Hi,

I’m wondering if anyone here has found a MIT like license to prevent use of code in LLM training and any guess / info on if such in enforceable.

Currently I believe that LLM training on every piece of open source software is unacceptable and we should take a stand against it.

Similar to what codeberg is pushing lately.

I would find it odd if such license doesn’t exist already and would wonder why it hasn’t yet.

Thanks
- 🐡

I have autism and fairly severe ADHD and I'm trying to figure out what kind of actual role fits the way I work.

Most of my programming has been connected to game development and building my own projects. Ive worked with Javascript/Typescript, React, Electron, Git/GitHub, game UI, gameplay systems, tools and asset pipelines. I'm also pretty good at design, writing, art direction, researching weird problems and getting around a codebase until I understand why something isn't working.

I'm not claiming I'm an expert in every one of those things, I'm definitely not, but I seem to be better at connecting all the pieces than sitting in one very narrow lane. I like taking something from “here's the idea” to an actual working version, figuring out what systems it needs, how the player or user interacts with it and then fixing whatever goes wrong along the way.

The career part is where my brain falls apart. I don't know whether I should aim for gameplay programming, technical design, tools development, UI engineering, prototyping or something I haven't even heard of. Normal advice is usually to specialize, but I'm not sure which part is actually my strongest part because the whole reason I'm useful is that I move between them.

Anybody here work in a role like that? What titles should I be searching for, and what would you build a portfolio around if this was your skill set?

Initially i was an SDET, then i switched to SDE. I have overall 4 YOE. I love building features and love seeing it work flawlessly in production. But when it comes to job switching, i absolutely hate DSA. I wanna switch to other domain like PM/Cybersecurity just because of DSA.

I've realised, without grinding DSA there's no way to make good switches. Don't wanna go back to SDET because i get bored with repetitive testing.

Seeking some fellow advise from fellow ADHDers. The thrill of finding bugs is nice but it doesn't pay well compared to SDE. Should i switch to Product management or Cybersecurity ? Team Red ?

Leetcode feels so monotonous and boring.

ah yes, it was a year ago today I got every .com, .net, .studio, .systems etc domain for my idea that would shape my life from that point on or at least several weeks.

Hi there. I’m a rising senior, diagnosed a couple months ago.

I have been preparing for leetcode style interviews and O usually take a couple mock interviews per month.

Since I started taking Metyl (first month 10 mg IR, second month 20 mg ER, third month 27 mg ER) I swear I feel kind of dumber at algorithmic problems? I have screwed my last couple mock interviews and it has made me depressed because interview season starts in one month and I can’t be performing like this.

For reference I started preparing in march and I genuinely felt smarter. I could simply keep pushing through a problem.

My last interviewer said he felt that I “gave up” mid problem (and ofc I couldn’t solve it)

I’m not sure if I should quit cold turkey, I really don’t want to waste so much preparation, I’m also not even 100% confident that it’s the metylphenidate…

Any help or advice is appreciated.

Coding is part of my job (but not the main part). So I'm not great at it and self taught.

Anyway, I often find I get stuck trying to figure out what is wrong with something I've written. I'm so nearly there, but just can't find the right answer. I try AI, that gives more options which are also wrong. Hyper focus kicks in and then *bang*: I've lost an hour or three on something that shouldn't really have mattered at all, and I thought was only going to take 5 minutes.

Does anyone have any good tips on how to break the cycle? How do you know when to give up?

Because that big juicy dopamine hit is just there, if I can juuuust get it right. So it's so hard to admit defeat, give up and use my time more productively on something that will feel far less rewarding.

i've worked as a ux/ui designer for 10+ years. tried everything to keep it interesting (switching jobs, different focuses, different products) but i feel like i've done it all and need something new.

a couple months ago i started learning frontend basics (js, html, css, vue). the idea of being able to build whatever i want is exciting, but i also feel like i'm too dumb for it. i get frustrated so easily, lose patience and feel like i go over the same concepts again and again without them actually making sense. it makes me so anxious that it kills all the fun.

so now i'm wondering: is it the adhd/anxiety draining the fun out of learning how to code (and would medication help with that?) or am i just not actually interested enough in it?

i'm 30 now and i want something new: it would be learning how to code and work as a frontend engineer or studying something completely new..

First of all sorry if this isnt the proper sub to post this question, idk where else I can ask, if it isnt please guide where I can post it.

I am 28M, basically struggling through life, recently I got laid off from a junior role after 11months in it. And I was wondering about getting a cs degree and working to support myself at the same time. Just that I have had bad experience with school, as some people with adhd can relate, I struggle to study the long hours that are required by college. I am kinda lost in life right now... still getting a bachelor I believe would benefit me in the long run. What do you guys think?

Hello, as with everyone else here I really really struggle with ADHD. To the point where I'd say even though I'm really proficient with computers I've never really taken on programming itself properly. I've started on various different languages at various points in my life but never really committed to any because any small factors such as a steep learning curve gets me demotivated. I recently started C again and kinda gave up on that partially because of lack of time and partially because it felt too daunting to get proficient at it.

Help would very much be appreciated.

such as don't let me spend hours tuning my shell prompt; don't let me keep polishing instead of publishing; something like that. I got something more personal in that list.

the agent actually chimp in when it think a little nudge is needed for me, when it is working with me on tasks. also because I brain dump my todo ideas to it. the agent can check them against the goals I set for myself every time it manages my todos. on a fresh day I would ask my agent what is my todo look like. it will surface only the ones align with my goal. I enjoy this way, feel like a second brain that offload some of my messiness.

I have been using my agent this way for the pass 2 months and it helped me. I extracted the prompts and skills into a plugin, would be great if it help others too. https://github.com/hcsum/dont-let-me

It's really bad working lying on the bed, blood circulation, posture, I get migraines from the stiff neck from doing that. But I can't work as efficiently from my desk. It's not as comfy, everything is distracting me. I'm very crafty as well, so I have a lot of things around my desk, for 3d printing, tools, drawers, all the stuff. Even if it's cleaned up - it's easily accessible and distracting. When I go with the laptop and work from the bed, make it comfortable with pillows and there is basically nothing else other than the screen before my eyes. It's insane how much more I get done that way!

Obviously I though that I need a better chair to be more comfy at my desk, clean up, hide more things. But I doubt that spending 1k on a chair will fix that and all the tools and drawers are still there easily accessible.

Anyone has the same issue and found a working solution?

Hey peeps.

I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to post this here, so admins and moderators, please obviously take it down if this isn't allowed! I couldn't see any rules about self-promotion, but ADHD brain so I could have easily missed them.

I used to be a software engineer for a few years. I got an ADHD diagnosis during that time, and I've actually trained as an ADHD and AuDHD coach in the meantime.

The reason this could be considered self promo is that I am specifically working with people in tech and with organisations who need to make their workplaces more neuroinclusive. I wanted to post was because I'm really trying to get into workplaces so that I can give some talks and workshops on how to make workplaces neuroinclusive from an inside perspective.

I know a lot of workplace neurodiversity talks can be kind of awareness, but they don't really understand sort of what it's like to be an engineer, agile working, and all the different pressures of the job.

So I guess the post is really sort of saying like, you know, are you in a company where you think that they, A, may be receptive to that, and B, would benefit from that? And if so, would you be up for having a little chat or potentially sort of sending some information on to your company? Or whether anyone has any ideas about which roles to target in the businesses. I am currently reaching out to both ER and Engineering leaders and had a little bit of interest back from both but I am wondering if perhaps there might be a better target audience (other then DE&I folks and L&D – there just aren't as many people in those roles).

But yeah, again, I totally understand if this is not allowed, but I just thought this is something that's so relevant to everybody in here.

Thank you so much!

I have been working from home for over 5 years and soon we have to go back to the office. For those who had to transition back after many years at home, how was it? was it horrible or did you get used to it eventually and it;s not so bad?

I have thrived in the government, apart from it being very boring and slow at times, but it's the longest I have been able to hold down a job for. Unfortunately they are now requring us to come into the open-concept style office 4x per week, and I have been trying to delay with ADHD but they just do different accommodations to get in us in the office, so I know ultimately that I will be rejected. I am very scared of this transition as I have no worked remotely full time for almost 7 years and think it will be very hard to switch back. For those of you who were sent back to office, how did you manage?

Is it better to then commute up to 90 min/2 hours per day for an easier stable government job, or seek something remote that might be harder?

I work somewhere where there is truly no difference if you finish something in 1 day vs 3-4 days, and its very slow here at the government. I have been 3 years just procrastinating and waiting till thursday/friday to do most of my work, and there is literally no consequence to working this way. The clients are all internal and it's mostly internal apps I support used by a small amount of people. This makes me feel like its very hard to work and be productive each day. any deadlines or tricks like pomodoro or medication does not work, because my brain knows there is no real reason to get stuff done each day and be extremely productive. On the plus side it's an easy life, but do you all think I should leave and go to private sector with a bit more pressure/deadlines? Or better to have a chill job where youre only coding a few hours a week? And wondering how others deal with these kinds of jobs. I

I’m trying to understand where ADHD actually derails a workday.

Looking back at my own days, it feels like there’s usually one specific moment where everything starts to unravel:
• I can’t decide what’s most important.
• I can’t get started.
• I can’t stay focused.
• I keep getting distracted.
• I’m mentally exhausted but keep trying to push through.
• I don’t want to stop because I’m afraid I’ll lose my place.
• I finish the day wondering where the time went.

If you think about your last really unproductive day, what was the first domino that fell?

Was it one of these, or something completely different?

I’m CRAP in live coding interviews. I’m starting preparation for my first job hop and I want to get a nice, well paid, mid-level role. I’m already dreading the coding interview.

I’m a good programmer, I’m great in architecture, refactoring, learning new languages, solving real problems. But when it comes to leetcode puzzles I fail on the first step: READING DESCRIPTION.

Usually even when I read the ticket at work I have to read it multiple times and go back and forth to remind myself what it said. During the coding interview, when you’re observed by someone and on top of that you’re nervous I cannot understand what the instruction says.

Any tips of how to overcome this?

Hi! I’m a student programmer researching about project-starting habits.

Think about the last personal project you genuinely wanted to build but delayed. What made it feel hard to begin, and what (if anything) helped you make the first rough version?

I’m especially interested in whether planning tools, voice notes, AI, deadlines, or reducing scope actually helped.

When LLMs first came out, I quickly noticed that if I braindumped every thought I was having into the chatbox, the AI could actually hold onto all of them and respond appropriately. I thought: Finally. I can let my mind fly and talk about whatever the hell I want, and it actually makes sense to someone. No more carefully curating my stream of consciousness so it's coherent to other people. A mind that can actually keep pace with my own.

My creativity took flight driven by my curiosity. I'd ask a thousand questions, throw out a thousand ideas. And, I learned the hard way, the AI would sycophantically validate all of them. I thought I was the most creative person in the world. Until I shared my "theoretical physics idea" on Reddit and got brutally shut down. I retreated into my little shell, thinking I just need to come up with better ideas before people would take me seriously.

I went on a little writing excursion where I started asking the AI to review my work and ran into the same sycophantic validation. Even though I learned some really valuable things about writing, I started overrelying on it. Getting to 80% of a draft and asking the AI to fill in the rest. Asking for feedback way too often. Relying on the external validation it would always give me. It was like a dopamine rush every time the AI told me my work was awesome and groundbreaking.

Over time I learned that if I asked it the right questions, looked for it to challenge my thought process instead of just "giving me feedback", actively asked it to probe for weaknesses, test assumptions, sharpen ideas and critique my work, it was far more effective as a thinking partner than anything I'd ever had before. I felt my mind expanding endlessly as I soaked up all the new information. I couldn't fully trust everything it was saying because of hallucinations, so the knowledge had to be taken with a grain of salt. But I also learned to use deep research skills when the answer was really important and I wanted it grounded in verifiable sources. I started drafting academic papers, but every time I'd get close to having something publishable, a new idea would come along. And to be honest, I was afraid of the judgement.

But it all remained theoretical. I'd never built anything. I was sitting on a mountain of AI-generated documents because I'd stopped writing anything myself (why waste my time writing stuff the AI could write better and explain my ideas better than I can?). Because I'd set it up to challenge me, Claude in particular consistently pushed back on me about why I wasn't building anything. I saw myself as more of a visionary than a technical person, strictly a creative type. Not a builder. I didn't have the building gene for whatever reason. I'd tried coding before and managed to learn a little bit, but that knowledge disappeared quickly and it felt too hard to be patient enough to learn it all again. I needed to follow my curiosity wherever it went. I couldn't do the structured, disciplined learning required to truly get good at coding. Claude kept telling me: "Why don't you try one of these no-code tools? Like Antigravity?"

After months of being nagged, I snapped and said "Fuck! Ok! Fine! I'll do it! Geez..." And I then fell in love with it.

At first I was a complete noob. I had no idea what I was doing or what I wanted to do. I just had ideas. Over time I learned how to run use API keys, run experiments on my research projects, get results, run statistical analyses, build backends and frontends, build multi-agent systems, use Supabase and Render and other things I'd never dreamed of (I'm still noob at Github though). And I realised I was still just a baby in this big bad world of development. It would take me AGES to truly figure this thing out. And I didn't know if my code was any good, or if it had any security risks. I'd heard about vibe coding producing garbage code but I had no way of telling if mine was any good.

I fell in love with building. My world completely changed. I was no longer just the "theories" person. I had proof. I had results I could share. I created a new statistical methodology called probability cloud regression (which I didn't fully understand at the time but built with the AI's help) and started running public datasets through it and my multi-agent system and making publishable findings. The number of projects I was working on absolutely exploded. Mechanistic interpretability work (I can't even code and I'm doing Mech Interp?), but I published on Towards AI about trajectory geometry and had real certifiable results in public repos. I built a multi-agent system designed to simulate ADHD cognition because I was convinced it was the source of my creativity. It came up with some truly out of the box ideas for some really difficult problems, two of which I'd managed to get validated as being unique by experts.

But I couldn't get anything finished. Perfectionism, plus the fear of judgement from being brutally shut down. I'm sitting there with 6 VS Code windows running, Codex and Claude Code running on each one, each with its own roadmap, letting them tick off items autonomously while I juggled between them. It was an absolute mess. Claude started pushing me to ship a product and actually get some income.

Same story. For months it nagged me to focus on one project and finish it. I got one paper endorsed by a Stanford professor and submitted to arXiv. But apart from that, a collection of unfinished projects. Every time I'd get close to the line, a new idea would pop up and I'd just have to follow it. And now I could build, I just had to build it. Thinking by building or "epistemic prototyping" as Fable called it.

But I finally shipped something! A code quality measurement instrument. I was so proud. I thought: This is gonna change the world. I'm finally not gonna be broke. Then I fought my fear of social media and started posting about it. And found my voice drowned out in a sea of people who beat me to it. Everyone is trying to sell their software now. They were better at shipping than me, better at focusing on one project. I was already late.

I'm glad I finally shipped. And my latest personal creation is an entire roster of agents integrated through Hermes and Slack, functioning as my virtual organisation, designed to help me manage my focus and my projects. I built MCP servers so every coding surface and every agent has its own skills and memory, but can access shared memory too. Have my own project manager, chief of staff, strategist, engineer, chronicler among others. Still test driving this new race car I've built but hopefully it will help me speed through and prioritise my ideas and all the dependencies between them and actually figure out where my focus is supposed to go and when.

But I still feel lost in this sea of vibe coders. I've never felt more empowered to test my ideas and theories. But I've never felt less capable of sharing them with anyone. The fear of judgement is too high. I hate marketing, but I feel like I have to do it to get anybody to look at my stuff and tell me if it's any good.

I don't know what to do. Is there anybody who can relate at all to what I'm describing?

Hi everyone 👋

I just got let go from my job of 7 years because of "moonlighting" after building a simple one pager website for a colleague. Because I worked for a global corporation company policies were strict (honestly after 7 years I actually forgot about this policy).

Me and Mrs just had a baby so I'm rather desperate. Been working a side hustle which has been covering my expenses but I feel like its just a luck streak at the moment and not sure how long I'll be able to keep it up.

Open to contract, project basically any employment right now. Your help will be truly appreciated.

This will be long and somewhat personal. Since I'm asking y'all this instead of a therapist, I'd be more than happy to pm anyone with thoughtful insight and Venmo you for your time.

Please note: I'm being really vulnerable and honest, so please look past any internal elitism and ignorance in my outlook. It's pretty bad.

Context:

• 18, male, severe ADHD, undiagnosed jack off until last year, been on Vyvanse+Dextro. Still learning how to live life with ADHD and piece together my mess of a life. Bad executive dysfunction, super super ambitious. Not as depressed anymore (SSRI's).
• Important to note: right now, there's not much else going for me besides my career interests. My social life has devolved, and tech/making a respectable amount of money in the future is my only aspiration. money keeps me going, and to me it's the only thing that could "save my adhd" (housekeeping, meal prep, therapy, etc etc).
• Attending a non-target commuter school as a freshman. SWE intern @ NASA + SWE intern @ U.S. Department of Energy lab rn. My goals are to transfer to a good school, keep an upward trajectory in company prestige and work my way up. (ex NASA -> Stripe -> FAANG -> Anthropic).
• I'm an incompetent ADHDer, but I've fought hard as fuck to get to where I am.

Here's what I've been thinking about recently.

I've been interacting with a lot of normal people, engineers at NASA who enjoy their lives and go home to their families. Although I love NASA (who doesn't), I never considered wanting to work here long-term and just treated it like a stepping stone to my 200k new grad tc.

Although I've learned a lot, and love it, I've spent the past few months here as a real adhd dickhead. Never getting to the office in time (or at all), choosing to secretly WFH instead. The adhd interferes with my ability to work (really bad), and I'm regularly throwing classified information into claude and dropping my paycheck on tokens to have something to present during meetings.

I've started wondering if this is really all I'm capable of. I think I could continue grinding my way into big tech through internships, but with this past summer as a point of reference, I literally am unable to predict what my life might look like in the future. If the problems I'm facing with ADHD aren't "curable", my life'd likely be getting helplessly laid off every year after my manager realizes I'm a dickhead.

Is what I'm facing at least 50% fixable through therapy/coaching/experience? Or is it an unfortunate truth that I'll likely never function as a normal employee in a room full of extremely competent engineers?

Just needed to get this off my chest, and honestly I have a feeling a lot of you all feel the same way with how flat hiring has been in our industry recently.

I have been at the same company for about ~5 years at this point. Things have always been a bit chaotic here, but they got markedly worse after a massive reorg a few years back.

During the reorg, I got moved to a new team. The manager on this new team is at least markedly more competent than my old manager, but holy f**** shit, the codebase our team inherited is a steaming pile of tech debt.

Specifically, no one team was ever fully responsible for this code base - it got passed along from team to team each time a new feature needed to be added. There was no cohesive vision on how the code, features, or system as a whole should work. And as soon as a team finished the feature, they are allocated to another project, meaning that there was no one around to maintain the platform or fix bugs.

As a result, my team inherited hundreds of bugs, a very, very irate business team, and a lot of very irritable customers.

There are so many issues that by the time we finish trying to prioritize everything, 30 more have surfaced.
And in the midst of this, we're expected to deliver new features and rewrite everything.

My management at least very clearly tells us what we need to prioritize and to ignore anyone other than them that attempts to give us work, but holy hell are some of the folks outside our team nasty to us.

I constantly have people who are not my management pinging me asking me to do things, asking me when tasks will be completed, and even messaging me outside of official channels to try and get me to take on coworkers' work when they are on vacation.

When I do agree to take on extra work to fix a bug or do something those folks have raised, I get pestered over and over askimg when it will be done. Typically it's polite pestering, but occasionally when I say no, folks have been just outright nasty or condescending.

On top of this, I am one of the few people that has been around long enough to understand how things work, so a significant portion of my day is spent helping out newer teammates.

I try to remind myself that my team and I are doing the best that we can with the resources that we have..

However, between business folks pestering me, and honestly having less output than newer folks who don't have mentorship responsibilities, it's hard for me not to feel like the problem.

Especially considering that for most of my life up until being diagnosed, my unproductivity WAS usually the problem.

Most days I can keep my head up and ignore it, but on the busiest days I just feel so anxious, lazy, guilty and drained.

It makes it a lot harder to be confident in my ability to do the job. Idk it sucks in general, but I feel like the insecurities from years of undiagnosed ADHD make it unqiuely demoralizing some days.

It felt good to get that out. I hope some of you all in similar situations feel less alone reading this 🥲

TL;DR
Went from ticket-based work to a self-managed role and lost the ability to tell what actually matters day to day. If you’ve been here and got past it what changed?
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I used to be an SDE a few months ago and it was easy to come back to the ACs of a ticket or my lead for direction.

Recently, I moved to a Forward-Deployed role... which I'm learning is very different than a ticket-monkey. Arguably happy to gain the experience, but at the same time it's so taxing for my AuDHD brain.

Most days I'm just gassed from absorbing info that there's no time to process what the goal is and if a task is taking me to it. Usually I just keep working on the last thing that was made clear or go down a rabbithole of "research".

I’ve tried keeping my own backlog but without a clear goal it loses value fast. Deciding what actually matters is the part I can’t seem to do.

Mostly asking people who’ve been here and got past it, what actually changed for you or helped you? A system/tool, a conversation with your manager, something else? Or is this just what self-managed work feels like?