I'm 40 years old and have been in IT for 20 years, the last 10 as a senior web developer. I'm completely burnt out and want to step away from work for a year, maybe two. We live in Canada, so healthcare is a non-issue here in a couple of ways: core medical care is publicly funded regardless of employment status, and on top of that, I'd be added to my wife's employer insurance for dental, vision, and prescriptions while I'm not working.

On the financial side, we have no mortgage, no kids, spend around $35,000/year, and have $1.1 million in investable assets also her income alone also covers our household expenses roughly twice over. Would you take on the risk of stepping away for a year or two in this situation? I know it might sound like an obvious yes, but I don't want this to unintentionally turn into permanent retirement.

My plan is to try freelancing and explore building something of my own with AI. I just don't have the energy to pursue that while working full-time — honestly, I can barely keep up with my actual job right now, let alone anything extra. The downside here of course is the opportunity cost on giving up a $130,000 salary.

so currently i'm learning web dev and decided to start building some projects with pure javascript before moving to the frameworks .

knowing that i already learned some react basics and build the simple projects that are listed in the freecodecamp tutorial video . i tried back then to pause before the solution to every problem and did fairly well on applying what i was learning but i never build something big like a e-commerce website with it or a blog or anything that requires databases even though i know mongodb , mysql , oracle databases and previously made a e-commerce website using php which i forgot btw .

i understand the important concepts in javascript lfor example asynchronous operations , objects ,Modules , destructing.

i really need advise like my goal right now is to be able to comfortably build a any web application that requires both front-end and backend .

i really don't enjoy front-end much as much as the code is functional i don't really take great detail in it . although i want to get into machine learning and automation after web dev as it is what i really like and enjoy.

i really need your advice programmers !

Please dont be rude im looking for guidance in the comments.

Im about to graduate form CS and i feel like i don’t know how to do anything to be honest.
I just know Java and C because of my college classes. The projects are always half made and sure i get it we learn to design and computer architecture, but if you ask me to build an API i have no clue how to.

If you tell me to build a website i have no clue how to start. Yes i can do everything with claude code like everyone else but that is not the point.

I really want to learn how to develop. How can i even start doing that? I read about junior job interviews where they are asked leet code (yes i can do this) and then to write an API and im like…am i supposed to learn that at college or they learned it by themselves?

Guys, I am a Software Engineer student, I am very familiar with all the tech I use in my projects, I can explain them very fluently, but with the practice of ai, if anybody says to write react code, I can do it for sure, but I feel more nervous than before,

For interviews at a company nowadays, should I be practicing syntax and all,

It feels like, getting tested for something which I am expected to abstract to fast up for real work

I really need some experience advising me.

Hi everyone,

I'm honestly feeling overwhelmed and could really use some guidance.

I'm a fresher who recently joined a startup as a Data Analyst intern. I expected to work on SQL, Python, dashboards, and analysis, but my very first task is to design and build a complete production data pipeline.

The requirement is to combine webhooks for real-time data capture with API-based data pulling for historical data.

The problem is that the company has 10 years of historical data, and the third-party API they use has strict rate limits. Because of that, a full data pull takes around 3–4 days. New data is also being generated every day, so the pipeline has to handle both historical backfills and ongoing real-time updates.

The biggest issue is that I've never built anything like this before.

I don't come from a data engineering background. I've spent the last few days reading blogs, watching videos, and using AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to understand how these systems work and to draft an architecture. But I don't want to build something just because AI suggested it—I want to understand why it's designed that way.

Right now I feel like I'm trying to solve a senior-level problem with beginner-level knowledge.

I'm willing to put in the work. I just don't know what the right learning path is.

If you were in my position:

Where would you start?

What concepts should I learn first?

Are there any books, courses, YouTube playlists, or GitHub projects that helped you understand production data pipelines?

How would an experienced data engineer approach a problem like this?

What mistakes should I avoid?

I know this is a broad question, but even if you could point me toward the right resources or learning roadmap, it would mean a lot.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.