As an Prologue
I have just graduated as a computer engineer, since I was 8 years old programming and creating new stuff has been both my passion and go-to resort, after graduation -out of a bit of naivety- I had many false assumptions of how a career in computer science is like, I made some mistakes and I learned from them. after a year working as a backend developer ,I have put together a list of what lessons I learned that I didn’t know the year before.
The Good list
1- Deployment knowledge: Believe it or not , whenever you’re deploying a new app copying and pasting the recommended deployment script from the documentation and/or chatgpt won’t be the most efficient way of deploying the app, Trust it but understand it’s limitations and how to overcome them.
2- Don’t overengineer stuff: When building new features, I used to overthink the architecture so much that I’d lose sight of the actual functionality. This made it easy to get off track and miss deadlines. Focus on what needs to be delivered first, and iterate later.
3- Keep on learning: I get it — once you check out from work, procrastination kicks in. I’m guilty of it too. But if you stop learning, you start becoming replaceable. With how fast AI and automation are evolving, staying stagnant isn’t an option.
4- Don’t rely too heavily on ai agents: Using LLMs to assist with tight-deadline, unfamiliar features is tempting — and often helpful. But be careful. They can generate code that works “on paper” but fails in real scenarios. For example: we needed to create a secondary auto-incrementing integer ID alongside a UUID primary key. The framework didn’t support this out of the box. ChatGPT suggested using a unique integer field and just getting the max value, then adding one. This creates a race condition when multiple workers add entries concurrently — a serious issue. Ironically, even the StackOverflow post the model pulled from criticized this approach. Lesson: double-check everything.
5- Don’t stress yourself now: Keep on grinding, but don’t be afraid to do mistakes as we aren’t perfect, also compare yourself only to your-previous-self.