AAU Software Engineering community

⚡️ Global Dev Tool Trends: September 2026 Edition ⚡️ The software engineering landscape has officially shifted from "AI as a chat assistant" to "AI as an autonomous co-developer." If you are relying purely on standard autocomplete for your projects this semester, here is how the global dev tool ecosystem is evolving right now. The AI-Native IDE Wars (Cursor & Windsurf): Standard editors are rapidly being replaced by AI-native environments. Cursor remains the dominant choice for seamless codebase integration and multi-file edits, while Windsurf is gaining traction as a highly optimized, affordable alternative. Both keep you in the driver's seat while dramatically speeding up boilerplate generation and interactive coding. Asynchronous Background Agents (Jules & Devin): The industry is moving toward agents that work while you attend lectures. Jules operates with its own allocated capacity to autonomously analyze up to 30,000 lines of code, write unit tests, and open GitHub PRs asynchronously without requiring an active prompt session. Similarly, Devin-class cloud tools handle complete multi-step engineering tasks by running parallel agents to close out tickets end-to-end. Terminal-First Orchestration (Claude Code): For developers who live in the CLI, tools like Claude Code are leading the pack for deep repository context and complex terminal-heavy refactoring. It allows you to run multi-file edits directly from the command line. Multi-Agent Platforms (Google Antigravity): The new frontier is engineering your own AI workflows. Platforms like Google Antigravity provide developers with direct environment access to build, test, and deploy autonomous multi-agent systems. It is quickly becoming a standard for building scalable infrastructure with deterministic tool pipelines and formal verification steps. Zero-to-MVP App Builders: For hackathons and rapid prototyping, browser-based builders like Bolt.new, v0, and Lovable are generating fully deployable, full-stack applications (including databases and backend logic) directly from natural language. Let's keep building ! @CTBEsoftwareengineers

✨The bug that isn't a bug: silent LLM failures✨ If you're building anything with LLM agents or API calls, here's a trap almost everyone falls into: a 200 OK response doesn't mean success.* Most people wrap API calls in try/except and call it "error handling." But LLMs (and a lot of third-party APIs) fail silently they return valid JSON, valid status codes, and just wrong or empty content. Your code sails right past it thinking everything's fine. So a quick fix that saves hours of debugging: 🔹Don't just check response.status_code == 200 validate the content too (right schema? non-empty? within expected bounds?) 🔹Log the raw response on ambiguous failures, not just the exception 🔹For LLM calls specifically: add a sanity check step (e.g., "did this actually answer the question asked?") before trusting the output downstream The pattern: "it ran without crashing" ≠ "it worked." hope this helps ☺️ @CTBEsoftwareengineers

Please Stop starting your CV like this:

“I am a hardworking and dedicated professional” “Passionate about making a difference” “Seeking a challenging opportunity to grow”

Nobody cares. “I am hardworking” means nothing😂 Every single person says it. No one has ever written “I’m inconsistent and hard to work with.” So it becomes invisible. Recruiters skip it in seconds. “Passionate about…” is just noise now. Overused and Empty. Passion is not a proof. It doesn’t tell them what you can actually do. “Seeking an opportunity” is worse. You’re making it about you.  But your CV is not about you. It’s a business document. They are not reading it to help you. They are reading it to answer one question: Can you solve our problem? If your first line doesn’t answer that, you’ve already lost. Use this instead:

[What you do] + [who you do it for] + [the result you produce] Example: Marketing manager with 6 years building demand generation for B2B SaaS companies, consistently driving pipeline growth above target.

That’s what earns the next line. @CTBEsoftwareengineers

🏫 Campus Review: CTBE – 5 Kilo Campus CTBE stands for the College of Technology and Built Environment. It's home to Engineering, Architecture, and other related fields like Construction Management. It's split across two campuses: 5 Kilo and Lideta. (The two used to be separate colleges but are now merged under one shared Dean, even though the campuses are geographically apart.) Today, we're covering 5 Kilo campus. 📍 5 Kilo Campus has 6 undergraduate schools (here "school" means an undergraduate department within the college) Ranked from most to least competitive to get into: 1. Software Engineering 2. Electrical Engineering 3. Biomedical Engineering 4. Mechanical Engineering 5. Chemical Engineering 6. Civil Engineering How you get placed at 5 Kilo: - Your entrance exam score + first semester grade are averaged. Meet the cutoff point, and you're placed at CTBE right after first semester. But you won't choose a specific department yet. You'll take common courses (pre-engineering) first. - To get into a specific department, it's your first + second semester average combined. Example: 3.5 in first semester and 3.8 in second semester averages to 3.65/4 that's about 91.25%. Last year, that was enough for Mechanical Engineering (4th most competitive department). - Software Engineering is the most competitive , especially for non-sponsor students. 👉 Full department allocation breakdown coming in a future post. Stay tuned. 🔎 Other notes on 5 Kilo: - Size: Relatively small perimeter-wise. nowhere near as big as 6 Kilo. - Dorms: Located outside of the campus, across the street (unlike other campuses, where learning facilities and dorms share the same compound). Still, the dorms are more spacious and better kept than 6 Kilo's. Also there's a chance your Dormitory might be at 6 kilo. So you learn at 5 kilo but your dormitory is at 6 kilo. - Library: Located at 5 Kilo, open all night. - Food: Lounges available at both the campus and dorm buildings. Government cafeteria available at the dorm compound if you're a cafe user. - Wi-Fi: Works decently on campus, but basically non-existent in the dorms. - Location( outside of the uni): there're lots of Fast food, restaurants, and supermarkets all nearby. - Labs: Every department has labs, but how often you actually use them depends on the department Next we will post a detailed description about the departments so don't forget to join @unfilteredaau

✨Something I noticed working with AI agents: they don't know when they're wrong ✨ A human dev usually pauses mid-task when something feels off "wait, this doesn't look right." An agent doesn't have that instinct. It'll confidently keep building on a wrong assumption for way longer than any person would, because nothing tells it to stop and doubt itself. That changed how I use them: 🔹I stopped asking for a whole feature in one shot big prompts = big bugs, and you can't tell which half broke Now I ask for one function/module at a time and actually read it before moving on 🔹After it generates code, I ask "what could break this?" it often catches its own edge cases when prompted, even though it won't on its own ♦️Exception: repetitive, well-worn stuff boilerplate, CRUD, standard configs. Good models nail this consistently, no babysitting needed. Save the scrutiny for anything new or non-trivial. The bigger lesson: catch a bad assumption early, or you'll spend way more time unwinding it later than you would've spent checking it upfront. Hope this helps☺️ @CTBEsoftwareengineers

The Huawei ICT Competition 2026–2027 (Northern Africa) Innovation Track is now open for registration. This track is about using new technology to solve real problems. You can register until December 2026. The first exam is November–December 2026, the national final is January 2027, the regional final is February–March 2027, and the global final is May 2027. Please read the rules and then register here: https://e.huawei.com/en/talent/#/ict/innovation-details?zoneCode=026902&zoneId=98269713&compId=85132021&divisionName=Northern%20Africa&type=C002&isCollectGender=N&enrollmentDeadline=undefined&compTotalApplicantCount=6 @CTBEsoftwareengineers

🔥 THE 11TH ETCPC IS HERE! Ethiopian Collegiate Programming Contest 2026 CSEC ASTU proudly presents the 11th Ethiopian Collegiate Programming Contest (ETCPC) 2026! This isn't just another programming contest.It's where problem-solving, algorithms, coding speed, and teamwork come together under pressure. 📅 EVENT DATE October 8–9, 2026 📍 VENUE Adama Science and Technology University (ASTU) Adama, Ethiopia 🇪🇹 WHY PARTICIPATE?

● Take on challenging competitive programming problems ● Meet and compete with passionate programmers from universities across Ethiopia ● Push your problem-solving skills beyond the classroom ● Represent your university on the competitive programming stage 🇪🇹

⏳ REGISTRATION DEADLINE September 11, 2026 🎟 REGISTER NOW 🔥 See you at ETCPC 2026! @CSEC_ASTU #ETCPC #ETCPC2026 #CompetitiveProgramming #ProgrammingContest

Disclaimer: The LinkedIn profile shown in this image is a demo created for illustration purposes only and does not represent a real individual ! @CTBEsoftwareengineers

New Year, New Me. Not a complete rewrite though… just a better version. ⏺New skills. ⏺New projects. ⏺New opportunities. Same developer. "v2.0.0" loading... 🌼Happy New Year! again🌼 @CTBEsoftwareengineers

The 5-Kilo Delusion: A New Year Wake-Up Call for AAU Tech Students

Everyone have become Telegram channel managers forwarding someone else's project instead of building his own and gradually forgetting how to code. We are masterfully polishing our LinkedIn headlines, sharing random tech event on the city , and celebrating "opportunities" before read more ...

@CTBEsoftwareengineers

Something big is coming soon ... Stay tuned in the new year ❤

የአዲስ አመት እንኳን አደረሳችሁ መልእክት መልካም አዲስ አመት - Happy Ethiopian New Year 2019 ዶ/ር ሳሙኤል ክፍሌ የ አዲስ አበባ ዩኒቨርሲቲ ፕሬዝደንት

✨Quick tip: Don't just catch errors handle them with intent. 1. Catch specific exceptions, not everything python

# Swallows all errors, hides bugs try: result = risky_call() except Exception: pass # Know what you're catching try: result = risky_call() except ConnectionError as e: log.warning(f"Retrying: {e}") retry()

2. Fail loud in dev, fail safe in production Silent failures are debugging nightmares. Log the context (inputs, state) when an error hits, not just "something went wrong." 3. Errors are part of your API If you're writing a library or backend service, your error types/messages are what other devs debug against. Design them like you design your functions clear, specific, actionable. 4. Never let an exception cross a boundary undocumented If a function can throw, say so (docstring, type hints, or your language's equivalent). Callers shouldn't discover it in production. Rule of thumb: if you can't explain why an error happened from the log alone, you didn't handle it you hid it. #Tips @CTBEsoftwareengineers

Time is watching

Use it or lose it, your choice! #Qoute @CTBEsoftwareengineers

Project showcase Athena Nexus Many women interested in tech lack a structured environment to consistently practice their skills, build projects, and receive recognition for their progress.Existing learning platforms often focus on individual learning rather than creating a community-driven path from learning to practical experience. Athena Nexus provides a structured community platform where members progress through weekly and milestone-based coding challenges, submit their work, and showcase approved projects in a public gallery. you can check it out here: Github Live link and if you like it , please vote here by reacting on this post @CTBEsoftwareengineers #project_showcase

Join the online STARK Official Hackathon It is a 3-week long online hackathon with a final in-person event and offers various tool prizes, including a chance to win 50,000 ETB (1st: 25,000 | 2nd: 15,000 | 3rd: 10,000). Open to developers, designers, creators, and problem-solvers. Register alone and get matched into a team. Kickoff: September 9, 2026 Ends: October 2, 2026 Format: Online | Free entry Announcement: October 2 at ALX Register: https://stark-hackathon.vercel.app/register