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Don't Make the Same Mistake I Did
I have plenty of regrets, and one of them is not starting ...
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@georgekobaidze Sir, you already know my first technical article but this one is latest:
A humbling reminder that passing tests can lie
I'm Not on the DEV Team. I Still Debugged Their Missing Badges From Public Code. (And My First Test Was Wrong.)
Have A Great Day!
Thanks for sharing, I'll read it! However this one's dedicated only to first articles and first-time writers. 🙏
No worries Sir. I'll be just glad for you to read it.
Have A Great Day!
This is actually great. I'm happy you're finding these issues. That's the first step towards making this platform better.👏
Thank you for this ✊.
I built using AI a tool that can help send message locally from a device to another.
I'm very proud because I'm trying to understand better how to create automation tools to help devs
today I did my second post related to Cthrone my project:
dev.to/fiwon123/cthrone-v0191-2jio
Though this clearly isn't your first post, is it?😄
Not the first one, but my post I considere more. I started posting on the 25th of last week just letting you know.
My first one was more a experience then something useful: dev.to/fiwon123/my-experience-usin...
Really interesting concept. I wonder how you'll solve the "not in the same network" problem. Well done!👏
Ty very much, rly appreciate that 🙂
Well, this takes me back more than ten years.
kenwalger.com/blog/css/numeric-inp...
And wow, I had some typos and grammatical errors in there. 🤦♂️No editors, no AI to check things, just the ramblings of someone wanting to start a tech(ish) blog.
First on Dev.to: dev.to/kenwalger/indexing-in-mongodb
More typos and grammatical errors.
I've learned a lot over the years, not just in technology, but in the content generation and publication process.
Great article, it really shows how much difference a well-placed index can make.
It took me back to when I first started working with databases. For the first few weeks, I had no idea indexes even existed. Then I was implementing a CRUD operation, and one of the developers told me, "Hey, you can use an index there."
I looked it up, and the article I found said indexes make queries faster. My first thought was: OK, then why don't we put them everywhere? So I googled exactly that and learned about the trade-off: slower writes. Every insert or update also has to update every index on the table.
That's when I got curious about what an index actually looks like under the hood. In PostgreSQL, the default is a B-tree. It keeps the data sorted like a sorted array, so lookups and range scans are fast, but it splits the data into pages arranged as a tree. That way an insert only touches one leaf page instead of shifting everything around. Seeing that design made the whole read-vs-write trade-off click for me.
I ended up reading about indexes for the rest of the day. Good old days 😄
A truly heartening gesture! One need not be an expert to share valuable knowledge. I sincerely admire your generosity in encouraging budding writers and offering them your time. Such kindness makes a community flourish. Much appreciated!
Thank you! I’m here doing what I can to help the community.🫡
I started this blog a few months ago but in reality the thought crossed my mind more than a year ago. I found it so hard to start because I didn't know where and I thought that my articles would be kind of useless as a beginner, I even forced myself to write about something but didn't really work. At a certain point I learned about Windows permissions dev.to/encryptedscenes/windows-isn..., got so confused with terminologies, lists, etc. and I thought I could explain it in an easier way and this was my spark. This was, however, not my first post because, since I'm interested in so many things and I'm still exploring, I thought it would be kind of random to just talk about a different topic every day that aren't or don't seem related every time without explaining why. So I wrote a relatively short post to explain my journey dev.to/encryptedscenes/the-beginni.... After that, you're right, it's getting easier to write posts
I loved this article. People really underestimate how tricky Windows can be, just because it's known as the more user-friendly option compared to Linux.
Your points really resonate with me. I learned system administration back when I was a student, and Windows was sometimes even trickier than Linux. At the core level, I'd say Linux is more intuitive, and more things just make sense.
Not to mention PowerShell. I still haven't fully grasped it. It feels kind of weird to me.
Great article, thanks for sharing!
By the way, I also checked out the actual first article on your profile, and it's really good too. You write about cybersecurity and similar topics, which I find fascinating.
I'm planning to write a separate article featuring people who've shared their work with me here, with links to their first articles. Which one would you like me to include: this one or your actual first one?
Thank you for your feedback!
PowerShell should be "easier" because of the structure of commands (verb-noun) but for some reasons I always need to search for commands on the Internet or on Notion because I can't remember them. Not to mention PS modules. At the moment I haven't really practiced it yet, just learned it on the HTB Academy
I'd be fine with you choosing whichever you like or fits best your article's theme, but I'd choose the Windows one, it was the one that I first thought about and means more to me
Looking forward to reading your article!
Using Notion as a "cheat sheet" is really relatable.
Great insights, thanks for sharing those details! And keep writing, your style is really catchy and interesting.
Thank you!
"If it was interesting to you, it'll be interesting to someone else" is the line every hesitant first-time writer needs to hear. As someone who only started writing here this year, the thing that surprised me most is how kind and specific the feedback is. People don't just say "nice post", they add the tip you missed. Promising to personally read every first article is a really generous way to lower the barrier. Hope you get flooded with submissions!
Thanks! I really hope so. I want this to reach more and more people.
Thanks for encouraging! I am new here. I was searching for a community to belong too, so here I am! Next week I will publish my first article and since you promise to read, I am looking forward for my first reader😀
Hey fellow .NET dev! I’m looking forward to reading it! Take your time! Make it special💥
Here it is, as promised! :)
dev.to/yonka/modernizing-yonkadev-...
Promise delivered! You're clearly someone who lives up to expectations, and that's a valuable habit.
Now, the article itself: for a first article, I was surprised by how detailed and informative it is. So many points felt relatable.
First, as a fellow .NET developer, I know how hard it is to reach for anything other than .NET. It's our comfort zone, or happy place, where everything just feels easy. But we're software engineers first, and we should be comfortable across languages and frameworks. That's actually why most of my personal projects are in JS and Python rather than .NET... I gotta fix that though 😄
I really appreciate that you see it this way too. Good engineers don't get hung up on whatever stack they're handed, they just figure it out. And AI has made that easier than ever.
Copilot CLI was another relatable part. I won a hackathon with it, so it holds a special place in my heart, even though I mostly use Claude these days. It exceeded my expectations when I used it early this year, and I'm sure it's only gotten better since.
I also like how you walk through every step you took to reach your goal. The rubber duck agent idea is a great one.
And by the way, the website looks great. I'm a big fan of the minimalist design.
Keep writing, you're good at it, very very good!👏
Wow, Giorgi! Thank you so much for taking the time to read the article and share such thoughtful feedback! 😊
I had to smile at the .NET comfort zone part. I know exactly what you mean! And now you've made me curious about your Copilot CLI hackathon experience. 😄
I'm also happy you mentioned the rubber duck agent idea. It's something I want to explore further.
Your encouragement means a lot, especially as this is my first technical article on dev.to. There is definitely more to come!
And thank you for keeping your promise to read it! 🤗
You kept your promise, so who am I not to do the same? 😄
I'm glad my feedback was helpful to you.
And actually, that rubber duck idea is so interesting, it can make a great article only by itself.🦆
As for my Copilot experience, here it is: dev.to/georgekobaidze/metal-birds-...
Here's my first article (as a computer science student):
dev.to/fatimaaqaisar/what-my-termi...
Documented a little experiment I did to learn about network protocols before I had taken a computer networks course.
I'd really appreciate if you'd take some time to read. Thanks!
@fatimaaqaisar absolutely loved the article. It's technical and, at the same time, it's so interesting to follow through and read.
The reason is simple: it expresses your curiosity. Your ability to always ask the most important question: "why?"
That question is something that should always be asked, no matter what we're dealing with, not only in our industry, but in life in general. We should take absolutely nothing for granted. Absolutely love your mindset.
One of the parts that caught my attention was this:
Unsigned makes much more sense to me, since I can't think of any use for a negative TTL. I'm also surprised that slipped through in such a carefully structured and thoroughly reviewed document. Nice catch, by the way. Great attention to detail!
As for the TCP three-way handshake, I was literally about to suggest a separate article on it, and then I read your note at the end saying pretty much the same thing. You already have good writer's instincts!
This topic is extremely important for every developer to understand, because literally everything runs on it. I see more and more people skimming over it and taking it for granted, which is a really bad mistake. The moment you run into a complex problem, you have no idea where to even start. Abstractions are great because they make everything faster and easier, but we should still dig into what's going on behind the scenes.
Great job, and keep writing!
Thank you so much for such thoughtful feedback! I'm actually halfway through a Computer Networks course at this point, and most of the things I wrote in that article make far more sense now that I understand the bigger picture haha. And Ikr TTL shouldn't be negative! It was interesting to see that the inconsistency made it into the document in the first place.
I originally wrote it out of curiosity, but also partly to see whether I could actually write a technical article. I never ended up following up with the TCP handshake one, but I guess now would be the perfect time to pick it up again :)
Thanks again for the encouraging response. It really means a lot!
And yes, curiosity really is such a valuable quality. There's just so much to learn and discover.
Absolutely. We're never going to run out of things to learn and discover, so curiosity is the way to go!
cooking... in mind.
I appreciate this initiative.
Thank you!
This landed at the right moment, because we published our first article on DEV about an hour ago and were not sure it belongs here. It is a research note rather than a tutorial: what an AI agent should be allowed to do at three in the morning when nobody is awake to approve it, with sources and a few nights from our lab’s own notes. No code, no walkthrough, just the question and how we answered it. Our version of the fear was less “is it good enough” and more “is it technical enough for this place”. If anyone wants to tell us whether that kind of writing has a home on DEV, it is at dev.to/meho_ai/what-are-the-office... and we would take the feedback seriously.
Strong piece. Reframing the question from "when can the agent act" to "what operation, under whose identity" is sharp, and the lab stories make it believable. The point about guardian agents (one model grading another) is well argued too.
Thanks for sharing this!
Thanks a lot for checking it out:)
@georgekobaidze So much of this post resonates with me. I'd love for you to give my first article a read: dev.to/rupaligauravaram/i-built-a-...
I've been meaning to consistently write technical blogs, short, long, different kinds, but for months I felt like I was still honing my skills and didn't feel ready. I wrote about some topics I'm passionate about but had no readers and kinda gave up a lil. I've now restarted with the sole purpose of writing consistently.
A week ago, I built myself a prompt generator using a simple python script that picks a data science topic and writing constraints for me. It's now Day 4, and I would love some feedback. I'll admit my posts sound awkward and unnatural, but I'm persisting through this discomfort so I can write more freely over the coming days:))
This is awesome, Rupali. I love the idea of building a prompt generator and challenging yourself to write every day. It tells me you enjoy pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, and I respect that, because not many people can do it.
It might feel unnatural and awkward at first, but trust me, the more you do it, the better you'll get. Then, out of nowhere, it starts to feel natural and your readership takes off like crazy. Just stay stubborn and persistent. I went through the same thing when I started writing regularly, and it worked like a charm.
I'd gladly join in, but I have so much planned already that it's kind of impossible right now.😄 Let me know when you do the next one, though! I've never done a 30-day challenge and it sounds exciting. I absolutely love putting myself in situations where I feel the pressure to deliver.
Great work! Keep it going!👏
Thank you for your response @georgekobaidze !! I'll be sure to let you know when I do another challenge like this. Thanks again, your post has been very encouraging😄
(if you ever want try this challenge in your free time, you can just clone my python script, add your topics, set of rules and you get a unique prompt generator of your own: github.com/Rupali-Gauravaram/dev-p...)
Thank you! I'll keep that in mind! I'm glad this post helped and encouraged you!😊
Hi @georgekobaidze! I posted just today after joining this platform!
Please feel free to leave a review. My First Post
This is a great first post. A nice way to start your writing journey! So many good points you've touched upon.
First of all, I totally agree that most of the professors are just overrated wannabes who pretend to know how industry really works (sorry, not sorry). But I've see a few of them who even admitted that I knew much more even back then when I was still chasing my bachelor's degree, and I respect them just for that 😄
Second of all, you're absolutely spot on, when you say AI isn't just another autocomplete tool. It's something much bigger and more powerful and sooner we realize that, the better it'll become useful for us.
I like your thinking process and how you approach working with AI, while trying to learn as many things as possible.
Great read!👏
Thanks for the time to review! Glad to know that it was worth a good read!🙌🏻✨
I wish I had ONE cool professor tho. LOL, they all made me regret choosing the course😭.
Realizing that professors can't teach you the real life skills needed to survive in the real world is the first step to start building your career.
I remember when I got my first job as a developer, I was like: "whoa, this is way too complex than what I'm used to". And after just a few months, that same project seemed incredibly simple and easy.
That's why practice and real-life skills are so important.
Exactly, and that's the only mindful way to take it!
I've published my first article a few weeks ago and no one seems to care so far. So you're still gonna be my first reader. I would be happy about your feedback. :)
dev.to/dyedwiper/integration-testi...
Great first post and welcome to DEV!
I really like that you tried four approaches and backed your conclusion with actual measurements instead of just picking one and calling it a day. Going from almost 49 seconds with PGlite to about 7 with template databases is a great result, and the linked branches make it really easy to try out.
Looking forward to seeing more from you. Keep writing!
Thanks for the nice feedback! ❤️
The line that hit me: "Your first article will probably feel tricky, awkward and hard... but that's a special kind of cringe. It's proof of how far you've come."
I remember feeling exactly this way. When I started, I thought I needed to be a senior expert to write anything worth reading. I'd stare at a blank page and think, "Who am I to write a tutorial on this?"
The advice I wish I'd been given earlier is this: You don't need to be an expert. You just need to be one step ahead of the person reading it.
If you just figured out how a for loop works, write about that. The person who is still confused by it will learn way more from you than from a senior dev who forgot what it feels like to be a beginner. You don't have to be a guru; you just have to be a good guide for the stage you just passed.
I also love your rule about writing it yourself. AI can structure an article, but it can't feel the frustration of a bug that took three hours to fix. That human element is the whole reason people read blogs.
This is a great initiative, man. I'll be reading through the comments to support the new writers!
Thanks! I’m so looking forward to seeing what people come up with. Their ideas are especially interesting, cause they’re new to all this and their perspective is much different.
This is such a great initiative! I still remember publishing my very first article, wondering if anyone would actually read it, and getting excited about every single view! 😊
I had the same experience, I got a handful of views and ~2 likes. And I was like: oh my goodness, someone's actually liked my post!😂
What a rookie I was.
I haven't written a technical article in years. I felt like it was time for me to try again, and so far I have really enjoyed it. My topic is super niche, but it's been fun to build both the example code and the articles in the series.
dev.to/trcollinson/your-erp-says-t...
Even though this isn't your first post, it's a great article to make a solid comeback with! Building a fictional plant just to have an answer key to grade your rebuild against is such a clever move.
Great work!
Thank you so much! It has been a fun series. Most of my family hasn't been able to follow so I made a video post. We'll see how it goes! dev.to/trcollinson/crestline-suppl...
Thank you for reading the previous one! :)
Love this initiative, Giorgi!
Here's my first technical article on DEV. I was curious about what MCP servers could actually do beyond what was mentioned in their README so I built a scanner and tested it against the top 50 MCP repositories.
What started as a small experiment eventually grew into a project which I'm still actively working on.
I scanned 50 MCP servers to see what they can actually do — here's what I found
Great write-up. The builtins-injection demo is something a lot of Python devs don't know, and the reachability angle is what makes this more than a linter. Two thoughts: stripping builtins is still escapable via subclasses() tricks, so the AST allow-list approach feels like the stronger "done right" example.
Thanks for sharing.
dev.to/xulingfeng/i-cut-my-ai-test...
Kinda feels like digging up my old messy work, haha 😂
Great first post! Realizing you were paying to process pixels when the DOM already had everything you needed is such a simple but powerful insight. The real numbers and honest takeaways make it an easy and enjoyable read.
Thanks a lot for your kind words! It was quite an "aha‑moment" when I figured this out. Real‑world numbers really help ground the theory.
@georgekobaidze is it good if I post in Spanish? (I think that some AI tool can help you with translation) Thanks in advance for this such a great initiative!
Here my latest article: No es el modelo, es lo que le construís alrededor
I hope you can read :)
Absolutely, go ahead! Thanks!
Even though this is not your first aricle, it's a great follow-up to Part 1! The engine/car analogy really lands, and the cost-per-token section is the best part for me. The point that the full history gets re-billed on every turn is something a lot of people miss, even engineers who use these APIs daily. I also liked that you held back on defining "agent" instead of rushing it.
Thank you very much for your feedback. Really appreciate.
I love this. I wrote recently about whether the tech community is really as welcoming to beginners as we say it is, and this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. It's one thing to encourage people to put themselves out there, but actually offering to read their work and give thoughtful feedback is something else entirely. That first bit of encouragement can mean so much to someone who's nervous about sharing their work. I really hope a bunch of new writers take you up on this.
The community is definitely welcoming. But I feel like we need to do a better job encouraging newcomers to start creating their own content.
I’m happy to contribute to it!✌️
Hi giorgi, your post came at right time,see I'm not good at writing but I want to be good technical writer ,so many things came to my mind but whatever I write AI writes better ,do you have any advice for it and also this is my link, I posted today with the help of AI on some of the features i build on my opensource project dev.to/suseendaran_nair_88f71da1/4...
This is an important problem that you're addressing here. Making payment transactions idempotent is critical, and we definitely shouldn't take our chances by completely relying on the agent that it'll do the right thing.
Great job!👏
Sir, I'm still scared my last comments exchange makes my brain numb.
Take it as motivation. Don't let a few comments decide your next actions.
Hello there, thanks for the encouragement! I still scared about the "gods of development" out there, but deep down I know they all are also started from somewhere!
I am still learning about development and such, and currently starting to write some random thought here! Hope I could also get somewhere 🫠
This is the link to my project: Example of Kubernetes Environment I Made For My Company
Well, this looks fun. What a way to resign from the company! I'm sure you gained a whole lot of experience just from this project. But when you write about them, that just puts everything in perspective.
Well done!
This is a wonderful initiative, George! 👏
I particularly appreciate your emphasis on authentic writing and using AI as a supporting tool rather than a replacement for human perspective.
I believe technical writing is not only about sharing what we know, but also about questioning what we think we understand.
I recently explored this idea through a slightly humorous comparison of AI, a Spy, and a Wife — highlighting how observation, computation, and shared human experience contribute to intelligence.
Here's the article if anyone is interested:
dev.to/navidishaq/ai-spy-and-wife-...
My advice to aspiring writers: Don't wait until you know everything. Start writing about what you're learning, and let your understanding evolve through the process.
Thank you for encouraging a culture of learning and sharing! 🤝
Fun read, Navid! The "Everything is fine" hook is perfect and the quiz-style reveals make the piece interactive in a way most articles aren't. The core principle of knowing when to interpret, when to verify, and when to just ask is a real design lesson that many AI products still get wrong.
What made me hit publish?
Because it causes no harm, it only gives more opportunities to improve, hear from others, and collab!
dev.to/quantumtechcoder/how-i-buil...
Wow this is cool! Shipping both a live WebGL explorer and a PyPI library is impressive, and the Evolution Slideshow is a genuinely original idea. Watching the boundary form iteration by iteration is something most fractal viewers don't offer.
I'm glad you hit that publish button!
This is a great initiative! Many beginners hesitate to publish because they feel they need years of experience or a perfect topic, but sharing what you've learned is how you grow as a writer and developer. I especially appreciate your offer to give honest feedback. A supportive community like this can make that first step much easier. Looking forward to seeing what new writers share!
Thank you! And how about you? Are you gonna use this chance and write your first article?👀
Hey :) This is a link to my first technical article: LINK
I also write on other platforms like Medium, but Dev remains the best and most friendly to beginners.
This is a great topic to start your technical writing journey! Well done.
This article provides a nice, high-level overview of both approaches. You're absolutely spot on when you say both have their own use cases, and that's exactly why we have both options and not just one of them.
I've seen so many people blindly suggesting microservices like they're some kind of silver bullet, but in reality, a monolith can be a much better alternative in a number of cases.
This is the nudge a lot of people need. My first posts were awkward and I still cringe at a few lines, but that cringe is useful — it means I can see how much clearer I've gotten. Advice I'd give past-me: write the bug that wasted your Saturday, not the tutorial you think seniors expect. Short is fine.
Totally true!
Nice motivation to promote people who want to write 😀
Love the idea. I too have this regret of not posting on social since a couple of years. I wanted to start in around 2022, but fear took over me I guess 😅
Sometimes it's fear, sometimes it's lack of time, and dozens of many different reasons. But once you start, you find out they weren't good enough reasons. 😄 But starting at some point is billion times better than not starting at all.
@georgekobaidze Hey Giorgi! I'm pretty new to writing on DEV. I've been sharing some of my projects and experiments, but I still don't really get how views work here.
It's not even about likes. Some articles barely get any views at all, and that's a bit demotivating when you've put a lot of work into them.
Is that normal when you're just starting out? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
That is absolutely normal. My first article just got 4 likes in its entire existence and very few views. Same for some of those that I wrote even later.
You just got to keep writing, keep trying and think of the creative ways how you can engage with the audience. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months and it might take more than a year, but eventually you'll get there if you're persistent enough.
My first post here came out in 2023, about keeping a React app fast day to day: dev.to/epilot/how-to-maintain-the-...
My one piece of advice for first-timers: we write more easily when we picture one friend reading, so pick that friend first and explain the bug to them. Thank you for offering to read everyone's first post, that's a lovely way to welcome people.
What a great tip. Love it!🔥
@kate_astrid great article, by the way!
"I'm a fast-paced person: I eat quickly, walk briskly, and make decisions in a snap." That very first sentence totally resonated with me 😄 I'm a calm and quiet person, but when it comes to walking, I'm basically an F1 car. I just can't walk slowly. Same goes for eating and for decisions for the most part, cause some decisions do deserve a bit more time to make them right.
And most importantly, slow apps drive me absolutely crazy. Even though I'm not a front-end developer, I found the tips in this article fascinating and absolutely useful for anyone dealing with performance issues in their apps.
Thanks for sharing! Solid first article back in 2023! 👏
published my first article a few days ago after thinking for so long and saw your post now. Here it is
dev.to/mehar_usama_6/from-upgrade-...
Welcome to DEV, and what a post to start with! Going from fixing the same failures from memory to a public dashboard grading all 169 repos is a fantastic journey. My favorite part was the bot stats: more than half of those PRs were closed unmerged, and nobody knew until the data was in one place. That's exactly why this kind of visibility matters.
Thanks for sharing all this, and I hope you'll write more!
Thank you for the encouragement and the opportunity! @georgekobaidze
Here is my first article on DEV:
Building an Explainable ICD-10-PCS Recommender with Constrained LLM Traversal
Welcome to DEV and what a strong first post! Letting the structure of ICD-10-PCS itself constrain the LLM is such a smart approach. Instead of hoping the model won't invent a code, you only ever give it valid options to choose from.
I also like that you kept humans in the loop with verbatim evidence from the chart, which is exactly what a healthcare tool needs.
Really enjoyed this one. Looking forward to reading more from you!
Thank @georgekobaidze for taking the time to read my article and share your feedback!
Really glad you enjoyed it, and I look forward to sharing more!
This landed at a good time. The line that stuck with me was "If it was interesting to you, it'll be interesting to someone else" — that reframes a first post from proving expertise to simply documenting something you actually wrestled with. I also agree with the rule about writing it yourself: AI can tidy grammar, but the useful part is usually the specific wrong turn you took, like a bug that took far too long or a concept that only clicked after you tried it in a small project. Do you find short first posts get more useful feedback than longer ones, or does length not matter much as long as the problem is concrete?
You just answered yourself. Length doesn't really matter as long as the problem is concrete and the article addresses that problem directly.
I think some of the most valuable technical articles come from problems that didn't go as planned.
Take Google's SRE postmortem about a routine infrastructure decommissioning that went wrong. A retry after a partial failure, combined with an API treating an empty filter as no filter, ended up triggering disk erasure across satellite machines. That's a pretty serious failure caused by an assumption that probably looked harmless during development.
What makes a write-up like this valuable isn't just the final fix. It's explaining the chain of events, the assumptions behind the implementation, how the issue was investigated, and what changed to prevent it from happening again.
You don't need to publish groundbreaking research to write something worth reading. Sometimes documenting one difficult debugging session can save another developer hours of investigation.
💯
Here is my first article on DEV.to!
I’ve been revamping a QR code engine (currently experimenting with rRMQR) and optimizing the Kanji table was a major part of the puzzle. I managed to crack it in a few evenings, but I was so excited after solving it that I just had to sit down and write this post.
How I Shrunk a QR Kanji Table by 36% Using Dynamic Programming
Welcome to DEV, and what a way to start! Treating command selection as a shortest-path problem is such an elegant idea, and the walkthrough makes it really easy to follow. I also appreciate that you included the gzip numbers and were upfront about what that 36% leaves out. That kind of honesty is rare in optimization posts.
Well done!
Publishing daily at the moment and I still hover over the button some days, so the fear clearly doesn't read the calendar. The thing that finally made it easier wasn't confidence. It was getting corrected in public and surviving it — a reader pulled up a claim of mine this week, properly, and the thread got better for it. Turns out the worst-case scenario is just... a better article. Wish someone had told past-me that the comments section is a co-author, not a firing squad.
Publishing daily is a very good habit, but don't stress yourself too much. You don't have to publish something every single day, it's better be well-thought and written, than done quickly. Sometimes I don't publish anything for 2 or 3 weeks.
Great job! Keep it going!
Noted, and honestly probably right. The daily run is me testing whether showing up beats polishing, and so far the readers keep voting for showing up. But the day it starts feeling like a chore, the cadence goes first. Deal.
Hi @georgekobaidze, here's my first technical article!
Building Teddy Bud: A Student's Journey into AI, Agentic Development, and Product Building
dev.to/harry_jees/building-teddy-b...
I'm a Class 12 student from Kerala, India, exploring software and product development alongside my studies. I finally decided to publish this because I wanted to share not just what I built, but also the experiments, failures, and lessons that went into it.
I'd really appreciate your feedback. Thank you for creating this opportunity for new writers!
It's fascinating to see a 12th-grade student start building his own projects and writing about them. Not many people do that.
I know you mentioned you're busy and don't have much free time, but the more experienced you get, the less time you'll have. Learning to find time now is already a great instinct.
Refining your plan on paper first is a great way to start a project. You think through most of it up front, and AI becomes a helper rather than the one in the driver's seat. Thinking deeply about your ideas is always the way to go.
"Even when an agent completed a task, I wanted to understand what it had changed, why it had changed it, and whether it could introduce problems elsewhere." This part is awesome. It shows you actually want to learn, not just ship things while relying completely on the AI model. Keep it that way, and future you will thank you.
I also like that you think about the product, not only the technical side. You chose the name Teddy Bud because it brings up comfortable feelings for potential users. That's what most software engineers miss: they focus on technical excellence and skip the product and marketing side. That's a mistake. You need to make it interesting for the people who'll use it.
This is a great start, and you're already ahead of most people your age. Keep going and keep building. It won't be perfect the first time, but you'll get closer with every project.🚀
This landed at the right time for me. I've been sitting on drafts because I assumed a first post had to be polished and original, and your line — "If it was interesting to you, it'll be interesting to someone else" — is the permission I needed. The most useful posts I've read were exactly the ones you describe: a bug that took too long, or a concept explained the way the author wished someone had explained it to them. I'm going to write mine about a small debugging lesson rather than waiting for a big idea. Thanks for offering to actually read them — that makes the leap a lot less lonely.
Great, share your work anytime!
This is a really encouraging push. I kept putting off my first post because I assumed it had to be polished and original, but writing about a small bug I fixed would have been a much better start. Thanks for offering to read new writers, that makes it feel a lot less lonely.
Glad to help. Share your write-up whenever you have it.
I needed this. I've been terrified of posting ever since we created our app, and I kept finding reasons to wait until I had something worth saying.
I've finally decided to give it a try and share all my embarrassing mistakes and what I learned from them. It still feels awkward, but "it's proof of how far you've come" is a nice way to think about the cringe.
So yeah, to anyone else sitting on a draft: don't be afraid. If I can do it, you can too.
This is awesome! Please post it once you put the article together. Looking forward to it.
Actually, a technical article is something I have been planning to publish for quite a while now. I've been stuck on what topic I should do. Been thinking about how fascinating the world of backend is while I was learning it, maybe I should write one small and focused topic first. I particularly liked how React's website teaches new devs, maybe I'll adapt the caricature pics (hope my drawing skills are still fine hahaha).
Less technical is also fine, as long as it's related to software engineering, don't limit yourself.
My drawing skills are nonexistent, so I usually use AI for that 😂
This is such a generous offer, Giorgi — especially the promise to read every single first article and give honest, thorough feedback. The line about a first article feeling tricky, awkward and hard really resonated, and I liked your reminder that a bug that took way too long to fix is a perfectly good first topic. What made you decide to turn this into the Hall of Fame idea after that first round?
Thanks! The idea of turning into the Hall of Fame just came to my mind itself.
Uhm, new here! I made a few posts recently and I would love a little feedback.
Sure thing. Share your first post here and I'll be more than happy to give you a thorough feedback.
xayen.tech/blog
Sorry, it should be on DEV, this is one of the rules.
dev.to/xayenuniverse/i-built-an-sd...
I like that you're making room for people who are just starting out. Sometimes all it takes is one person taking your first article seriously to make you want to write the next one. That's what makes this such a lovely idea. ❤️
I'm happy to be that person! It's an honor!
Thanks for this! It gave me the push to finally publish my first article today: 5 reasons your AWS bill keeps growing even when nobody uses your app. Would love any feedback.
dev.to/shuwacloud/5-reasons-your-a...
This is such an important post. I've heard so many times that people just ignored their aws account billing, assuming it was only about the usage, only to find out they have tens or even hundreds of dollars of payments waiting for them.
This is a scary experience and can be avoided by being more dilligent and cautious.
Thanks for sharing this. What a great first article!
Mine......
Encouraging reception from fellow young coders
Hello world!!
You're just 10 years old and already so active in the community while learning so many things?🤯
You might be the youngest member of DEV 😄
Keep learning, you have so many great things ahead. Starting that early and having fun with it is the best indication that you'll achieve great things, but only if you keep it that way.
Well done!👏
Thank you sir😀
Putting yourself out there and hitting publish the first time is brutal. Reminds me of our team drafting our first digital SOPs over at The Printing World. Glad I took the leap!
It is brutal. I remember my heart racing like crazy before hitting that submit button😄
everyone has to start somewhere as long as it is ahead & not backward right two weeks in two finally post first app what a mess
True. There's no perfect time to start. You just have to start.
Really helpful, I have never tried to wrote any article, just tried to asked questions and give answer in stackoverflow community.
Will give a try.
Looking forward to reading your first post. Feel free to share it here.
By the way, this was my first article ever:
Understanding Your Audience as a Software Engineer
The advice here is solid, and it works just as well for people who work with hardware as for people who write code. Most of my own posts started as a note about something that broke on shift: a flapping link, a dirty fiber connector, a ticket that took three escalations to pin down. If you fixed it, you already have the article — write down what you saw, what you tried, and what actually worked, and the next person with the same fault will be glad you did.
Thanks for offering to read newcomer posts, Giorgi. Just published my first piece here about fixing insecure desktop license checks with Ed25519 signatures and offline leases: dev.to/velopre/why-returning-valid...
Would genuinely appreciate any feedback on whether the technical breakdown reads clearly.
Hey Giorgi, took your offer to heart — just published my first DEV
article. Would love your honest feedback when you have time.
dev.to/giannis_chatz/from-a-one-of...
It's about building a multi-sheet Excel → nested XSD converter in
Laravel, and what happened when I tried to generalize the one-off
script into a product. Includes the actual code for XSD walking,
fuzzy sheet-to-entity matching, and translating libxml errors back
to Excel coordinates.
Here it is. Thank you so much!
dev.to/l1vra/i-built-jwt-auth-with...
I was thinking of publishing it a lot and thought that maybe some people have faced these problems, so I pressed it!
Just published my first one!
"Shey light dey house?" (is there power at home) is a question every Nigerian asks daily. so I built a small device that answers it for me. The article covers the whole thing, from the ESP32 firmware to the Rust server and dashboard.
What made me hit publish: It's my first time writing about something I built, and I wanted to see if I could explain it clearly.
Shey Light Dey House? How I Built an ESP32 Power Monitor for My Home
Hello sir, I recently posted my first article about my experience on reviewing my old projects and what I discovered through the process. Thank you in advance and here is the link:
The post
I am few weeks old on this community .Here are my first steps in Dev community .dev.to/aktechstories/your-first-da.... will love some feedback
Please read and tell me what I can improve.
DIY Homelab NAS Mark-1: Build Log (Ubuntu Server + Docker + Immich)
dev.to/kickz1nn/building-an-embedd...
Hey, I'm learning Java and Test Automation, and I decided to write about my approach, thanks for the opportunity!
dev.to/lenzz920/building-my-dream-...
dev.to/sazzad90/rendering-json-dri...
dev.to/sumanth_kumarkotagudem/fine...
Thank you. First Article. Thanks for the push
A month ago, I started writing about an LLM inference system I built: dev.to/lun0522/series/45136. They haven't got many readers, though. Would appreciate any feedbacks!
My first one: dev.to/lucascz/c-undefined-behavio... I published it because it took me lots of time to find out that behauviour of C++
Hmm, Okay so here is my first post on dev.to about the product I'm building:
dev.to/hs_sandesh_d38f900f7bfc25/h...
Hi i am two week old writer in dev community and here are my first articles
dev.to/aktechstories/first-day-in-...
Thank you for the offer! Here is my first post. dev.to/jpshettyai/the-software-lif...
Bonjour, Giorgi!
I'm taking you up on that offer and hope you can find some time to checkout my first article: dev.to/dday9/goodbye-pico-3nd3