DEV Community: Super Dev

AI can't solve this coding problem.

Super Dev — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 12:52:54 +0000

Recently, I found myself working on a personal project that involved using FFmpeg WASM to transcode WebM into HLS. Along the way, I learned the hard way that AI still can’t be fully relied upon for truly innovative coding. Essentially, if you’re working on a problem that hasn’t been widely explored, don’t depend on AI to generate a complete, working solution.

My goal was to render animations on an HTML canvas and stream that canvas directly to YouTube—all from the browser, with no backend involved.

I spent weeks on this: searching for references, reading FFmpeg documentation, and looking for existing projects (I found only one). To a large extent, I relied on ChatGPT to suggest references and guide me on what to search for and where to look. I also prompted it to generate code snippets for specific functionalities. In every case, the generated code didn’t work.

I then switched to Claude via GitHub, but that didn’t produce working code either. However, Claude did offer a valuable insight: it suggested eliminating a transcoding step I had been struggling with and recommended streaming to YouTube directly in a different format. While its code still didn’t work, that shift in direction was crucial. It led me toward an approach that required more effort but proved to be significantly more reliable and efficient.

From this experience, here’s my conclusion: AI is highly effective for generating code in well-established domains such as real estate management systems, landing pages, dashboards, and similar projects with abundant reference implementations. However, when it comes to complex, cutting-edge problems, you still have to do the heavy lifting yourself.

I’m Building for the Real MVPs of Our Economy, SMEs

Super Dev — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:59:51 +0000

This is a submission for the DEV Weekend Challenge: Community

The Community

I built this for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), the silent engines of our economy.

They create jobs.
They power innovation.
They give many of us our first clients, first paychecks, and first real-world experience as developers.

And yet… most of them struggle to survive.

The biggest challenges they face:

💰 Limited access to funding

🎯 Difficulty finding consistent customers

🏗 Infrastructure and operational constraints

If SMEs thrive, the entire ecosystem thrives, including us as developers.

So instead of just building for other developers…
I decided to build for them.

What I Built

I created a web-based platform that helps SMEs:

🔎 Discover funding opportunities

🤝 Connect with potential customers

🌱 Position their businesses for sustainable growth

This idea didn’t come from a random brainstorm, it was born out of real conversations in a startup founders’ community I belong to. Many of them are actively advising me on features they need.

This isn’t theory.
It’s being shaped by the people it’s meant to serve.

Demo

An MVP is already live:
👉 https://good-name-ng.web.app

I’d love your feedback, especially from founders, developers, and ecosystem builders.

Code

You can explore the code here:
👉 https://github.com/nwanna-joseph

How I Built It

The MVP is powered by:

🔥 Firebase (authentication, backend services)

🖼 Vue (frontend framework)

☁️ AWS (infrastructure support)

The goal was to move fast, validate quickly, and iterate based on real user feedback.

Google’s 16 KB Rule Explained: Step-by-Step Fixes for Legacy React Native Projects

Super Dev — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 05:10:37 +0000

Google has made support for 16KB page-size devices compulsory across all Android apps. This means that every developer — whether maintaining an existing app or submitting a new one — must update their app’s React Native, Android Gradle, and build configurations to ensure full compatibility with the new memory alignment standard. Apps built with older SDKs or outdated React Native versions may fail to install or crash on newer Android devices running the latest system images.

To help teams transition smoothly, Here is a complete article (
https://josephnn.gumroad.com/l/16kb-support-step-by-step-fixes ) that walks you through every step required to modernize your React Native project — from upgrading dependencies like react and react-native, to aligning Gradle and Kotlin versions, enabling the new React Native architecture, and configuring key files such as build.gradle, settings.gradle, and MainApplication.kt. It also explains why these updates are critical: Google’s 16KB requirement improves memory efficiency, binary stability, and performance across ARM and x86 architectures, ensuring that your app remains functional, secure, and ready for future Android releases.

By following the guide, developers can confidently update their projects, pass Google Play’s new compliance checks, and future-proof their apps for the next generation of Android devices. You’ll learn everything needed to make your legacy React Native app compatible with Google’s new 16KB page size requirement. The guide is divided into clear, practical chapters that walk you through each step — starting with how to confirm whether your app currently supports 16KB devices, then moving on to updating your React and React Native dependencies to ensure full compatibility. You’ll also learn how to update key Android build files (build.gradle, settings.gradle, gradle.properties, and more) to align with the latest Gradle and Kotlin versions, and finally, how to update your iOS folder with the proper configuration for 16KB support. By the end, you’ll have a fully updated project that builds cleanly, installs correctly, and runs seamlessly on all modern Android and iOS devices.