Anthropic, When AI Builds Itself

🤝 Stay in Touch

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GitHub	building things → hemapriya-kanagala
LinkedIn	resources & updates → hemapriya-kanagala
X	random dev thoughts → @KanagalaHema

Transparency note: The banner image for this article was generated using DEV Community's built-in AI image generation feature. I wrote the prompt, generated multiple variations, and selected the final image used in this post.

Dev Opportunity Radar #5: A Fully Funded Trip to AWS re:Invent, Google Cloud Career Launchpad, and a $1,000 Award

Hemapriya Kanagala — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:59:34 +0000

TL;DR

Welcome back to Dev Opportunity Radar.

This is a weekly series where I share opportunities, resources, communities, and interesting finds that I come across, with the goal of helping people discover things they might otherwise miss.

This week's edition includes a fully funded AWS re:Invent grant, a Google Cloud career accelerator, a $1,000 award for young builders, a hands-on cloud learning resource, and a Community Find shared by a reader.

I'm also introducing a new 💙 Reader Updates section. If you discovered an opportunity through the radar, applied to something, joined a community, attended an event, or simply found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

If you've come across an opportunity, resource, community, program, or event that deserves more attention, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

Quick Scan
Still Open From Previous Editions
This Week's Opportunities
- AWS All Builders Welcome Grant
- Google Cloud Career Launchpad
- Leaders of Today Award
Resources Worth Checking Out
- KodeKloud: 100 Days of Cloud
Community Finds
- Hack with MLH and DigitalOcean
Reader Updates
Until Next Friday
Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

⚡ Quick Scan

Opportunities

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline
AWS All Builders Welcome Grant	AWS	Fully Funded Conference Grant	July 14
Google Cloud Career Launchpad	Google Cloud × Mentor Me Collective	Cloud Career Accelerator	July 3
Leaders of Today Award	Leaders of Today	Builder Award	July 5

Resource Highlight

Resource	Type
KodeKloud: 100 Days of Cloud	Free hands-on cloud challenge with real AWS & Azure tasks

Community Find

Shared By	Find	Type	Date
L. Cordero (@earlgreyhot1701d)	Hack with MLH & DigitalOcean	AI Hackathon	July 10-11

🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions

A few opportunities from previous editions are still accepting applications.

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline	Featured In
FR8	FR8	Builder Residency	Rolling	Edition #2
Anthropic Fellows Program	Anthropic	AI Research Fellowship	Rolling	Edition #4
LeapYear	LeapYear	Founder Program	July 9, 2026	Edition #4
AWS She Builds Mentorship Program	AWS	Mentorship Program	June 30, 2026	Edition #4

📍 This Week's Opportunities

Here are a few opportunities I came across this week that I thought were worth sharing.

📌 AWS All Builders Welcome Grant

Who it's for: Early-career technologists within the first five years of their career, along with a limited number of university students preparing for a career in technology.

What stands out: The grant covers the full cost of attending AWS re:Invent 2026, including a conference pass, roundtrip airfare, and five nights of hotel accommodation.

Participants also get access to a curated experience that includes mentorship from AWS experts, networking opportunities, peer meetups, and the full re:Invent conference.

I wanted to include this because conferences like re:Invent can be incredibly valuable, but the cost of attending often puts them out of reach, especially for students and people early in their careers. This program removes much of that barrier while giving participants the chance to learn, build connections, and become part of the broader AWS community.

What's Included:

Full AWS re:Invent 2026 conference pass
Roundtrip airfare
Five nights of hotel accommodation
Mentorship with AWS experts
Curated networking events and peer meetups

Application Deadline: July 14, 2026

Important: Applicants must be at least 21 years old, be within the first five years of their technology career or be an eligible university student, and meet the program's eligibility criteria. International applicants are welcome, but should confirm visa availability and travel documentation requirements before applying.

🔗 Learn More | 🔗 Apply

📌 Google Cloud Career Launchpad

Who it's for: Anyone looking to start or grow a career in cloud computing. No prior cloud experience is required.

What stands out: Mentor Me Collective, in partnership with Google Cloud, is offering 1,000 scholarships for a free 12-week cloud career accelerator covering areas such as Cloud Engineering, Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, Generative AI, Cloud Computing Foundations, and more.

I wanted to include this because cloud learning can often feel overwhelming, especially when you're trying to figure out where to start. This program combines structured learning, hands-on labs, mentorship, study groups, and real-world projects into one place, making it much more approachable for beginners.

I've also previously participated in a Mentor Me Collective program, and one of the things I appreciated was the supportive community and structured learning experience. While this is a different program, that positive experience is one of the reasons I wanted to share this one as well.

Participants also receive access to Google Cloud Skills Boost labs, mentorship, career support, a capstone project, and a 50% discount on the Google Cloud certification exam for their chosen learning track.

I also like that the program is fully online and self-paced, making it much easier to fit alongside work or university.

Duration: 12 weeks

Cost: Free

Application Deadline: July 3, 2026

Program Starts: August 8, 2026

Eligibility: Open to anyone interested in building cloud skills. No prior cloud experience is required.

🔗 Learn More | 🔗 Apply

📌 Leaders of Today Award

Who it's for: Anyone aged 30 or younger working on something they're genuinely passionate about, whether it's a project, community, creative idea, startup, research, or something that's only just getting started.

What stands out: The award supports 10 people with $1,000 each to help take their project or idea to the next step. There are no essays or public voting, and the focus is much more on what you're building than on a long list of achievements.

I wanted to include this because it feels different from many traditional awards. They're interested in what you're building and why it matters to you, even if it's still in its early stages.

I was also happy to come across an opportunity that reaches a broader audience. While this isn't open everywhere in exactly the same way, it includes dedicated regions for applicants from Canada, the United States, Europe, and an "Anywhere Else" category.

Award: $1,000 (10 recipients)

Who can apply: Anyone aged 30 or younger

Application Deadline: July 5, 2026

🔗 Learn More | 🔗 Apply

📚 Resources Worth Checking Out

Not every useful find comes with an application deadline.

Here's one resource worth checking out this week.

KodeKloud: 100 Days of Cloud

If you're looking for a hands-on way to build cloud skills, KodeKloud's 100 Days of Cloud challenge is worth checking out.

Instead of watching hours of videos, you'll complete one practical cloud task each day using real AWS and Azure environments. Along the way, you'll work with topics like IAM, networking, serverless, monitoring, containers, and automation while gradually building a portfolio of your work.

One thing I like is that the challenge focuses on actually doing the work. Every completed task gives you something tangible to show, whether that's infrastructure you've deployed, CLI commands you've used, or cloud services you've configured.

The free plan lets you complete one task per day, which also makes it a nice way to build a consistent learning habit without feeling overwhelmed.

If you're interested in learning cloud by building real projects instead of just watching videos, I think this is worth checking out.

Cost: Free (with optional paid plans)

Best for: Anyone who prefers learning by building rather than just watching tutorials.

🔗 Learn More

🌟 Community Finds

One of my favorite things about this series has been seeing people share opportunities, communities, and resources that others might not have discovered otherwise.

Hack with MLH and DigitalOcean

Shared by L. Cordero (@earlgreyhot1701d).

Major League Hacking (MLH) and DigitalOcean are hosting an in-person AI hackathon in San Francisco on July 10–11.

Whether you're an experienced developer or just getting started, participants will have the opportunity to build with DigitalOcean's AI tools, collaborate with other builders, learn from mentors, and compete for prizes over two days.

What I especially like is that the event feels approachable. Whether you're looking to build your first hackathon project or simply meet other developers in the community, it looks like a great place to learn, experiment, and connect with other builders.

Dates: July 10–11, 2026

Location: San Francisco, California

Cost: Free (registration required)

🔗 Hack with MLH & DigitalOcean

Thank you to L. Cordero (@earlgreyhot1701d) for thinking of the radar and sharing this with the community. It really means a lot 💙

I'd love for this section to keep growing.

If you've come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

One small request: If you're sharing an opportunity, please avoid posting raw URLs directly in the comments. DEV sometimes filters them before I get a chance to see them.

A short description alongside the link makes it much easier for me to review and potentially feature it in a future edition.

💙 Reader Updates

Starting with this edition, I wanted to introduce a new section I've been thinking about for a while.

One of the things I've enjoyed most since starting Dev Opportunity Radar has been hearing from people who discovered something they otherwise might have missed.

If you discovered an opportunity through the radar, applied to something, joined a community, attended an event, or simply came across a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

You don't need to have been accepted or have a big success story to share. Sometimes simply discovering the right opportunity at the right time is already a win.

If you'd like to share an update, feel free to leave a comment on this edition. I'll only feature it in a future edition with your permission.

I hope this section becomes a place where we can celebrate those stories together, one update at a time.

👋 Until Next Friday

Before I go, I just want to say thank you.

Five editions ago, this started as a simple idea: to help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed.

Since then, people have shared Community Finds, suggested opportunities for future editions, and helped make the radar better each week.

And if you discovered something through the radar, whether you applied to an opportunity, joined a community, attended an event, or simply found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd love to hear that too. That's exactly why I introduced the new 💙 Reader Updates section in this edition.

The goal of this series hasn't changed:

Help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed.

My hope is that this slowly becomes our radar, not just mine.

Thank you for reading, for sharing, and for being part of the journey.

If you'd like to catch future editions, consider following me on DEV and bookmarking the series.

I'll be back next Friday with more opportunities, resources, and Community Finds.

See you next Friday! 👋

🗂️ Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

If this is your first time discovering the series, you can browse previous editions and Community Finds here:

👉 Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

Every edition, Community Find, and helpful link is collected there, making it easy to browse the series as it grows.

I Wish I Had Started Documenting My Tech Journey Earlier

Hemapriya Kanagala — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:56:08 +0000

TL;DR

For a long time, I told myself I would start documenting my journey later. I thought I needed better projects, more knowledge, or more confidence before anything I did was worth sharing.

Looking back, I realize it was never really about documentation.

I was afraid of being judged, afraid of getting things wrong, and afraid of putting something imperfect out into the world.Because of that, I spent years waiting for the "right" time to start.

What I didn't realize was that while I was waiting, parts of my journey were quietly disappearing.

Today, there are projects, lessons, experiences, and versions of myself that I wish I could revisit but can't, simply because I never captured them when they happened.

If I could go back and give my younger self one piece of advice, it wouldn't be to learn a different technology or build a different project. It would be to document more, share more, and spend less time waiting to feel ready.

The Version of Me I Can No Longer Visit
It Wasn't Just About Documentation
The People Starting Today
The Things That Never Made It Into a Resume
More Than a Portfolio
The Unexpected Part
It's Never Too Late
I'd Love to Hear Your Story
🤝 Let's Stay Connected

The Version of Me I Can No Longer Visit

Every now and then, I find myself wondering what my first thoughts about tech looked like.

Not the polished version I would write today, but the real version. The student who was excited after finishing a small project, the person who spent hours debugging something simple and felt incredibly proud when it finally worked, and the version of me who was trying things for the first time without any idea where the journey would eventually lead.

I wish I could go back and read what that person was thinking.

The problem is that I can't.

Like many people, I assumed I would remember those moments. I thought the lessons, the projects, the discoveries, and the experiences that felt important at the time would naturally stay with me. Over the years, I completed projects, joined communities, applied for opportunities, attended events, and learned countless new things. At the time, each experience felt significant enough that I couldn't imagine forgetting it.

But memory has a way of smoothing over the details.

What surprises me now is that I don't miss the projects themselves nearly as much as I miss the person I was while building them.

I miss the excitement of discovering something new for the first time, the curiosity that came with not knowing the answer, and the satisfaction of solving a problem that had felt impossible only a few hours earlier.

Those versions of ourselves don't stay forever. We grow, our priorities change, and the things that once felt monumental slowly become distant memories. That's why I've started thinking about documentation differently. It's not just a record of what we built or accomplished. Sometimes it's a way of preserving who we were while we were becoming who we are.

It Wasn't Just About Documentation

Looking back, I don't think the problem was that I forgot to document my journey.

The truth is that I was afraid to.

At the beginning of any journey, it's easy to feel like you have nothing worth sharing. When you're surrounded by people who seem more experienced, more accomplished, or more confident, it's hard not to compare yourself to them.

You look at impressive portfolios, polished projects, successful creators, and people who seem to know exactly what they're doing, and before long you start telling yourself a familiar story:

"Maybe I'll start when I'm better."

At the time, that thought feels reasonable. You convince yourself that you're waiting for the right moment, but what you're really waiting for is permission. Permission to be inexperienced. Permission to be imperfect. Permission to share something before it's polished.

The problem is that the feeling of being "ready" rarely arrives the way we expect it to.

There's always another skill to learn, another project to improve, another reason why now doesn't feel like the right time. As soon as you reach one milestone, a new one appears in front of you. The version of yourself you thought would finally feel confident enough to start keeps moving further away.

For a long time, I told myself that I would start documenting someday. I imagined a future version of myself who would have more experience, more knowledge, and more confidence than I did.

What I didn't realize was how quickly time passes while you're waiting.

Before I knew it, years had gone by, and many of the moments I wish I had documented were already behind me.

The People Starting Today

One thing I genuinely admire today is seeing people document their journeys from the very beginning.

Whenever I scroll through LinkedIn, X, GitHub, blogs, or developer communities, I come across students sharing what they're learning, what they're building, and what they're struggling with in real time. Sometimes it's a small project they finished over the weekend. Sometimes it's a lesson from class that finally clicked. Sometimes it's simply a reflection on something they learned that day.

What stands out to me isn't how impressive the work is. It's that they're willing to document the process before they have everything figured out.

They're not waiting until they become experts. They're not waiting until they land internships, build an impressive portfolio, or reach some milestone that suddenly makes their journey feel worth sharing. Instead, they're capturing the journey as it happens, with all of its uncertainty, mistakes, questions, and small victories.

And honestly, I wish I had done more of that.

Not because every post becomes popular or every project changes someone's life. What I admire is that years from now they'll have something I wish I had more of: a record of how they became who they are.

One day they'll be able to scroll back through old projects, applications, posts, and reflections and see the path they took to get where they are. Many of those moments probably feel ordinary today. Some of them might even feel insignificant.

But stories are rarely built from a single defining moment.

They're built from hundreds of small moments that only become meaningful when you look back and see how they connect.

That's what I think these people are preserving, often without even realizing it.

The Things That Never Made It Into a Resume

When I think about the parts of my journey I wish I had documented, it's rarely the big achievements that come to mind.

I don't find myself wishing I had written more about a particular line on my resume or a milestone that looks impressive in hindsight.

Instead, I think about the smaller moments that quietly shaped me along the way. The first time I solved a problem that felt impossible. The excitement of getting accepted into a program I wasn't sure I was qualified for. The project that taught me far more than it ever produced. The conversations that changed how I thought about myself, my career, or what I was capable of achieving.

I think about the moments when I doubted myself and kept going anyway.

Those experiences never became bullet points on a resume, and most of them would probably never stand out to anyone else. Yet they're some of the moments that shaped me the most.

They influenced how I think, how I approach challenges, and who I've become over time.

Looking back, those are the memories I wish I had captured while they were happening. Not because they were extraordinary, but because they were meaningful. They're the moments I find myself wanting to revisit, and the ones I wish I could see through the eyes of the person I was back then.

More Than a Portfolio

When people talk about documenting their work, the conversation usually revolves around visibility. We talk about building a portfolio, growing an audience, creating opportunities, attracting recruiters, or finding jobs. Those things absolutely matter, and for many people they become valuable outcomes of sharing their work.

But the older I get, the more I think there's another benefit that gets talked about far less.

Documentation preserves growth.

Looking back, I don't think the biggest value of documenting our work is that it helps other people see what we've done. I think it's that it allows us to see how far we've come. It captures versions of ourselves that would otherwise disappear and gives us a way to revisit old ideas, old challenges, old failures, and old wins.

When progress feels slow, documentation can become proof that progress is happening at all.

That's one of the reasons I view things like GitHub repositories, blog posts, notes, and LinkedIn posts differently now. They're not just artifacts of work. They're snapshots of a particular moment in time. They capture what we were learning, what we were struggling with, what excited us, and what we believed at that stage of our journey.

Years later, they become something much more valuable than a portfolio.

They become evidence that we were there.

Learning.
Building.
Struggling.
Growing.

And sometimes that's exactly what we need to be reminded of.

The Unexpected Part

The funny thing is that when you start sharing your journey, something else happens.

You find people.

That wasn't something I expected when I first started writing.

For a long time, I worried about whether my thoughts were worth sharing at all. I worried about being judged, saying the wrong thing, or simply putting something out there that nobody cared about. Looking back, that fear probably kept me quiet much longer than it should have.

I was a silent reader far longer than I was a writer. I spent years reading articles, learning from communities, and admiring people who seemed confident enough to share their experiences publicly. I benefited from what others were willing to contribute, but I rarely contributed anything myself.

I still remember publishing my first article on DEV. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much. I wasn't thinking about followers, engagement, or any of the things people usually associate with publishing online. I was mostly wondering whether anyone would read it at all.

When I finally hit publish, it felt uncomfortable. A thought that had existed only in my head was suddenly visible to everyone else.

The article didn't receive comments or reactions, but people did read it. I remember checking the views and realizing that actual people had spent time reading something I wrote. That small realization meant far more to me than I expected.

I published a few more articles after that and then eventually drifted away from writing for a while. When I returned this year and started publishing again, the experience felt completely different. People started commenting, sharing their own stories, offering encouragement, and giving thoughtful feedback.

Over time, some names became familiar. People who started as strangers gradually became a small but meaningful part of my journey, and I found myself looking forward to hearing from them whenever I published something new.

What's funny is that I've never met most of them in person.

Yet they continue to support me anyway.

When I first started sharing online, I worried about negativity. What I didn't expect was kindness.

I didn't expect strangers to celebrate my progress, encourage me to keep going, or take time out of their day to leave thoughtful comments. I certainly didn't expect to feel supported by people from different countries, backgrounds, and stages of their careers.

But that's exactly what happened.

And honestly, that support has changed me too. Every encouraging comment, every shared opportunity, and every small act of kindness reminds me of the kind of person I want to be. It makes me want to encourage someone else, share something useful, or help someone who might be doubting themselves the same way I once did.

Because sometimes the smallest moments end up staying with us the longest.

It's Never Too Late

I know many people build incredible careers without ever sharing publicly, and I genuinely respect that. This isn't the only path, and I don't think documentation has to be public to be valuable. It can be a journal, a folder of notes, a document filled with lessons learned, or a collection of project write-ups that nobody else ever sees.

What matters is leaving yourself a trail. Something that helps future you remember who you were, what you learned, what excited you, and how far you've come.

The reality is that I can't go back and document the beginning of my journey. I can't recover every lesson, every thought, or every moment that slowly disappeared with time. But I can document today. I can write about what I'm learning now, capture experiences while they're still fresh, and leave behind something that my future self can look back on years from now.

These days, I still feel nervous whenever I share something online. I still wonder what people will think, and I still worry about getting things wrong. The difference is that I no longer wait for those feelings to disappear before I act. If I waited until I felt completely confident, I would probably still be waiting.

Over time, I've realized that courage isn't the absence of fear. It's choosing not to let fear make every decision for you.

I'm still scared sometimes, but I don't want that fear deciding which projects get shared, which lessons get written down, or which parts of my story are worth keeping.

And if sharing publicly feels intimidating, start privately. The goal isn't to become a content creator, grow an audience, or build a personal brand.

The goal is simply not to lose your story.

Whether that's a blog, a GitHub repository, a journal, a folder of notes, or a post that only a handful of people ever read, it all counts. Years from now, you'll have something I wish I had more of - a record of the journey itself.

Because one day, you might want to look back and meet the person you used to be.

And you'll be glad you left a trail.

I'd Love to Hear Your Story

Writing this made me realize how many parts of my own journey I wish I had captured while they were happening.

At the same time, it also made me appreciate the things I did manage to save, whether that's an old project, a forgotten post, or a memory that somehow stuck around.

I'm curious what your experience has been like.

Have you documented your journey in some way, or do you ever find yourself wishing you had started earlier?

Maybe you have old projects, notes, blog posts, journals, or even screenshots that take you back to a different version of yourself.

I'd genuinely love to hear your story and how you think about documenting your own journey.

🤝 Let's Stay Connected

One of the best parts of sharing online has been meeting people from different backgrounds, experiences, and stages of their journeys.

If you'd like to connect, share your story, or continue the conversation, I'd love to hear from you.

Transparency note: I used AI (Gemini) to create the banner image for this article.

Dev Opportunity Radar #4: Anthropic Fellows, $30K for Founders, and AWS She Builds

Hemapriya Kanagala — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:37:06 +0000

TL;DR

Welcome back to Dev Opportunity Radar.

This is a weekly series where I share opportunities, resources, communities, and interesting finds that I come across, with the goal of helping people discover things they might otherwise miss.

This week's edition includes Anthropic's Fellows Program, LeapYear for aspiring founders, the AWS She Builds Mentorship Program, and two free books on building AI agents that are worth adding to your reading list.

If you've come across an opportunity, resource, community, program, or event that deserves more attention, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

Quick Scan
Still Open From Previous Editions
This Week's Opportunities
- Anthropic Fellows Program
- LeapYear
- AWS She Builds Mentorship Program
Resources Worth Checking Out
- Principles & Patterns of Building AI Agents
Community Finds
Until Next Friday
Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

⚡ Quick Scan

Opportunities

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline
Anthropic Fellows Program	Anthropic	AI Research Fellowship	Rolling
LeapYear	LeapYear	Founder Program	July 9
AWS She Builds Mentorship Program	AWS	Mentorship Program	June 30

Resource Highlight

Resource	Type
Principles & Patterns of Building AI Agents	Free AI agent books (digital + printed copy available)

Community Finds

Status	Notes
No new Community Finds this week	AI Tinkerers, Claude Corps, and MLH's Hacking for Good were featured in Edition #3

🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions

A few opportunities from previous editions are still accepting applications.

I've already covered these in detail, so I won't repeat everything here. If any of them catch your attention, check the original edition for the full overview, eligibility details, and application links.

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline	Featured In
FR8	FR8	Builder Residency	Rolling	Edition #2
Gemini × XPRIZE AI Business Challenge	Google & XPRIZE	AI Business Challenge	Aug 18, 2026	Edition #3

📍 This Week's Opportunities

Here are a few opportunities I came across this week that I thought were worth sharing.

📌 Anthropic Fellows Program

Who it's for: Technical builders, researchers, engineers, students, and self-directed learners interested in AI research, safety, security, systems, reinforcement learning, or AI policy.

What stands out: Anthropic provides funding, mentorship, compute resources, and direct access to researchers while fellows spend four months working on an empirical research project.

One thing I found particularly interesting is that the program explicitly welcomes promising technical talent regardless of previous research experience. The focus seems much more on your ability to learn, build, and contribute than on having a traditional research background.

Fellows are matched with mentors and projects across areas including AI Safety, AI Security, ML Systems, Reinforcement Learning, and Economics & Policy.

The program includes mentorship from Anthropic researchers, research funding, compute support, and the opportunity to produce a public research output. Anthropic notes that more than 80% of fellows in an earlier cohort produced papers.

For anyone interested in AI research but unsure how to break into the field, this feels like one of the more accessible pathways I've come across.

Duration: 4 months (full-time)

Compensation: $3,850 USD / $2,310 GBP / $4,300 CAD per week + research funding and compute support

Eligibility: Must have work authorization in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada

Applications: Rolling

Important: Anthropic lists the Fellows Program on its careers page, but applicants are evaluated through the separate Constellation application form.

The careers page itself notes that you will not be considered unless you complete the Constellation application.

If you're applying, make sure you fill out the Constellation form rather than relying only on the careers page submission.

🔗 Program Overview
🔗 Constellation Application Form (Required)

📌 LeapYear

Who it's for: Students, dropouts, recent graduates, and ambitious builders who want to spend a year working on a startup.

What stands out: LeapYear backs people very early, often before revenue, and doesn't require founders to relocate or drop out of school.

Funding: $30,000 for 1.5% equity.

I wanted to include this because a lot of startup programs assume you're already working full-time on a company or ready to move somewhere. LeapYear seems much more focused on helping people get started wherever they are.

Teams receive funding, mentorship, and support while continuing to build from their current city. New cohorts are funded every three months, allowing founders to focus on building rather than waiting for a once-a-year application cycle.

One thing I particularly liked is that the emphasis seems to be on commitment, curiosity, and the willingness to spend a year building something ambitious rather than on credentials or previous startup success.

Whether you're exploring an idea, building a side project, or taking your first serious step toward starting a company, this feels like one of the more approachable founder programs I've come across.

Application Deadline: July 9, 2026 (July 2026 cohort)

🔗 Learn More | Apply

📌 AWS She Builds Mentorship Program

Who it's for: Women in technology looking for mentorship, professional growth, and community support.

What stands out: Participants are matched with an AWS mentor based on their goals, experience, and location, then spend 12 weeks working through guided professional development activities alongside a global cohort.

I wanted to include this because mentorship can be difficult to find, especially early in your career. Programs like this provide not only access to experienced professionals but also a community of people navigating similar challenges and goals.

Participants also gain access to events featuring AWS leaders, networking opportunities, and a broader community of builders and technologists.

Whether you're a student, early-career professional, career changer, or someone looking to take the next step in tech, this seems like a great opportunity to learn from people who've already walked that path.

Cost: Free

Program Dates: September 1 - November 30, 2026

Application Deadline: June 30, 2026

Requirements: AWS Builder ID required to apply

🔗 Learn More | Apply

📚 Resources Worth Checking Out

Not every useful find comes with an application deadline.

Here's one resource worth checking out this week.

Principles & Patterns of Building AI Agents

If you've been following the recent wave of AI agents and wondering where to start, these two free books from Sam Bhagwat (CEO of Mastra) are worth checking out.

Principles of Building AI Agents focuses on the foundations. It covers topics such as agents, tool calling, memory, workflows, RAG, MCP, multi-agent systems, evals, deployment, and observability.

Patterns of Building AI Agents builds on those foundations and focuses on taking agents from prototype to production. Topics include context engineering, evaluation workflows, security, human-in-the-loop systems, and production-ready agent architectures.

I wanted to include these because a lot of AI content online is either too introductory or too framework-specific. These books do a good job of explaining the underlying concepts and patterns that apply regardless of which tools you use.

Both books are available digitally for free.

You can also request a free printed copy. I was able to get mine shipped to India, and the process was straightforward.

After entering your email on the website, you'll receive the digital version along with instructions for requesting a physical copy if it's available in your region.

If you're interested in building AI agents, I'd recommend starting with Principles and then moving on to Patterns.

Cost: Free

Formats: Digital edition + free printed copy (availability varies by region)

🔗 Principles of Building AI Agents

🔗 Patterns of Building AI Agents

🌟 Community Finds

No new Community Finds this week.

That's completely okay.

Last week's edition featured AI Tinkerers and Claude Corps, both shared by readers, along with a last-minute addition about MLH's Global Hack Week: Hacking for Good.

Seeing people contribute opportunities, communities, and resources for others to discover has honestly been one of my favorite parts of this series so far.

If you missed those finds, they're worth checking out. Claude Corps is also still accepting applications. You can find all the details in Edition #3.

If you've come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

One small request: If you're sharing an opportunity, please avoid posting raw URLs directly in the comments. DEV sometimes filters them before I get a chance to see them.

A short description alongside the link makes it much easier for me to review and potentially feature it in a future edition.

👋 Until Next Friday

Before I go, I just want to say thank you.

A few weeks ago, this was just an experiment.

Now people are discovering opportunities through the radar, applying to them, and sharing opportunities, resources, and communities back with the rest of us.

Last week's edition featured three Community Finds shared by readers. We didn't have any new submissions this week, and that's completely okay.

The Community Finds section isn't going anywhere.

I'd love to see it continue growing over time into a place where people can share opportunities, communities, resources, and interesting finds that others might benefit from discovering too.

The goal of this series hasn't changed:

Help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed.

My hope is that this slowly becomes our radar, not just mine.

So if you come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, feel free to share it in the comments.

And as always, if I feature it in a future edition, I'll make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

If you end up applying to any of the opportunities featured here, I'd love to hear about it.

Thank you for reading, thank you for sharing, and thank you for being part of this.

If you'd like to catch future editions, consider following me on DEV and bookmarking the series.

I'll be back next Friday with more opportunities, resources, and community finds.

See you next Friday 👋

🗂️ Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

If this is your first time discovering the series, you can browse previous editions and Community Finds here:

👉 Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

Every edition is collected in one place so it's easier to explore past opportunities, resources, and community recommendations.

Letters to Tomorrow: A June Solstice Game About the Things We Carry Into Tomorrow

Hemapriya Kanagala — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 13:28:14 +0000

This is a submission for the June Solstice Game Jam

🎮 Play the Game: Letters to Tomorrow

💻 Source Code: GitHub Repository

TL;DR

Letters to Tomorrow is a narrative game set during the June Solstice, the longest day of the year.

A summer storm has scattered the town's annual letters to the future and damaged their final lines. You play as the Postmaster working the twilight shift, helping different people complete their letters before sunset.

Each phase of the day contains up to four letters. To move time forward, you only need to help at least two of them, but you are always free to stay longer and complete every letter if you wish. Only the letters you choose to finish are sealed and carried into tomorrow.

As the day progresses, you will meet people navigating friendship, courage, belonging, kindness, uncertainty, hope, and change. You can choose from suggested endings or write your own if none of the options feel right.

At the end of the journey, after helping others find the words they want to carry forward, you are given one final empty envelope and invited to write a letter to Tomorrow yourself.

The game is about the things we choose to keep when one chapter ends and another begins.

What I Built
Video Demo
Code
How I Built It
Prize Category
- Best Google AI Usage
- Best Ode to Alan Turing
Why Letters?
A Piece of My Story
A Small Step Outside My Comfort Zone
Final Thoughts

What I Built

Have you ever wanted to say something, but could not find the right words or the right moment?

That question became the starting point for Letters to Tomorrow.

Letters to Tomorrow is a narrative web game set during the June Solstice, the longest day of the year. You play as a postmaster working the twilight shift after a summer storm scatters the town's annual letters to the future. Many of the letters have lost their final sentences, and it becomes your job to help complete them before sunset.

Each letter belongs to a different person standing at a different point in life. A baker opening his shop for the first time. A musician wondering whether she deserves to be heard. A teacher reflecting on a moment that stayed with him. Someone remembering an unexpected act of kindness from years ago. A person trying to figure out what comes next.

As you read, you choose the words that feel most true. If none of the options feel right, you can write your own.

When I first read the challenge prompt, I kept returning to one idea: the solstice is a turning point. The longest day eventually becomes evening. Time keeps moving forward. We cannot stop it, but we can decide what we carry with us into tomorrow.

That became the heart of the game.

The letters are not about saving the world. They are about ordinary moments that quietly shape who we become. A conversation. A friendship. A kindness. A new beginning. The things we often forget to celebrate, even though they stay with us the longest.

My goal was to create something that feels like taking a deep breath at the end of a long day. A small space where people can slow down, reflect, and perhaps recognize a piece of themselves in someone else's story.

Video Demo

In this walkthrough, I take you through a full shift at the Sunset Post Office, explain the core mechanics, and share some of the ideas that inspired the letters and themes throughout the game.

Prefer to play first?

👉 Play Letters to Tomorrow

Code

If you'd like to explore the source code, the entire project is available on GitHub.

One thing I enjoyed about building this game was keeping everything surprisingly simple. The whole experience lives inside a single HTML file, which made it a fun challenge to organize the narrative, game systems, save functionality, animations, accessibility features, FAQ, and player guidance all in one place.

hemapriya-kanagala / letters-to-tomorrow

A narrative web game about unfinished letters, second chances, and finding the right words. Play as a postmaster on the June Solstice, helping lost messages reach tomorrow before the sun sets.

💌 Letters to Tomorrow

A June Solstice Story

A narrative web game about unfinished letters, quiet moments, and the things we choose to carry into tomorrow.

🎮 Play the Game • 📝 DEV Article

About

Letters to Tomorrow is a narrative web game created for the June Solstice Game Jam.

A sudden summer storm has scattered the town's annual letters to the future, leaving many of them unfinished just before sunset.

You play as the Postmaster working the twilight shift on the longest day of the year. Your role is to read these letters, understand the people behind them, and help them find the words they were trying to carry into tomorrow.

Each letter belongs to someone standing at a different…

View on GitHub

The game is deployed on Vercel and can be played directly in your browser. If you would rather experience it before reading further, you can jump straight into the Post Office below:

👉 Play Online: Letters to Tomorrow

No installation, downloads, or account creation required.

How I Built It

I wanted the experience to feel simple, accessible, and easy to run. The entire game lives in a single HTML file using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There is no backend, no account system, and no server required to play.

I want to be transparent about how Google AI was used throughout the project.

The concept, game structure, characters, letters, narrative themes, and overall experience were created by me. The emotional core of the game came from stories, memories, and ideas that I wanted to explore through the lens of the June Solstice.

Where Google AI helped most was during development.

I used Google AI as a coding partner to help build parts of the interface, refine layouts, improve responsiveness across devices, and implement visual details such as transitions, animations, and accessibility features. It helped me translate ideas that existed in my head into working code.

I also used Google AI to review instructional content such as the How To Play guide and FAQ section. Because the game is intentionally gentle and reflective, I wanted to make sure players would never feel confused about what to do next. I used AI as a second pair of eyes to identify questions I might have overlooked and to help improve clarity.

For the narrative content, I occasionally used AI for feedback and editing suggestions, but the letters themselves were written by me. I wanted them to feel personal, human, and grounded in real experiences rather than generated messages.

Accessibility was also important to me. The game is designed to work comfortably on phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. I focused on readability, responsive layouts, and clear navigation so that players can focus on the stories rather than the interface.

One technical decision that mattered a lot to me was privacy.

The game uses local storage only. Everything the player writes stays on their own device. Custom letter endings, personal reflections, and the final letter to Tomorrow are never sent to a server and are never visible to anyone else.

I built it this way intentionally because I wanted players to feel comfortable being honest. Some people may only write a sentence. Others may write something deeply personal. Either way, those words belong entirely to them.

I also made the decision not to include background music. The silence is intentional. I wanted the game to feel like a quiet desk at the end of a long day, giving players room to reflect and hear their own thoughts while reading and writing.

Prize Category

Best Google AI Usage

Google AI, primarily Gemini Pro, played an important role in helping me bring this project to life.

I used Gemini as a development partner throughout development to help with frontend implementation, responsive design, accessibility improvements, animations, interface refinement, and general troubleshooting. It also helped me review and improve supporting content such as the How to Play guide and FAQ section.

For the narrative side of the project, the characters, themes, stories, and emotional direction came from me. I occasionally used Gemini for editorial feedback on drafts, but the letters themselves were written by me.

I also used Gemini to generate the banner image for this article. You may notice a Gemini watermark on the image, which is part of the generated output.

Most importantly, Gemini helped me spend less time fighting technical hurdles and more time focusing on the stories I wanted to tell.

Best Ode to Alan Turing

During the third phase of the game, players discover a letter called The Blue Envelope.

Rather than focusing on codebreaking or mathematics, I wanted to honor the human side of Alan Turing's story.

The letter is written for anyone who has ever felt different, thought differently, or seen the world from a different perspective. It is a reminder that some of the qualities that make us feel out of place are often the same qualities that allow us to contribute something meaningful.

The letter ends with a note acknowledging Alan Turing and the curiosity that changed the world.

Why Letters?

While designing this game, I kept asking myself a simple question: if the June Solstice is a turning point between today and tomorrow, what is the most human way to represent that?

I kept coming back to letters.

A letter exists in a strange space between the present and the future. When someone writes one, they are capturing a version of themselves that exists only in that moment. Their fears, hopes, questions, memories, and unfinished thoughts are placed on a page and sent forward to a person they have not become yet.

That felt deeply connected to the spirit of the solstice.

The longest day of the year is a reminder that time never stands still. The sunlight eventually fades. Seasons change. People change. We cannot hold on to a moment forever, but we can decide what we want to carry with us when it ends.

That is why every story in the game takes the form of a letter.

The baker is not simply remembering the day he opened his shop. He is trying to remind his future self why he started. The musician is not simply talking about fear. She is leaving herself a note for the next time doubt appears. Every person in the game is reaching across time and speaking to the person they hope to become.

In a way, that is exactly what the player is doing too.

By the end of the game, the final empty envelope is not another puzzle to solve. It is an invitation. After spending time helping other people find the words they want to carry into tomorrow, the player is given a chance to decide what they want to carry forward themselves.

That is why Letters to Tomorrow could only be told through letters.

A Piece of My Story

One of the letters in the game is based directly on a real experience from my own life.

After moving to the United States, I was struggling to carry heavy luggage up several flights of stairs when a stranger noticed and helped me without being asked. Not long afterward, one of my professors handed me her umbrella during a rainstorm and told me to keep it. When I tried to return it, she smiled and said, "No, you need it."

Neither of those moments lasted very long.

Neither of those people probably remember them now.

But I do.

What stayed with me was not the luggage or the umbrella. It was the feeling of being cared for in a place that was still unfamiliar to me. Those moments made the world feel a little less intimidating. They made me more willing to ask for help when I needed it and more willing to offer help when I saw someone struggling.

That experience became the inspiration for Hema's letter in the game.

I included it because I wanted at least one letter to come directly from my own life. It serves as a reminder that some of the things we carry into tomorrow are not major life events. Sometimes they are simply moments when someone chose kindness.

A Small Step Outside My Comfort Zone

There is one more thing I wanted to share.

The demo video for this project is narrated by me.

That may not sound like a big deal, but it was a meaningful step for me. I am usually much more comfortable expressing myself through writing than through recordings, and knowing that a video could be seen by many people made me hesitate more than once while working on this submission.

If you watch the demo, you will probably notice a few moments where I stumble over words, speak a little too quickly, or sound nervous. I tried my best to smooth those moments out during editing, but some of them are still there.

For a while, I considered using a generated voice instead. In the end, I chose not to. Letters to Tomorrow is a game about ordinary people sharing honest pieces of themselves, and I wanted the introduction to feel personal too.

So I left the imperfections in and shared it anyway.

I am still learning how to become more comfortable with speaking, recording videos, and putting my work out into the world. This project was a small step in that direction.

If you have any tips on narration, presentation, or creating better demo videos, I would genuinely appreciate the feedback. It is an area I am actively trying to improve, and every project teaches me something new.

Final Thoughts

Thank you for taking the time to read about Letters to Tomorrow.

I hope some of these letters feel familiar. If one of them stayed with you after you finished playing, I would genuinely love to know which one and why.

And if there is a letter you think belongs in this town but has not been written yet, I would love to hear that too. Some of the best stories begin as conversations.

I am also always interested in ideas for making the experience better. If there is a feature that would make the game more accessible, a question that should be added to the FAQ, or something that felt unclear while playing, please let me know.

If you would like to revisit the game, you can always return to the Sunset Post Office here:

👉 Play Letters to Tomorrow

Most of all, thank you for spending a little time with these stories.

Dev Opportunity Radar #3: Neo Scholars, a $2M AI Challenge, and an $85K AI Fellowship

Hemapriya Kanagala — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:47:44 +0000

TL;DR

Welcome back to Dev Opportunity Radar.

This is a weekly series where I share opportunities, resources, communities, and interesting finds that I come across, with the goal of helping people discover things they might otherwise miss.

This week's edition includes a student-focused founder program, a $2 million AI business challenge, a free Google AI agents course, a Web3 learning resource, and two community finds shared by community members.

If you've come across an opportunity, resource, community, program, or event that deserves more attention, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

Quick Scan
Still Open From Previous Editions
Radar Follow-Up
This Week's Opportunities
- Neo Scholars
- Gemini × XPRIZE AI Business Challenge
Bonus Opportunity
- 5-Day AI Agents Intensive Course with Google
Resources Worth Checking Out
- LearnWeb3
Community Finds
- AI Tinkerers
- Claude Corps
- Hacking for Good
Until Next Friday
Dev Opportunity Radar Archive

⚡ Quick Scan

Opportunities

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline
Neo Scholars	Neo	Founder & Career Program	June 14
Gemini × XPRIZE AI Business Challenge	Google & XPRIZE	AI Business Challenge	Aug 18
5-Day AI Agents Intensive Course	Google & Kaggle	Free AI Course	June 15-19

Resource Highlight

Resource	Type
LearnWeb3	Free Web3 learning platform with structured courses and projects

Community Finds

Shared By	Find	Type	Deadline
Julien Avezou (@javz)	AI Tinkerers	AI Builder Community	Ongoing
Phinn Markson (@marsonp)	Claude Corps	AI Fellowship	July 17
Francis (@francistrdev)	Hacking for Good	Global Hack Week	June 18

🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions

A few opportunities from previous editions are still accepting applications.

Opportunity	Organization	Type	Deadline	Featured In
FR8	FR8	Builder Residency	Rolling	Edition #2
Interactivity Research Grants	Thinking Machines	Research Grant ($100K)	June 19, 2026	Edition #1

📡 Radar Follow-Up

One of the things I hoped this series would do was help someone discover an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have come across.

Last week, Daniel Nwaneri (@dannwaneri) shared that he discovered the FR8 residency through the radar and applied the same day.

That genuinely made my week.

Daniel also shared something that summed up what I'm trying to do with this series:

"The series does something most opportunity roundups don't. It actually explains why something is worth your time instead of just listing it."

There are already lots of places that collect links.

My goal is to add enough context that you can quickly decide whether something is actually worth exploring further.

Seeing someone discover an opportunity, take action on it, and then come back to share that experience felt like a reminder that the series is doing what I hoped it would do.

Thank you again, Daniel, for sharing the update and for letting me mention it here.

And Daniel, if you're reading this, wishing you the very best with your application.

📍 This Week's Opportunities

Here are a few opportunities I came across this week that I thought were worth sharing.

📌 Neo Scholars

Who it's for: Undergraduate students who enjoy building things, love computer science, and are interested in startups, entrepreneurship, or ambitious technical projects.

Neo combines mentorship, startup recruiting, founder support, and access to a strong network of builders all within a single program.

Accepted scholars gain access to mentorship, startup opportunities, recruiting support, events, and a community that includes founders and builders from companies like Cursor, Cognition, Chai Discovery, Applied Compute, and more.

One thing I particularly liked is that participants aren't being pushed into a single path. Whether you want to start something, join a startup, explore ideas, or simply meet ambitious people, there seems to be room for all of those outcomes.

There's also an optional Neo Residency program where student teams can receive a $40,000 equity-free grant and spend time building in San Francisco.

Who can apply: Undergraduate students graduating Winter 2026 or later.

Application Deadline: June 14, 2026

🔗 Learn More & Apply

📌 Gemini × XPRIZE AI Business Challenge

Who it's for: Builders, founders, developers, students, and anyone interested in creating an AI-powered business.

Participants aren't just building a prototype.

They're expected to build something that reaches real users, solves a real problem, and generates real revenue.

The challenge focuses on businesses powered by AI agents and built using Google Cloud products.

Projects can be submitted across areas including education and human potential, entrepreneurship and job creation, small business services, financial access, and professional services.

I actually came across this later than I would have liked, but the good news is that there's still plenty of time left.

If you've been thinking about building something meaningful with AI rather than just experimenting with prompts, this might be worth looking into.

Prize Pool: $2,000,000

Grand Prize: $500,000

Deadline: August 18, 2026

🔗 Learn More & Join

🎁 Bonus Opportunity

5-Day AI Agents Intensive Course with Google

Who it's for: Developers, students, builders, and anyone interested in learning how modern AI agents are designed, built, and deployed.

The course goes beyond basic prompting and focuses on practical topics like agent workflows, tool use, memory, evaluation, security, and deployment.

The program is hosted by Kaggle and developed with Google researchers and engineers.

Participants receive daily learning materials, whitepapers, companion podcasts, hands-on codelabs, daily livestreams and AMAs, Discord discussions, and a capstone project.

The capstone project, called Kaggriculture, involves building an autonomous agent that manages a virtual farm and competes against other agents.

I wanted to include this because it's free, happening soon, and seems much more focused on building real agent systems than many introductory AI courses.

Dates: June 15-19, 2026

Capstone Deadline: June 28, 2026

Cost: Free

Bonus: Certificates, badges, and Kaggle swag for top participants.

🔗 Learn More & Register

📚 Resources Worth Checking Out

Not every useful find comes with an application deadline.

Here's one resource worth checking out this week.

LearnWeb3

LearnWeb3 is a free learning platform for developers who want to explore blockchain and Web3 development.

The reason I wanted to include it is because a lot of learning resources assume you already know where to start. LearnWeb3 does a good job of organizing topics into structured learning paths, making it easier to progress from one concept to the next.

The platform covers areas such as Ethereum development, Solidity, smart contracts, blockchain infrastructure, and other Web3 fundamentals through a mix of lessons, projects, and hands-on learning.

Whether you're completely new to Web3 or looking to build a stronger foundation, it's a resource worth bookmarking.

Cost: Free

Community: Discord, study groups, events, and developer support.

🔗 LearnWeb3

🌟 Community Finds

One of my favorite things about this series has been seeing people share opportunities, communities, and resources that others might not have discovered otherwise.

AI Tinkerers

Shared by Julien Avezou (@javz).

AI Tinkerers is a global community for people actively building with AI. They host meetups, demo nights, hackathons, workshops, and technical events across hundreds of cities worldwide.

What I like about it is how focused it is on builders. The community is built around sharing working projects, technical workflows, lessons learned, and real implementation details rather than AI hype or marketing.

Whether you're building with foundation models, agentic workflows, open-source models, or no-code AI tools, the focus is the same: show what you're building, explain how it works, and learn from others doing the same.

If you're someone who learns best by seeing what other builders are creating and sharing your own work, this looks like a community worth exploring.

Who it's for: Developers, engineers, researchers, builders, and people actively shipping AI projects

Cost: Free to join (event availability varies by city)

🔗 AI Tinkerers

Claude Corps

Shared by Phinn Markson (@marsonp).

Claude Corps is a new fellowship from Anthropic, CodePath, and Social Finance that places early-career fellows inside mission-driven nonprofits across the United States for a full year.

Rather than learning AI in a classroom, fellows work directly with organizations tackling challenges in areas like education, public health, workforce development, housing, food security, civic services, and more.

There is no degree requirement and no formal coding background is required. The program is looking for people who are already comfortable using AI tools, learn quickly, communicate well, and care about making an impact.

Fellows receive training, mentorship, relocation support if needed, and spend a year helping organizations put AI to work on real problems.

Compensation: $85,000 salary + benefits

Eligibility: 18+, authorized to work in the United States, and less than 2 years of full-time work experience

Application Deadline: July 17, 2026

🔗 Claude Corps

Hacking for Good

Shared by Francis (@francistrdev).

MLH's Global Hack Week is running a special Hacking for Good edition from June 12–18.

Global Hack Week is a week-long online event where participants complete challenges, attend live sessions, learn new technologies, and build projects alongside a global community of developers.

This particular edition is focused on using technology to create projects that have a positive impact.

One reason I wanted to include it is that Global Hack Week tends to be much more approachable than a traditional hackathon. You don't need a team, prior hackathon experience, or even a strong technical background to participate.

Whether you're looking to learn something new, build a small project, or simply meet other developers, it's a good opportunity to get involved.

Dates: June 12-18, 2026

Cost: Free

Who can participate: Anyone, anywhere

🔗 Hacking for Good

Thank you to Julien, Phinn, and Francis for sharing these.

I'd love for this section to keep growing.

If you've come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

One small request: If you're sharing an opportunity, please avoid posting raw URLs directly in the comments. DEV sometimes filters them before I get a chance to see them.

A short description alongside the link makes it much easier for me to review and potentially feature it in a future edition.

👋 Until Next Friday

Before I go, I just want to say thank you.

A few weeks ago, this was just an experiment.

Now people are discovering opportunities through the radar, applying to them, and sharing opportunities, resources, and communities back with the rest of us.

This week alone, the Community Finds section exists because Julien, Phinn, and Francis took the time to share something they thought others might benefit from.

I hope that continues.