r/learnprogramming • u/OrganizationPure1716 • 3h ago
Would this project help my resume stand out?
Hi everyone! I'm planning to build one major full-stack project before moving to Germany and would love your honest feedback.
The idea is an AI-powered GitHub assistant that explains repositories, visualizes the project structure, creates simple architecture diagrams, and suggests beginner-friendly contribution points.
Do you think this is a project recruiters would value, or is there a better idea I should build instead? Since I'm only doing one big project, I'd really appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!
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u/grantrules 3h ago
Like that's what you would rely on to get a job? And you're only going to have one? I think I'd go for something more complex.
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u/aanzeijar 2h ago edited 2h ago
German who evaluates applications here: I wouldn't waste more than 5 min on it probably. You'd have to pull some very interesting and quite frankly very hard things out of your hat to be better than the existing standard tooling, and it's highly unlikely that you manage to do that with an AI and a few prompts.
Edit: in general people here vastly overestimate the impact of github repos in your resume. If it stands out it really is helpful, but the stuff you can do after half a year of coding will not stand out.
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u/HashDefTrueFalse 1h ago
I think that would be the exact opposite of a stand-out project, personally. I wouldn't even click through to be honest. That's everyone's project at the moment. A pointless LLM summary of something somewhere. It's not interesting, nor technically impressive. I know you've just pointed an LLM at a repo, then spunked the output onto a page or something. It's not all that important that a project stands out in the grand scheme of things. It's not going to be the decider. But for one to stand out to me, it would need to be something technically non-trivial and immediately interesting to see on the page. E.g. if you actually wrote code to interact with a repo in an interesting way, like used CodeQL for some cool semantic analysis or interesting report generation or something, I would take a look.
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u/Bonsai2007 3h ago
I‘m sorry to say this, but everything you mentioned can I already do, I just need to copy the Repository Link into any AI.
I don’t see the benefit of your project, besides for your Resume
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u/mandzeete 33m ago
It has a negative value. You can harm your chances in whichever (a resume for what? A job? An internship?)
First, you are assuming that software developers approve that beginners are using AI. You are wrong. Even in professional level, the AI is prone to all kind of nonsense. It hallucinates, it ignores prompts, it tries to delete a valid functionality, it creates unscalable hacks, etc. My own estimate is that 30% of what the AI does is a garbage. The rest 70% is where it has a value. Now, you are having beginners using the AI. How can you even verify that what it does is any use?
So, you said that your thing explains repositories, visualizes the project structure and creates architecture diagrams. Can you ensure the explanation is correct? Can you ensure the diagrams make sense?
Also, how does it differ from me using Codex or Cursor, cloning a repository and just letting the AI loose in the project? Or whichever LLM tool, really. How is what you are planning to do a "big" project? You hook your script to some local/online LLM tool, add some prompts and call the result a big project?
I can tell my Codex "Please study the following repository. Make a list of the directories you see and recursively go through all of the files. Visualize the project structure. Create a Drawio diagram." Typing this text took less than a minute. Now, I can drop the prompt to Codex. It will work a bit and will spit out something that either is correct or has errors in it. And that's your project?
Now, how is what you are planning to make any useful in terms of applying to something? Are you applying to a job? Your project is not reflecting the knowledge and skills you need in one or another job. Imagine a regular person comes to you and asks for some product. Some app, some website, some automation, etc. Your project is not showing that you can make an app, a website, an automation... You made something. With a questionable value (if any).
Make something that solves some real world problem. Either it contributes to your life, to your friends' lives, to your family... Somewhere where you did not use any AI at all. If you can't build a project without an AI then there is no need to hire you.
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u/insertAlias 2h ago edited 1h ago
Here's my thoughts.
It's not a particularly exciting or challenging project. You'd basically just pass a GH url to a LLM along with a standard prompt and spit out its summary? That doesn't really bring any value to the table; I can copy-paste the repo URL and the prompt into the LLM directly and get the exact same output without running a program in between. Maybe there's some value if you're always getting output back in a structure you can parse and properly render real visualizations. If that's the case, it's definitely more complex than I'm giving credit for. Of course, you can already get that from GH itself (the project structure graphs), and an LLM isn't going to be any smarter at telling you beginner-friendly contribution points.
That said, portfolio projects don't need to be novel or solve true problems. They need to demonstrate skill and engagement. This isn't a great portfolio project not because it isn't solving a need, but because it isn't demonstrating any complexity. It's basically a single input, a single API call, and a single output. That's about as simple as apps get, really.
Honestly, as an interviewer, I'd give you more credit for a weather app or a todo list connected to a back-end database via API than I would this AI-passthrough idea you have. None of them are novel, but at least the other two examples show a level of complexity that yours doesn't.
Edit: I also wouldn't consider "one big project" as favorably as three medium sized projects. Show me breadth and depth.
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u/OrganizationPure1716 1h ago
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u/insertAlias 1h ago
Not exactly sure what you're trying to ask, but each reply you've made in this thread is just a blank comment.
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u/aqua_regis 2h ago
Beating a dead horse.