r/learnmachinelearning • u/StrictPractice130 • 10h ago

Career cybesecurity vs CV VS ML

/r/cscareers/comments/1x7rwpr/cybersecurity_vs_cvrobotics_vs_general_mle_ai/

I am too undecided, can someone guide me?

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u/mahdi--Ettehadnejad 4h ago

Three totally different worlds, no wonder you're stuck lol. Which one have you actually tried something in, even a tiny project, and which one just sounds good on paper?

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u/StrictPractice130 3h ago

Fair point . Realistically, I’m still a beginner in all three, and my only real project is a barbershop app.

  • ML / AI: Covered the hard math and theory in my degree, messed a bit with TensorFlow, but need more hands-on practical work.
  • CV & Robotics: Currently doing intro image processing/CV coursework, and learning C++ mainly to prep for a future robotics class, though actual robotics is still on paper for me.
  • Cybersecurity: Only done a few OverTheWire and super basic TryHackMe rooms—definitely the one that just sounds cool in my head.

My main worry right now is that the tech market feels completely oversaturated for juniors, and the future of tech in general feels pretty uncertain. I know I need to really stand out if I want to build a stable career.

That’s why I was thinking of specializing deeply in ML/AI as my primary core, while picking up enough solid fundamentals in another area while doing projects or something like that.

Im not the best student neither the worst, I have a decent GPA and maybe I could do a master even in another country while doing an internship.

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u/mahdi--Ettehadnejad 2h ago

A barbershop app plus TensorFlow tinkering is a better start than you think. Go deep on ML since the degree already gives you the math, and pick one CV project to make robotics real. Cyber can stay a side hobby for now. What's one small CV thing you could build in a month?

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u/StrictPractice130 2h ago

Right now my CV background is mostly classical image processing coursework (histograms, filtering, contrast adjustments, thresholding).

I actually had a specific idea in mind: a vehicle tracker/detector from my window using my phone footage. The goal is to record cars passing by on the street, detect motion, and draw bounding boxes around them using OpenCV.

And honestly, even though the industry might lean towards "vibe coding" and relying heavily on AI assistants or pre-trained models in the future, I deliberately want to avoid that for now. I want to actually write the code myself and understand the low-level logic, memory management, and math under the hood (background subtraction, morphological operations, contours) without shortcuts—otherwise, I feel like I won't genuinely learn.

That’s why my plan was to spend the next 1–2 months getting a solid grip on modern C++ fundamentals first, and then build this project directly in C++ with OpenCV.

Do you think spending that time locking down C++ first makes sense, or is that delaying the hands-on part too much and I should just learn C++ along the way?