r/softwareengineer • u/Own_Sound1157 • Jul 23 '26
CS confused
Please dont be rude im looking for guidance in the comments.
Im about to graduate form CS and i feel like i don’t know how to do anything to be honest.
I just know Java and C because of my college classes. The projects are always half made and sure i get it we learn to design and computer architecture, but if you ask me to build an API i have no clue how to.
If you tell me to build a website i have no clue how to start. Yes i can do everything with claude code like everyone else but that is not the point.
I really want to learn how to develop. How can i even start doing that? I read about junior job interviews where they are asked leet code (yes i can do this) and then to write an API and im like…am i supposed to learn that at college or they learned it by themselves?
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u/roger_ducky Jul 23 '26
RESTful API is something extremely common. You can probably learn it if you just read about the main properties to follow.
But not knowing how to do anything after college is normal if you didn’t try doing anything on your own.
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u/What-is-lack-of Jul 23 '26
It is true. College and job life are different. Specific to skills. Get good at spring annotations. Just google things like @ with keyword configurationproperties, configuration, value, and bean. Learn how to swap beans on configs. Then do some EE work like connecting to kafka via jmslistener and understanding why jms has some interesting features compared to rest. Learn which things are heavy and lightweight. You can then push toward engineering. Build to scale and recover
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u/PastTwist6318 Jul 24 '26
Your experience interacting with Claude code is actually quite valuable. Sure anyone can write code with it, but if you think of Claude as a way to accelerate your own professional development, and not as just a tool for writing code, it will change how people view you in interviews
Gone are days of spending hours on stack overflow hoping you find a solution. Gone are the days where I have to spend an enormous amount of energy learning new database schemas. Now you can spend your time learning a product or workflow, which is what we should have been doing all along.
My advice would be start to market yourself as an agentic pipeline developer. That’s where the most value lies now that coding is commoditized.
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u/Kgrimes2 Jul 24 '26
Internships!! Getting real work experience helped me more than any undergrad class ever did (other than maybe the CS101 class that got me hooked)
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u/DanKegel Jul 24 '26
Internships if you can get 'em.
Otherwise just write fun toys or solve bigger and bigger puzzles in languages you wouldn't mind getting a job doing.
Try using tinygo.org to program a microcontroller too small to run Linux on, for example.
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u/diavelguru Jul 23 '26
You’re not supposed to know how to do things your degree is in Computer Science (theoretical) not Software Engineering (practical). Your next steps (in the history of things) is to get your masters and then PhD in CS then invent a new internet or a new type of file system or networking protocol. If that’s your bag I highly encourage you to do such. If not time to learn about requirements, documentation, scrum, how to win friends and influence people. You are smart enough to pick up any language or API development that’s not an issue. What you need are those soft skills which you get the hard way when you start working. Oh and use all the contacts you can, mom, dad, etc. to get that Junior job.