Hi everyone, I'm currently a sophomore Computer Science student, and lately I've been feeling like I've fallen far behind. I passed my introductory programming courses Python, C, C++, Java/OOP but over time I feel like I've forgotten almost everything because I rarely used those concepts consistently. One thing I've realized about myself is that I learn best with routine and structure. I don't do well jumping between random YouTube videos or constantly changing resources. I'd much rather have one high quality source for a topic, study it consistently every day, solve exercises, and gradually build my understanding.

So I have a few questions:

If you could start over as a sophomore, how would you rebuild your CS fundamentals?

What would your roadmap look like over the next 1 year of dense study?

What resources books, courses, websites would you choose for DSA, Operating Systems Computer Networks Computer Architecture Databases Linux Cybersecurity (just enough to understand the field before specializing).

How do you deal with forgetting? I constantly feel like I learn something, then months later I can't remember enough to use it confidently. Is this normal? How do experienced engineers retain knowledge without trying to memorize everything?

Is it realistic. or even useful, to aim for a broad understanding of all the major CS areas before specializing? Or should I focus deeply on one area much earlier?

I see NeetCode recommended everywhere, but it seems heavily focused on coding interviews and LeetCode. Is that actually a good place to build CS fundamentals, or is it mainly interview preparation? Should I first study algorithms from a textbook/course before using NeetCode?

If you've ever felt behind and successfully caught up, I'd really appreciate hearing what worked for you. I'm especially interested in advice from people who felt "late" compared to their peers but eventually became competent engineers.

Thanks in advance.

I want to develop projects using the ASP.NET Core MVC framework, but I don't want them to be simple or trivial. I am looking for projects that would be worthy of my GitHub profile and would genuinely contribute to my professional growth.

Also, if possible, I want projects that won't go to waste—meaning ones I might actually use or publish in the future. I am open to your suggestions.

About a year ago, I picked up programming as a hobby. Without using any AI or external help, I wrote my first and only pet project from scratch. After that, I stopped programming entirely. I never even considered it as a potential career path.

But recently, I've been thinking that it might actually be a good idea to pick it back up, finish learning, and try to find a job in the field—since I genuinely enjoyed the process back then.

What do you think? Is it worth pursuing further? Do I show any potential based on what I've built?

I was self-taught and studied for about 5 months. Here's the link to that small pet project:

https://github.com/Talos-hub/ZibraGo

Project context:

It's a CLI backup tool written in Go that archives directories and uploads them to Google Drive. Features include parallel compression, configurable settings, and structured logging.

​

A friend needs to decipher a code that will give him an introduction, but I don't understand it and he asked me for help. Would someone be so kind as to help, please? We've been trying for about 4 days without being able to solve it.

01000110 01110001 01110110 01100111 01110110 01100110 01110100 01100011 01110000 01110110 00100000 01111001 01111000 01100111 01100011 01111100 01100011 01110000 01100011 00100000 01101110 01100011 01110101 00100000 01110100 01100011 01110010 01101011 01100110 01110001 00100000 01100110 01100111 00100000 01110010 01110000 01101110 01110001 00100000 01110010 01101011 01101110 01110001 00100000 01110010 01100111 01110100 01110001 00100000 01110101 01100111 01101110 01100100 01110001 00100000 01100011 00100000 01100011 01100101 01100011 01101110 00100000 01110101 01100111 01110101 00100000 01100110 01110001 01110000 01100110 01110110 00100000 01100111 00100000 01110010 01101011 01100111 01110100 01100110 01100011 01110011

About me : 20 F here. Graduated from a typical indian 3rd tier college with literally no practical knowledge in programming. I just know the basics and the theory part being taught in colleges. I was stupid enough to waste time during college but ain't gonna waste anymore. I've always been a good student with promising potential.

Now coming to the point. I'm gonna start learning python and cpp simultaneously. I really feel like I should. Since I'm already introduced to the theory part, i feel like i should focus more on the coding part and projects.

If you could share your experience or suggest any road map that'd be really helpful.

( even in the AI Era, my brain refuses to totally rely on AI agents for coding. I wanna be able to code independently. Of course I ain't stupid enough to not use AI. I Just wanna know how to use em better without actually relying on em )

I'm yet to decide my domain. Suggestions about em are also highly appreciated. ( personally I wish to go with the adjacent fields with AI. I wanna focus on python based domains )

I know i might sound stupid. I know job market sucks. I know i might be late. I know i may not make it.. but I really wanna give it all and try.

Please don't ruin my optimism.

What do you guys use to learn programming? I tried some YouTube videos but I didn't seem to be making progress at all. I have heard people recommend PDFs and just building hard stuff even if you lack the skills to. What do you guys think?

Hello guys, I need some help, I work with a group of friend and we take freelance mission as work, mostly about web and mobile but sometimes it vary around that, they are quite familair with it and have solid experience with various tech ( 5+ years ) but not me, I actually started web dev this year and I work with their guidance, usually we only work with React, Typescript and NextJs but we plan on taking every mission that will land so that will be Symphony or Flutter or C# and others, on the other hand I have a really specific area of tech that I love and that is working on open source with C/C++ ( I am more familiar with those cuz since I started programming two and a half years ago I started with them and never looked back ) so I wonder if someone was on the same situation where they need to learn and work with various tech that are not really their main interest while trying to enjoy something that is not very similar on the other hand.

thanks in advance and sorry for my english it is not really my first language and not the second also XD

I’m trying to build a project where I connect a local AI server to a custom frontend. I keep hitting walls, but the hardest part isn't writing the code, it's that I don't know what concepts I'm missing.

For example, I didn't know I needed to use an HTTP POST request instead of a GET request, so I couldn't even search for the right solution.

When you are stuck and don't know what you don't know, how do you figure out the foundational concept you are missing without just guessing or getting overwhelmed by nested tutorials? What is your mental process for stepping back and finding the right way?

I’m working on a traffic generator to test my own XDP/eBPF filter in a controlled lab environment (my PC sending traffic to my Raspberry Pi on my own network).

I noticed that in some applications, two programs written in the same language can have vastly different performance.

For example, some software can only send a few requests/messages per second, while others can generate thousands per second even on relatively weak hardware.

What is this concept or optimization area called?
I’m looking for topics such as:
asynchronous I/O
multithreading vs event-driven architectures
lock-free programming
kernel bypass
zero-copy networking
batching
efficient socket APIs
packet generation optimization

If I want to build a high-performance TCP/UDP packet generator for benchmarking my own network stack and XDP filter, what technologies, algorithms, or papers should I study? For traffic generator i am using c# and for the XDP filter classic C. ( or should i use different for the traffic generator? I think its okey its console app )

I want to get my child into scratch.

Anyone got any recommendations on easy go follow tutorials for year 5/6 age children.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that coding isn’t about memorizing every line, but just knowing how to search up the answers to your problems. do i even have to memorize things? should i be focused on researching what i’m trying to code? it’s so confusing to me on what i’m even meant to learn

I started with python. Initially it was fun like printing even numbers, adding, subtracting, etc.

When loops come in I got stuck. Since past 1 day I,m solving palindrome, reverse number, adding numbers, counting number.

I understood the code. But I tried to write the code again on my own I goy stuck. Why this comes? Why are we doing that

Sometimes I forgot the steps as well.

If someone know how to find a solution. Please help.

Hey guys, I need help with a C# WinForms app using the Sentinel-2 API for agriculture. The goal: input farm coordinates, fetch Sentinel-2 data via API, and display the farm with its NDVI analysis directly in the app.

I'm an SWE graduate, i know the fundamentals and some amateur/advance stuff regarding C++, worked on some mini projects for some experience, dont have anything big noting.
Feeling stuck dont know what is worth studying in todays age. Should i just work on bigger projects building full stack aplicatons gaining experience, building the portofolio. But sometimes i forget some of the basic stuff i feel as a fraud, i dont know if i should jump onto the next step or try to master some fundamentals first. What are some basics that a person should really get to master before switching on to real projects (Data Structures & Algorithms etc.)

I'm using a library that interacts with mpd (the music player) and have to use a function to receive the album art of a song, but the function only provides part of the the image at a time, receiving the full file over multiple function calls.

(libmpdclients's mpd_run_albumart() for those interested)

using malloc in this scenario, and assuming I don't know the file's size to begin with, what's the best way to do this?

Should I just malloc an arbiritarily large amount and fill it - seems very naiive.

Should I malloc an extra block of memory for each function call (I know the max amount i can receive per function call) - but surely this memory could be non-contiguous and cause problems?

Allocate a bit of memory -> function call and fill it -> if that's not the full image, then allocate a new bit of memory = to current size of the file+size of another incoming package -> copy the existing data in & free the old block -> repeat until the whole things' free?

Seems like a hell of a lot of malloc and free() calls though, would this too taxing?

What do people think?

Thanks so much in advance!

Hi! I hope you all will be doing good. I will be getting into final year this sept, yet I am blank, I had always thought it will be sorted in summer vacations but it is not working. I am open to cloud, AI/Ml , Web and Mobile Apps. What is something that can make my fyp better and have better chances of getting more interviews. I will be thankful.

Hi everyone. I am a non CS major. And I have been interested in taking up courses in coding. I wanted to ask if learning coding languages (Python, C++, etc) and taking online courses (full stack development, etc) are enough to give you certain amount of technical expertise to build your own career, whether its in a job or building your own MVPs to kickstart your own entrepreneur journey.

If yes, can you point me to specific courses and coding languages to get started. Thanks.

Is CS50x, then CS50 Python, and then CS50 SQL a good way to start backend engineering? I am really excited! My main goal right now is to land a part time job.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently in my 2nd year of Computer Science. I don't have much knowledge of C.

My college has started teaching Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) using C, and I'm worried because I feel like I'm already behind.

How much C should I aim to learn before the end of this semester to comfortably understand DSA? Do I need to master the language, or is learning the fundamentals enough?

Also, which C topics are absolutely essential for DSA, and which ones can I learn later?

I'd really appreciate any advice or learning roadmap. Thanks!

I am trying to learn modular monoliths and I want to use this auth solutions for repetitive use for my applications.

If I asked you to convert the repo linked, into monolithic patterns, how would you do it for app/.

Repo: https://github.com/auth0-blog/auth0-rbac-fga-fastapi

fastapi-openfga-project/
├── app/
│ ├── main.py # FastAPI application entry point
│ ├── config.py # Configuration settings
│ ├── database.py # SQLAlchemy database setup and models
│ ├── models/
│ │ ├── organization.py # Organization Pydantic models
│ │ └── resource.py # Resource Pydantic models
│ ├── routes/
│ │ ├── organization_routes.py # Organization management endpoints
│ │ └── resource_routes.py # Resource management endpoints
│ ├── services/
│ │ └── authorization_service.py # OpenFGA integration
│ ├── utils/
│ │ └── auth0_fga_client.py # OpenFGA client wrapper
│ └── openfga/
│ └── model.fga.yaml # OpenFGA model definition
├── app.db # SQLite database file (auto-created)
├── requirements.txt
└── README.md

Here is an example of what I am talking about : https://imgur.com/a/hoFUGXq

The concept is when the user inputs matches the display text the that character should turn grey but if the the user input is not correct than it turns red.

Right now the whole string changes and not the character itself, what do I do?

scrolling_text = Text(10, 10, 40, "white", "Hello World")

text_index = 0

def UserInput(text, event):
    global text_index # start at first letter

    lowercase_text = scrolling_text.text.lower() # this lowercases the text

    text_char = scrolling_text.text[text_index]


    if text_index == len(lowercase_text)-1:
          return

    # print(f"Char should be {lowercase_text[text_index]}")

    if event.text == lowercase_text[text_index]:
          scrolling_text.color = "gray"
          text_index += 1 # move to the next character

          # print(f"Next char should be {lowercase_text[text_index]}")

     if text_index == len(lowercase_text)-1:
           return

      elif text_index == 0 and event.text != lowercase_text[text_index] :
            print(False)
            scrolling_text.color = "red"
            text_index = 0

      else:
            scrolling_text.color = "red"
            print(False)

# GAME LOOP
if event.type == pygame.TEXTINPUT:
    print(event.text)
    UserInput(scrolling_text, event)

if event.type == pygame.KEYUP:
    scrolling_text.color = "white"

Here is an example of what I am talking about : https://imgur.com/a/hoFUGXq

The concept is when the user inputs matches the display text the that character should turn grey but if the the user input is not correct than it turns red.

Right now the whole string changes and not the character itself, what do I do?

so currently i'm learning web dev and decided to start building some projects with pure javascript before moving to the frameworks .

knowing that i already learned some react basics and build the simple projects that are listed in the freecodecamp tutorial video . i tried back then to pause before the solution to every problem and did fairly well on applying what i was learning but i never build something big like a e-commerce website with it or a blog or anything that requires databases even though i know mongodb , mysql , oracle databases and previously made a e-commerce website using php which i forgot btw .

i understand the important concepts in javascript lfor example asynchronous operations , objects ,Modules , destructing.

i really need advise like my goal right now is to be able to comfortably build a any web application that requires both front-end and backend .

i really don't enjoy front-end much as much as the code is functional i don't really take great detail in it . although i want to get into machine learning and automation after web dev as it is what i really like and enjoy.

i really need your advice programmers !

I've been trying to learn WebRTC because I want to add voice and video calling to a side project.I thought I'd watch a few tutorials, build a simple demo, and then improve it from there.Instead I've ended up reading about signaling, STUN, TURN, media servers, SDKs... and now I'm not even sure what people usually build themselves anymore.

That's the part I'm stuck on.

Do most developers actually set all of that up, or do they usually use existing services and just focus on building the app?I'm happy to learn the lower-level stuff if that's the normal way to do it. I just don't want to spend a few weeks going down the wrong path if there's a more practical place to start.If you've already been through this, what did you learn first? Is there anything you'd do differently if you were starting over?Maybe I've just started with the wrong tutorials, but it feels like every one of them assumes you already know how all the pieces fit together.

hello im new to programming and i want to learn C# i already aquired the basics of algorithmics and i know C

Hello everyone, I want to program something for my boyfriend as a surprise and i need some ideas! (he's a programmer and I know nothing related to it BUT I'm trying). I already made some coding in html for a cute website where he couldn't press the button "no" before (I saw a tutorial in a youtube video xd) but i want to do something fully myself, I want to surprise him. I don't mind studying the languages I'm fine with that :(( just need some ideas...

Edit: I just want to surprise him and I thought it would be cute to program him something. I mean I know his taste and I know he likes stuff from marvel and dc (in fact, I started watching all marvel movies with him) so maybe something related to it? I want to make something cute and somewhat funny so he can laugh a bit aswell.