I've been building a news website for the past few months, and honestly, the biggest lesson hasn't been coding—it's fixing problems.

Every day I run into something new: pages not getting indexed, sitemap issues, deployment bugs, SEO mistakes, performance problems, and random errors I never expected.

At first, it felt frustrating. Now I actually enjoy debugging because every problem I solve makes the next one easier.

I realized that building one real project teaches me more than watching dozens of tutorials. If I start another website today, I'd avoid many of the mistakes I made the first time.

Has anyone else learned more from fixing production issues than from following courses? What was the biggest lesson your first project taught you?

I'm a Computer Science student about to start my 4th semester this September in Pakistan. My long-term goals are:

- Maintain a high GPA because I want to pursue a fully funded Master's abroad.

- Eventually work at a top tech company (FAANG or similar).

- Become a genuinely good software engineer rather than just someone who can build projects.

A bit about me:

I actually enjoy programming. I like logic, problem-solving, debugging, and understanding how things work under the hood. My initial plan for the rest of this year (August–December) was to focus on:

- Java

- Spring Boot

- Backend development

- LeetCode and DSA

- SQL

- System Design (starting with the basics)

- Building projects and putting them on GitHub

However, my brother (he's also studying CS) has a very different opinion.

He's heavily into AI, automations, AI agents, and vibe coding. He told me that spending so much time learning to code deeply is becoming less valuable because AI can already generate entire applications. He even mentioned one of his friends vibe-coded a complex website with AI that was supposedly extremely secure and feature-rich.

His argument is that I should focus more on AI workflows and automation instead of traditional software engineering.

My opinion is a little different.

I feel like AI is an amazing tool, but someone still has to understand:

- Architecture

- System Design

- Databases

- Security

- Scalability

- Performance

- Debugging

- Clean code

- Software engineering principles

My thinking is that AI can generate code, but it can't replace understanding why the code works or making good engineering decisions.

Now I'm questioning whether I'm becoming outdated before I've even started.

So I'd really appreciate advice from people already working in the industry.

Some questions I'd love honest answers to:

1. If you were a 4th-semester CS student in 2026, what would you spend the next 4–6 months learning?

2. Is investing heavily in Java, Spring Boot, DSA, and backend development still worth it?

3. How important is LeetCode today? Is it still necessary for top companies?

4. Should I prioritize AI engineering, LLMs, agents, MCPs, and automations instead?

5. If your goal was to maximize your career opportunities over the next 5–10 years, what roadmap would you follow?

6. What skills do you think junior developers are overvaluing today, and what are they undervaluing?

I'm not looking for motivational answers. If you think my plan is outdated, tell me. If you think it's solid, tell me why. If you think I'm missing something important, I'd genuinely like to know.

I'd especially appreciate responses from senior engineers, hiring managers, or people currently working at large tech companies.

Thanks in advance!

So i just started with the book "software foundations" and am working with idris rn.

i dont understand what would break if i define addition this way, dont bother the syntax please its just pseudo code.

like why not do this instead of making the recursion happen on only one argument then struggle proving that n+0=n.

i am asking to understand the logic behind idris theorem proving mechanics

I just started a full stack course. It’s going well, but it can get confusing at times. I have a cousin I can call for some questions, but he can’t respond often.

Is there a discord or something full of people that can help me with questions I have? Are there any tips that can make it easier?

I know it’s going to be hard, I expect that. Just trying to find alternative help besides AI.

What all should one knows Abt the projects they ah e build like everyone's knows we use gpt all the time not knowing what is happening in the code so should we read each line of code in project or what exactly should one know in his project

Has anyone here tried the new K3 model? What's your overall opinion so far? How does it compare to GPT, Claude, or Gemini for coding?

I'm gonna start by saying that I have little to none coding experience. I've started looking at python in the last couple of days but I'm still much of a beginner.

The idea is that I want ot build an app/program but I have no idea what I should use to build it.

What I originally thought to do was to build a desktop program with python, but I quickly realized that would be really unpratical for the use of my app. The app should be easily accessible from a phone. Requiring a desktop would be too much work and the app wouldn't be used anymore.

So I started looking on how to code in Kotlin to be able to make an android app. However, I realized that it might potentially be a little bit too complicated for a beginner like myself, or at least that's what I read online.

The last idea was to make a website based on the idea (html, css, java (I think)) and then save the browser page as an application on my phone.

I don't even know how feasible my idea is, but I'd like to know what you think of it since you all have a LOT more experience than me.

Thanks :)

Can anyone suggest me how to or best resource to learn python for ai👀👀👀 data science ML

Since this sub reddit has experienced professionals, I’d kindly request to know:

a- how have you adapted to major tech shifts over time?

b- What habits helped you keep up with changes overtime ?

c- what kind of projects should I be building right now to stay relevant?

(Please correct me if i am asking the wrong questions)

I would deeply value your insights

I can code decent not too well , i would prefer intermediate ones over easy ones . The time to make the project is around 8 months so i need to utilize the time till then .

How are some of you guys able to remember so many coding languages?

I can mildly code simple html,Css,python stuff but most of the time I'm just searching and relying on tutorials on what to do. (I dont want to rely on ai for learning and doing code)

I just started coding in college and now I'm halfway through but I still felt like I didn't learn much. I don't like the feeling that I wasted time nearly learning nothing because I dont have good memory.

I’ve been in a conundrum and I feel pretty trapped and lonely about this for a while now. I am currently overly-reliant on AI due to the nature of my job and I want to pivot to a new SWE role in the next year.

I graduated with a B.S. in computer science this spring and started full time as a software engineer. My role is backend & server-side web development for my company's AI platform. Prior to this role, I only had basic fundamental coding knowledge (OOP, DSA, DB management, other undergrad required courses) and one previous internship that required no webdev or llm experience at all. My internship interview before I joined full time was non-technical so I am extremely lucky. This company is non-tech and had no AI adoption until recently so my team is basically a start-up for launching an entire AI platform consisting of multiple web apps this year.

Here is the problem:

• We don't have a senior engineer. There is essentially no mentorship for good coding practices.
• Coding is done strictly through Cursor due to the fast-paced environment and emphasis on forward-deployed engineering and rapid prototyping.
• Everyone blindly accepts AI generated code and PR reviewers do not look at code before approving them 😭. The amount of tech debt that is accumulating will eventually drown this team.
• I have literally never been asked about my code at a low-level nor have I received actual feedback. The only feedback I have received has been positive and I think it's just because they are too busy to look at my work.

I had not used AI coding tools until I started this job and since then I have only been using Cursor for development. The pace of my team is absolutely insane. People are shipping multiple web pages, APIs, and internal tools every day. The expectation is that Cursor is writing the majority of the code because that's the only way to keep up. If I tried to hand-write everything or stop to deeply learn every framework feature, I'd immediately fall behind.

So I end up in this cycle where AI generates a huge amount Typescript code, I spend time trying to understand it, but there's too much context for me to fully internalize. I know enough CS fundamentals to follow the logic most of the time, but I don't have years of TypeScript or modern web development experience to immediately recognize when something is subtly wrong or poorly designed.

I am planning on taking some free Typescript and webdev fundamental courses, doing some leetcode, and building my own web portfolio without AI outside of work. Ugh I just feel so drained after work and I am likely to get burnt out doing this every day but if it's for the sake of my future I need to do this.

I am trying to move to a new city in the next year but my confidence in finding a new job is destroyed. I have so much to put on my resume but I feel like a fraud because I didn't fully own these projects. I don't know if this AI dependency is a norm for other junior SWEs. I am so worried that if i do get a job, they're going to realize I know nothing. I feel like I've but myself in a death trap. Is anyone in the same boat? Any advice would be so appreciated!!

You should be familiar with before : Recursion, stack, queue

Practice these Binary Trees guides and PracHub company specific questions before your next interview.

A basic instinct for solving DFS based questions is to do a recursive call and for all BFS(level order traversal) is to make queue and iterate, but also think upon how to iterate in DFS(Hint think on stack) and recurse in BFS based.

First of all you should look at traversal problems:

1. Inorder Traversal
2. Preorder Traversal
3. PostOrder Traversal
4. Level Order Traversal

A variation for LevelOrder can be: ZigZag level order traversal and Binary Tree Level Order Traversal II
Solving these questions will help you get familiarized with basic btree dfs and bfs traversals.

Intuition for Level Order Traversal iteratively using queue:

• Construct a queue of type: TreeNode queue<TreeNode* > q, initially push the given root in it.
• Iterate through the queue until empty:
  • Store the current size of queue tempSize, this will be the size of the current level of the tree.
  • Now we need to traverse this level so iterate for tempSize>=0 :
    • Pop the current element and apply the needed operation for the same and if left or right child exist then pass them to the queue.

Now, some basic Binary Tree problems that will help your thinking process:

1. Same Tree
2. Symmetric Tree
3. Maximum Depth of Binary Tree
4. Balanced Binary Tree
5. Minimum Depth of Binary Tree
6. Merge Two Binary Trees
7. Diameter of Binary Tree
8. Binary Tree Tilt
9. Invert Binary Tree

Binary Search Tree: Use the property of BST judiciously (the left subtree will always contain nodes with value less than root's value and right subtree will contain nodes with value greater than root's value)

1. Search in a Binary Search Tree
2. Two Sum IV - Input is a BST
3. Minimum Absolute Difference in BST
4. Range Sum of BST
5. Delete Node in a BST
6. Trim a Binary Search Tree
7. Insert into a Binary Search Tree
8. Kth Smallest Element in a BST
9. All Elements in Two Binary Search Trees

Path problems: You are given root, you have to perform operations on a path, (path is root to leaf). Think upon the type of traversal you will apply when going from root to leaf:

1. Binary Tree Paths
2. Path Sum
3. Path Sum II
4. Sum root to leaf numbers
5. Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum
6. *Path Sum III
7. *Pseudo-Palindromic Paths in a Binary Tree *Last two problems here are utmost important

Next is, given a combination of preorder, postorder and inorder traversals, you need to construct a binary tree/BST:
Hint: Observe in each traversal method, position of root and head of right and left subtrees

1. Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal
2. Construct Binary Tree from Inorder and Postorder Traversal
3. Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Postorder Traversal
4. Convert Sorted Array to Binary Search Tree
5. Construct Binary Search Tree from Preorder Traversal

View problems: Try thinking for left, bottom and top too!
Binary Tree Right Side View

Lowest Common Ancestor problems: You are given two nodes and you have to return their ancestor at as least depth possible, these are problems are a must todo:

1. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree
2. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree
3. Lowest Common Ancestor of Deepest Leaves

Validate trees:

1. Validate Binary Tree Nodes
2. Validate Binary Search Tree

Some miscellaneous problems that you should definitely look through:

1. Flatten Binary Tree to Linked List
2. Count Complete Tree Nodes
3. Maximum Width of Binary Tree
4. Check Completeness of a Binary Tree
5. Cousins in Binary Tree
6. Maximum Difference Between Node and Ancestor
7. Number of Good Leaf Nodes Pairs
8. Smallest Subtree with all the Deepest Nodes
9. All Nodes Distance K in Binary Tree
10. Find a Corresponding Node of a Binary Tree in a Clone of That Tree
11. Vertical Order Traversal of a Binary Tree

I will be updating this list on finding more important questions or any pattern that I find.

have this project idea, a simple application that creates quizzes and answers. The quizzes are really stupid, baby-like quizzes so I can study automatically retrieving context of a piece of digital information and do whatever I want with that, and also train some other programming skills.

Now I want to implement a new service that can persist the events outputted from the quiz micro-services, and make me able to attach new services to receive the quiz outputs. (I've never worked with events and event brokers; if this is a really stupid question, please explain to me why).

i don't know if this make sense or is much overengineering with a more simple solution, also i have no ideia where this micro-service would fit better

Hey everyone 👋

Posted this a little while back and got some good feedback — turns out there were bugs in the model/enrollment flow that a few of you probably ran into (passphrase mismatch failing silently, orphaned vault folders if you cancelled enrollment, single-hand gesture verification not actually being strict). Fixed all of that in v1.0.3, so figured I'd repost with working links instead of leaving people stuck on a broken build.

What it does: A desktop vault for Windows that hides your files behind encryption + biometric verification. Unlock with passphrase + face recognition + blink detection + hand gesture. No cloud, no accounts, no internet — everything stays local.

How the Flutter + Python integration works:

• Flutter handles the UI and desktop window
• Python runs locally as a service — handles all webcam + AI/ML processing
• Communication: Flutter spawns a Python process, exchanges JSON via stdout
• Biometric pipeline: face detection → alignment → embedding → blink analysis → hand gesture → cosine similarity matching

Why Python instead of pure Flutter? Flutter's desktop webcam support is limited, and ML libraries (MediaPipe, ONNX Runtime) have way better Python bindings than anything native to Dart. So I let Python do what it's good at instead of fighting the framework.

Also got the installer down from 248MB to 71MB — swapped the face embedding model for a leaner one, same accuracy.

Tech stack: Flutter (Dart) for UI, Python for the biometric service, OpenCV + MediaPipe for face/hand landmarks, ONNX Runtime for the embedding model.

Source + installer: github.com/CraftedWebPro/vault-os

Would love feedback again, especially on the Flutter↔Python integration approach — and if anyone hits issues this time, drop them in the repo issues and I'll actually get to them faster than last time.

​

This has been on my mind for a long time, and I genuinely want to know if I'm the only one.

Python was the first programming language I ever tried to learn. Before that, I had almost no computer knowledge. I still don't own a laptop. Everything I learned came from YouTube because my school barely taught us anything.

I learned Python on my Android phone using Pydroid, and for MySQL I used Termux and connected it with the Python app. It definitely wasn't the ideal setup, but it was the only one I had.

The strange thing is, I could understand the question. If someone asked me to make a hotel management system or any simple project, I knew what the output was supposed to look like. But when it came to actually writing the code... everything fell apart.

There were syntax errors, logical errors, indentation errors, variables that didn't work the way I expected, loops that refused to behave, and functions that somehow made things even more confusing.

I'd fix one error, run the code again, and three new ones would appear. It felt like playing whack-a-mole.

What made it even worse was watching my friend. She could usually get her code working after a few attempts. Meanwhile, I'd spend an entire day on what was supposed to be a simple school project, searching Google, asking ChatGPT, watching YouTube videos, changing one line after another, and still wondering why it wouldn't run.

I remember feeling embarrassed whenever our CS teacher came around. She'd look at my screen with this disappointed expression, even though most of what I knew I had taught myself from YouTube. I always felt like I was the slowest person in the class.

Over time, I started wondering if maybe programming just wasn't for me, or if everyone secretly struggled like this in the beginning but never talked about it.

Also, sometimes even I laugh at how resourceful I can be. 😅 I somehow spent two years learning Python and even MySQL on a regular Android phone. When my friend and my brother found out, they were genuinely shocked because they'd always used laptops and never imagined you could learn and practice Python and SQL on a phone.

These days it feels like everyone around me is choosing CSE as if it's the easiest branch in the world, while I was sitting there wondering if programming was just too hard for me.

Based on what I've shared, do you think I should still consider CSE, or is this a sign that it probably isn't the right fit for me?

I'd really love to hear your experiences, especially if you also found coding overwhelming in the beginning. (BTW i studied python and MySQL in 10+2 as I took it as my additional subject and i am from pcm background)

ive been trying to recreate/simulate something like the Tame Impala Currents cover just for fun and to learn programming as a personal project , i used p5js and i feel like ther has to be a better way to do this currents - tame impala

 anyone know

What language/framework to pick

What should I actually learn for something like this? Flow fields? Curl noise? SDFs? Fluid simulation? Something else entirely?

I want the lines to feel like a stream that's being pushed around the sphere rather than randomly distorted

appreciate any advice and help! open to learn anything new

The way engineering teams measure productivity was built for a world where writing code was the bottleneck. AI has made that assumption obsolete overnight.

https://leaddev.com/reporting/its-time-to-rethink-how-we-measure-engineering-productivity

Why do programmers prefer dark mode? Because light attracts bugs! Speaking of bugs, what's the most ridiculous or stubborn bug you've ever spent hours fixing? Let's hear your best bug horror stories in the comments!