Hardware is hard! Because of certifications and organizations like the WEEE. There are many different acts for electronic devices world wide. In Germany you have to spend about $ 20k per month even if you did not ship any product yet - just for regulations, certificates and things you have to register for to be able to sell a electronic device.

That makes hardware hard! The manufacturing and packaging is the easy part.

I'm working on a no upload, no account, no server-side preprocessing online viewer for schematics, PCB layouts, 3D boards and BOMs called ECAD Forge -> https://ecadforge.app/

Great article! I did build a open source one years ago: https://andrefiedler.de/open-source-co2-ampel/

It's on my desk and I can confirm, opening the window if it gets orange helps a lot with thinking.

Some days in the morning it shows red and I barely can't think or get awake. Opening the window and it changes instantly.

quote: "GitHub-hosted runners are available with Ubuntu Linux, Windows, or macOS operating systems." source: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/runners/github-h...

I unterstand the reasons, but I don't think so. I have experience in software development over 20 years now and still developing software daily. Nowadays it's nearly 100℅ AI written. It looks good and works. Sure, you have to guide the AI. But this can be done with custom skills, angent files, code quality guards test cases and so on. Maybe the code looks at the end not as I would have written it, maybe something is too complex implemented. But that's true for large developer teams also. At the end it's way faster and it works. I think, everyone who does not adapt to this new workflow is left behind in professional development soon.

Do you still need to review the code? LLMs generate code too quickly for humans to keep up.

Yes, but I can not review all anymore. It's too much code. But I at least "scroll" over all the code and check if I can spot something obvious. But you can not hold up anymore. I guess, you have to trust and react fast if something goes wrong. It has become more stressful.

As someone with 20+ years of experience as well, can we agree that, if you're doing this for any code that really matters, that this is fundamentally irresponsible and, in some circumstances, unethical?

Suppose you were legally liable for your code misbehaving in a way that led to harm. Would you behave differently?

And do you do this by choice? Or is this the case of an employer forcing you to vibecoded while skipping your due diligence as the author of that code?

It depends on. There's of course code that must be deeply checked. And all shades of grey. I guess it needs experience to know when to do what. Regarding to be forced or not... There are many kinds of pressure, features, deadlines... Of course, I learned how to deal with them and when to speak up or not. My boss is paying me the AI abo. He wants to get things done as fast and as good as possible. That's his job. We have to make sure to not keep behind. Other companies bring out new features faster and faster. Sadly, that's how the world goes round. I personally would take it slower... but seems there's only one way as longs as there are a few that go as fast as possible, you have to keep up.

Do you? Is shipping features faster really going to make or break a business?

I know that's not your call but IME it's simply not true: rarely do products win by simply being faster than their competition at delivering more features to market.

But the AI age has led to a panic among leaders as FOMO has taken over the industry. I can only hope one day that fever breaks.

I'm not optimistic.

It depends on the marked. When I did the Point-of-Sale software and Couponing stuff, it was not that important. Now I'm in a business, where marketing needs the features to sell consumer products. At least, that's what they tell all. So we have to deliver.

Yeah that's just the FOMO I'm talking about. Frankly, if your product is driven primarily by marketing you're already screwed.

Anyway, we're in this sh.t together so stay strong, keep your head up, and try not to compromise your ethics. The industry is seriously f.cked right now and it's going to be a rough ride for a while...

That's cool. Could you share some concrete examples of your successes?

Otherwise I quickly did some smaller projects lately, mainly AI driven. Just take a look at my list here: https://github.com/SunboX?tab=repositories

One I currently working on (privately) is ecadforge.app

The last ones, I worked on in Industry are retail7 apps, Migros Self scanning client, EDEKA, LIDL and so on customer facing apps.

My private interest is more in electronics.

Ah interesting. We are in very different domains haha. I had to search a lot of terms.

Thanks for sharing!

I'm working on a no upload, no account, no server-side preprocessing online viewer for schematics, PCB layouts, 3D boards and BOMs called ECAD Forge -> https://ecadforge.app/

https://eggbot.app/ an app for the widely OpenSource available EggBots to draw easter eggs. :)

I second this ... using a Google Pixel 8 I have exactly the same issues.

Yes, you can pass an image (or more) and Midjourney will use it in the picture. You are also able to control the level of "creativity" Midjourney has when creating the image.