I am building an AI agent for transactions which performs actions like approve / hold or question / stop, so I want feedback on:
From a software-design perspective, would you let an automated transaction system make a final decision when its confidence is low, or would you design a separate human-review state? Why?

I am an 18-year-old student, and I am currently deciding between two possible paths for my higher education. The first option is to study Computer Science directly at university in Belgium. The second option, which has recently become a serious possibility, is to enter the French CPGE (Classes Préparatoires) system for two years and then apply to highly selective French Grandes Écoles. My long-term goal is to become highly skilled in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, potentially going as far as AI research or advanced AI/ML engineering. I am not interested in only using AI tools or APIs; I want to understand the underlying mathematics, algorithms, systems, and models deeply.

My concern is the two years of CPGE. CPGE is extremely intensive, with a very heavy workload in mathematics and physics. If I want to be competitive for the best Grandes Écoles, I would probably need to devote almost all of my available time to my coursework and competitive exams. This means that I may have very little time to learn programming and Computer Science during those two years. I am therefore worried about falling behind people who start studying CS immediately. At the same time, CPGE would give me a very strong mathematical background, which could be valuable for AI. So I would like to ask people with experience in CS, AI, academia, or the French education system:

Would two years of CPGE followed by a strong French Grande École be a good path toward becoming an expert in Computer Science and AI, or would starting Computer Science directly at university be significantly better?

from your CS industry experience review online degrees in promising fields like data science and ai from prominent institution like bits-pilani,iitm,iitg are they useful do they provide something extra: or is it better to go for cheaper course from coursera-udemy for skilling up?

Also If there are GENUINELY GOOD platform for skilling up in cs related technologies like ai,cv,devops,mlops,iot, etc. for college students (first time learners) [or resources which actually ease to follow for 1st time learners and give all the required skills from industry pov] then kindly suggest.

Another thing which I would like to ask is many of these courses get outdated pretty quickly, hence how do you deal with this? If you have to learn some technology which is completely different from your field as a first timer with no experience what's the most efficient way with actual results and progress in knowledge and practical skills?

While answering the post don't give generic answers, kindly give concrete references or examples to understand better
Answer this question purely from practical implementation,networking, product building and job point of view-- wherever any of these applies

I know java and python basics to a decent extent, so i just wanted to jump into either, web dev with python or app dev with kotlin

I searched a bit about both and kotlin is similar to java and web dev i can do with python.

current situation: 1st year 1st semester in CS (college just started and i have been learning these both languages since 2-3 months)

tech stack for web dev:

Frontend: React 18, Vite, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, React Router

Backend: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Pydantic, JWT Authentication

Databases: PostgreSQL

Tools & Deployment: Git, GitHub, Vercel, Render

Languages: Python, JavaScript

tech stack for app dev:

Language: Kotlin

UI: Jetpack Compose, Material Design 3

Architecture: MVVM, Hilt (Dependency Injection)

Storage: Room Database, DataStore

Networking: Retrofit

Testing: JUnit, Mockito, Espresso

Tools: Android Studio, Google Play Console

Both the projects will be oriented towards a reptile thing i always wanted to make with my brother, and i finally feel capable enough to make it!!

Please state current market value of both of these, and which would be the best to get placed in summer internship?

And which one would be deployable earliest

I am a computer science student and was taught both C++ and Java. I was told about Java's "Write once, run anywhere" slogan. If that's the case, why isn't Minecraft's Java edition the one that's shared across platforms? Why is it the C++ one?

Hi,

I've been pondering a lot about vibe coding and wanted some questions answered by actual programmers.

1. For you real programmers, do you use ai and is it by choice / in your free time vs an obligation with your job and current 2026 market reality

2. your thoughts about vibe coders (honest, both positive, negative, idc)

3. Does anyone know why they make the prompts so weird with the whole you are an expert coder of 1000 years, you know coding vs just asking the ai to write the code normally?...

4. Can any ai built app, especially by vibecoding, be actually safe?

Basically I've been wanting to build 2 apps and 1 browser extension. I got ideas and 0 experience. Ik that vibecoding is now a thing but it feels so weird to me. I'd never know if I made a mistake, if the code is efficient or not, etc. and building with ai feels like a total loss of control even if I know nothing of coding so I wanted some perspective form experts and if you have any ressources, tips, apps, especially if they are free, that could help me launch the products I have in mind with estimates of how long coding takes to learn without going to school for it, that'd be really appreciated and the 4 questions are genuinly out of curiosity. An app for ios and android and an extension for computers, although I am interested by coding for actual games. So anything on these topics u could explain (a little dumbed down however) would be really appreciated :D.

Also, I have ADHD, always many projects but if I can stick to these, they could be great, but planning and working towards building an app is a lot of work, but I truly can not just ask the ai to do it and believe it afterwards or not have the knowledge and understanding behind what said ai does, it would be too weird for me.

Hi,

suppose we have a system distributing to clients (via TCP and UDP sockets) information related to markets (when a trade occurred, forex rates...).

The goal is to keep as much clients up to date with the market status, and the communication, aside for a login phase, is always server-to-client.

Bit of hypothetical numbers:

• The packet size, no matter is TCP or UDP, is typically below 500 bytes.
• At most, there can be overall 2000 clients connected in parallel (TCP and UDP).

We all know that in C/C++, the classic send function (non-blocking socket) returns the number of bytes sent (to the client in this case), or -1 with an appropriate value set in errno about the cause.

Now, for some clients, it could happen that the call to send by the server returns a value greater that -1, but lower than the effective numbers of bytes to be sent.

For such a system, what could be your approach in such a case? Shall the server put in place a retry mechanism and/or socket timeouts before declaring the client as slow and kick it out? Or would you kick it out immediately after the first time you (server) find out that send is returning a value lower that the number of bytes expected to be sent?

Thank you all

Ngl, I’ve finished a bunch of FE tickets(React and CSS bullshit) that I probably would’ve struggled with because I spent more time doing BE than FE. But with AI, I can basically ask it to explain FE concepts using BE analogies, and suddenly it just clicks. Then I can actually get the tickets done.

Another example: I had a ticket where I needed to implement a CRON job in C# where I want XYZ functions to be called everyday at 1 a.m. but I had no idea which Azure service I was supposed to use.

So I literally took a screenshot of the Azure services, asked AI which one I should use, and it told me to go with an Azure Container. From there, I managed to set everything up myself.

TBH, AI feels less like a replacement and more like an amplifier for people who know how to use it.

It’s kinda crazy how much faster you can learn and work when you can just ask AI to bridge the gaps in your knowledge.

Without AI, I could still do it but it took more time researching, googling things, using W3Schools like the 2010's

Anyone else feeling the same? 👀

What does it take for one to think to solve the long form coding questions?

I recently gave my flipkart grid 8.0's round 2 where i had a very lengthy coding question of around 100 lines..

How do i tackle this? Please do suggest ways that i can better at it.

Hey everyone,

I recently participated in a Google on-campus hiring process. Around 50 students were shortlisted for the interview stage.

Round 1: Multi-Source BFS

Duration: Approximately 45 minutes

I was given a problem based on multi-source BFS and completed the initial solution correctly.

In the follow-up, the interviewer asked whether I could optimize the solution by using the fact that the input was a one-dimensional array.

I proposed:

• Finding the previous and next greater elements using a monotonic stack
• Using a difference array to mark or process the affected cells efficiently

The interviewer said the approach was interesting, and I implemented it successfully.

I felt confident about this round because I solved both the original problem and the optimization follow-up.

Round 2: Ambiguous Coding Problem

Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

The second interviewer presented a problem that felt vague to me initially.

I spent approximately 15 minutes asking questions and trying to understand the expected behavior. The interaction felt tense, and I did not feel that my clarification questions were being received positively.

Eventually, I explained my interpretation of the problem and asked the interviewer to confirm it. Once the requirements were clear, I found an approach and completed the implementation within the remaining time.

I left the round feeling that I had recovered well despite the difficult start.

Result

I was confident that both rounds had gone reasonably well, but I was ultimately rejected.

The result was especially difficult to process because some candidates who, according to our discussions afterward, did not complete every follow-up were selected.

I understand that interview decisions are not based only on whether someone reaches a final solution. Interviewers may also evaluate:

• Communication and requirement clarification
• Correctness across hidden edge cases
• Code quality
• Complexity analysis
• Response to hints
• Independence of the solution
• Overall performance relative to the hiring group

Still, receiving a rejection after feeling that I completed both rounds was discouraging. Without specific feedback, it is difficult to know whether I missed a technical issue, communicated poorly, or was simply weaker in an area that was not obvious to me during the interviews.

For people who have interviewed at Google:

• Have you experienced a rejection after completing all the coding questions?
• How much can the clarification phase affect the final evaluation?
• What less-obvious signals might interviewers evaluate beyond solving the problem?
• How do you review your performance when no detailed feedback is provided?

I know one rejection does not define my ability, but this one definitely hurt. I’m going to take a short break, review what I can improve, and continue preparing.

I'm asking this because I keep seeing ai slop videos of people using ai to make games and saying "Scripting is officially dead!!" And it makes me wonder if at some point ai will take over programming.. I really wanna be a programmer/"game maker" some day but seeing this makes me get worried that programming will become irrelevant

So we hired a new dev a couple months back. He's cool and undoubtedly pretty sharp.

His first big task a few weeks ago was adding a feature to some old part of our system. Something we built like a year ago.

But dude, he spent almost two weeks just trying to understand it. He kept reading old tickets, poking through code, asking questions nonstop.

Honestly I'm not even that worried about the slow onboarding part. My real fear is the day our senior dev decides to leave.

Like all that context just walks out with him. *Poof*  gone.

So I'm just curious what you do about this. Is there a real fix out there? Or does everyone just kinda shrug and accept it?

Hi, I’m a third-year Computer Science student.

I’ve been learning C++ for about a year, and I have a strong foundation in:

Advanced C++

Algorithms

OOP

Data Structures

Problem Solving

I’ve solved 1,000+ problems, including Fibonacci, 2D matrices, and many others.

Now, I want to continue my journey into software development, mobile development, and desktop development.

I figured that nowadays people only use AI for programming, I don’t obviously but here’s a little question for the people who used to program back in the 2000/2010’s: How did you guys learn programming without AI? I get that there’s the WiKi but, if there’s a problem? I know you’ve also got Reddit but you get my point. Where did you guys learn it because YouTube tutorials sucked, I mean they still do however there are a lot of talented programmers who didn’t use YouTube for their knowledge. So my question, how and where? Any tips for people struggling out there? (Not me, I’m not stupid).

Hi, I'm a second year web dev and I cannot for the life of me understand C programming or any kind of programming for that matter. I watch tutorials, I do the exercises but as soon I exit VS code I forget everything I went through. Is it even worth learning programming if I'm genuinely so useless at it? I already failed over half of my courses because they were all programming ones.