frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Why Lenders Are Building AI Agents Now [video]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WQsHzBF1b4s
1•shawneechase•1m ago•0 comments

Yes, I *Would* Sacrifice Myself For 10^100 Shrimp

https://www.kylestar.net/p/yes-i-really-would-sacrifice-myself
1•paulpauper•1m ago•0 comments

Heist – Viral by Design

https://krishinasnani.substack.com/p/heist-viral-by-design
1•paulpauper•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: CleanerAudio – AI to clean and transcribe audio

1•EdwinJr13•3m ago•1 comments

Claude Sonnet Will Ship in Xcode

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-26-release-notes
2•zora_goron•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A natural language search interface to ETF (and deep insights on each)

https://www.signalbloom.ai/etf/
1•GodelNumbering•9m ago•0 comments

Brickyard

https://www.justlaybrick.com
1•willswire•14m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What to do when you suspect your interview is with a state operative?

3•puppycodes•21m ago•0 comments

Gravity Defied mobile game rewrite from Java to C++ & SDL

https://github.com/rgimad/gravity_defied_cpp
1•retro_guy•30m ago•0 comments

FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned 'nearly every American'

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/28/fbi_cyber_cop_salt_typhoon/
7•defrost•32m ago•2 comments

Project MiniNAS

https://jadarma.github.io/blog/posts/2025/08/project-mininas/
1•tymscar•33m ago•0 comments

AMD MI300X for LLM Serving Disaggregating Prefill and Decode with SGLang

https://rocm.blogs.amd.com/software-tools-optimization/disaggregation/README.html
1•latchkey•33m ago•0 comments

I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/i-researched-every-attempt-to-stop
9•rbanffy•34m ago•5 comments

AWS X-Ray SDK and daemon end of support timeline

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/xray/latest/devguide/xray-daemon-eos.html
2•cebert•41m ago•0 comments

AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack

https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/AUR-Repository-Still-Under-DDoS-Attack
3•kPwn•46m ago•0 comments

From Airbnb to America's 'Chief Design Officer'

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/style/joe-gebbia-trump-design-officer-airbnb.html
1•andsoitis•50m ago•1 comments

How AI stem separation alters the workflow of music producers

https://medium.com/@MarcaTatem/from-punk-energy-to-french-touch-smooth-how-ai-changed-the-remix-g...
4•Musicology•51m ago•0 comments

Military spending and war

https://www.nber.org/papers/w34123
1•hhs•53m ago•1 comments

Ford and the Birth of the Model T

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/ford-and-the-birth-of-the-model-t
1•chmaynard•55m ago•0 comments

Increased autonomic activation in vicarious embarrassment (2012) [pdf]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22864257/
1•thunderbong•1h ago•0 comments

Two Chinese Nationals Arrested for Allegedly Illegal Shipping AI Chips to China

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-chinese-nationals-arrested-complaint-alleging-they-illegally-s...
3•737min•1h ago•1 comments

'Universal' Cancer Vaccine Destroys Resistant Tumors in Mice

https://www.sciencealert.com/universal-cancer-vaccine-destroys-resistant-tumors-in-mice
4•amichail•1h ago•0 comments

BCHS Stack: BSD, C, httpd, SQLite

https://learnbchs.org
5•ryandotsmith•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How to teach a 4 year old to code?

4•kamphey•1h ago•4 comments

F1 in Hungary: Strategy and fast tire changes make all the difference

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/08/f1-in-hungary-strategy-and-fast-tire-changes-make-all-the-di...
1•PaulHoule•1h ago•2 comments

Bad Craziness

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15191
13•jjgreen•1h ago•2 comments

The Rise of Computer Use and Agentic Coworkers

https://a16z.com/the-rise-of-computer-use-and-agentic-coworkers/
1•kjhughes•1h ago•0 comments

We Oops-Proofed Infrastructure Deletion on Railway

https://blog.railway.com/p/how-we-oops-proofed-infrastructure-deletion-on-railway
1•thisismahmoud_•1h ago•1 comments

From the 'Banter Bill' to Bias Hotlines: The Alarming Rise of Snitch Networks

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-dangerous-rise-of-snitch-networks/
2•dmitrygr•1h ago•0 comments

The latest Covid vaccines come with restrictions

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/08/27/nx-s1-5515503/fda-covid-vaccines-restri...
2•metabagel•1h ago•3 comments
Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Why don't back end developers make portfolios?

4•yeahimjt•2h ago
I run a site where developers can share their portfolios. Right now it has about 220 portfolios, but only 2–4 are from backend developers.

That surprised me. Frontend developers often show off their skills with nice-looking websites. But backend developers usually work on APIs, databases, and infrastructure, which is harder to show in a portfolio. Maybe that is why so few make one.

Still, I would think more backend developers would put together a personal site, even just a blog or a simple project. Instead, most seem to skip it entirely.

Do backend developers just not see the point of having a portfolio? Or is there another reason?

Comments

marssaxman•2h ago
Developers in general do not have and are not expected to have portfolios, though some people treat their github account that way. It's just never been a thing. Frontend developers are the exception, presumably because the work they do is so closely tied to graphic design.
yeahimjt•2h ago
Yeah that's true, a good amount of the roles I apply to have (and even sometimes require) a portfolio url field in the application process

In that case, I doubt any backend positions have such a field. At that point it really is up to the developer to just build one for fun.

JohnFen•2h ago
> I doubt any backend positions have such a field

I haven't ever seen one, or been asked for one in those terms. I have often been asked to bring in something that demonstrates my work (which is a sort of micro-portfolio), and I do bring in a portfolio of my work even when not asked. I know that there's a certain point past the initial screening stages where work examples can really be effective.

yeahimjt•1h ago
Thank you for this insight!

When you say you bring in a portfolio of your work, what do you mean by that?

Do you have something online that you present, or is it something physical?

netcoyote•2h ago
I joke about this with other folks:

- artist: look at my pictures

- sound engineer: listen to this intro

- UI engineer: check out this screenshot

Me (a backend engineer): look at these numbers. See how the one one the left goes up faster than the one on the right? That was a year of my life.

yeahimjt•1h ago
I could only imagine how many times numbers have gone underappreciated.

I personally find optimizations interesting.

I'm actually going to make major optimizations to my site I mentioned in my original post soon. Hopefully it'll be appreciated by my users and not go unnoticed

JohnFen•2h ago
I have maintained a portfolio for decades, as have most of my colleagues. I don't put it online, though, because I don't see an advantage in me doing so (but I can totally see others could get an advantage doing so). I provide that portfolio to others personally when I'm selling myself in some way (job interview, wooing investors, etc.).

But I'm old and most of my colleagues are within a decade or so of me. I wonder if there's been a generational change. Maybe this used to be a common thing and just isn't so much anymore?

MattGaiser•1h ago
Mostly I am pitching to some HR person or even if the person is a dev, they have never been all that curious or interested in doing a deep dive. There simply isn't really an equivalent to "nice looking" for backend.
yeahimjt•1h ago
Ah I see, that's probably the only purpose for a backend dev to have a portfolio.

I know if I were primarily focused on backend I'd have pages for each project to deep dive into them further and to use image assets to better demonstrate my work.