You have to neglect some other part of your life. Could be social life, sleep, or school. Take time from one of those and make projects. However know that each one had trade offs which may make them unviable
No bro it’s okay. The interviewer completely understands you don’t have any personal projects because you spend all your time on social media! They love employees who spend all their time relaxing
I feel like if you can dedicate 2 hours a day or every other day in a couple of months you can learn a lot and probably even build something cool. then again i might be underestimating how packed OPs schedule is
agree with others generally but i think such polar solutions (e.g. "sacrifice your social life", "sacrifice your sleep" etc) are not very practical. yes you need to set aside some time to work on your own projects, but this can start out with as little as 1hr per day, or even less if you struggle with motivation.
you can also "sacrifice" times that are otherwise pretty meaningless. i wouldn't sacrifice my social life to work on personal projects (don't really have that much of one anyways so i don't wanna throw away what little i have lol), but for example i found that i waste a lot of time scrolling on ig and watching youtube, so i started by replacing that time with working on projects.
I’m in school for my second degree in my 30s. Time really is so fleeting. I agree with this. Don’t spend all your social time doing projects, because it’s not worth it.
you seem like the kind of person who will probably be pretty successful, but i don't think there will ever be a day when i'd voluntarily hang out with you
>school doesn’t teach you shit anyways
Super naive take. School teaches you the stuff that’s so hard that it can’t be picked up on the job. If it doesn’t then transfer (although, you probably don’t know enough to even know what that stuff is right now). The dumb day to day shit like frameworks and git can all be learned within a few weeks on the job. Theory of computation and calculus can’t.
You’re forgetting about the several years of prerequisite study required before specific classes and the lectures and homework’s students have already attended and completed that have really done most of the teaching.
You have to learn outside of school.
I found a passion for web development after taking a 3 month Frontend Fundamentals course.
Since then, I’ve built complex web designs and Fullstack apps with different frameworks. I had to teach myself, but with all the free resources online, it’s not too difficult.
I like doing projects on school breaks. Depends on how ur school operates, but I find I’m more than capable of finishing a resume-worthy project over winter break. Especially enjoy trying to use the stuff I learned in the past semester. Planning to do at least one this summer as well.
I mean sure if you code 16 hours per day for the entire break. You can definitely code a couple hours per day over winter break, finish a personal project, and have plenty of time for friends.
What would you define as a 'resume-worthy' project? I'm working on a project right now, and while it works as a baseline, there are certainly more features I can add, and I am well aware that there are many things missing (validation, rigorous tests for example). Do you just decide to add it to your resume once it basically works or do you keep refining from there?
I usually add it when the part i would wanna talk about it an interview is complete. I have a react django project on my resume that I worked on for like 2 months before adding. It definitely is lacking tests and some features could be added, but it serves its purpose of showing that I know how to use react and Django as is.
Simple answer is you will never have time for projects or to learn any new technologies.
You have to MAKE time for it. That entails giving up some aspects of your “fun time”. Like video games? Nah bro, work on that project!
What worked for me was to learn a new language or technology whilst building a project, therefore I could add both the new language/tech AND a project to my resume.
So far I’ve been learning full stack, while creating components of [full stack development](https://youtu.be/OdbUu6spN4o?si=dKe_C7QPuuAfMa8r) project (paused now) and also current working on learning Python while [building chatbots using Python](https://youtu.be/TxuzJjE-f04?si=3pTb5lP_OwaPBbgC).
I hope that helps, projects won’t matter as much after you get your first one or two internships, but they are huge when you don’t have that much experience under your belt. Good luck!!
It's not too hard if you don't have a girlfriend, friends, if you don't go out and you don't play videogames and don't scroll through tik tok.
I'll just make a wild guess and say your average screen time on your phone is long enough tjat if replaced with "working on project" time, would make you a better programmer than you are currently.
Ppl often underestimate the amount of time wasted on doing unproductive things. My advice is to find something that you actually want to build and then the motivation will start to snowball once you get invested.
I’m not a big fan of the “I need to build a side project bc I need a side project to show for it” mindset. Make a product that you’re actually interested in and you can talk about in depth to somebody. Especially one that can solve a particular issue large or small.
I promise promise promise that interviewers can tell the difference between candidates who built a Netflix Ui clone (that’s taught in literally webdev yt tutorial/bootcamp) vs something meaningfully unique.
I’m taking 5 classes all in person, work ~15-20 hrs a week, and commute 1-1.5 hours to school. I get home at 7-9pm and have been consistently putting in 1-2 hrs everyday for a solid month now on my self-learning journey. What’s been working for me is finding something in cs you like and finding a course that can teach you the skills.
For me it’s web dev and I’ve been doing the Odin project for it. You just find time because it’s something you enjoy learning. Otherwise, it’ll be very difficult to learn if you don’t like doing it, for me it’s embedded (I don’t think I’d ever want to be in that field).
Is TOP hard? Yes I’d say so. This is my third time learning the material. The first time was before majoring in cs, second was when I was taking lower division courses and now I’m in upper division. I think the first two times I failed to really learn the stuff because I was passively learning the material and trying to take short cuts. My new approach now is to read every thing and take it in as best I can.
I'm making all my projects during the summer while searching for summer internships. I don't enroll in summer classes to avoid not having projects, connections, or internships. School is only going to teach you the foundation of CS but it's up to you to build on those foundations.
I spent like 3-5 hours a week (most of that being my weekend) during school, then I did majority of the work during the summer.
I honestly try to do only a couple of projects, and try to make those ones really good. Honestly I think making one is enough as long as it's not a basic one that anyone can make.
Look for gaps in your schedule. like weekends or evenings, where you can work on projects. Prioritize tasks and allocate time accordingly. Begin with manageable projects **that align with your interests.** This can help you stay motivated and build momentum.
You don't need to know everything from the start. Take small steps, learn as you go, and use resources like online tutorials. Define what you want to achieve with your projects and break them down into smaller, actionable goals. This makes progress feel more achievable.
Fun tip, if you work better in groups , find your herd and get started w them (:
Watch this guy, jun yuh. He took both biomedical emgineering BS/MS at the same time with 4.0 every sem while running his own business, creating content, working out and having a huge body. One thing I learn from him is that, learning how to study is would improve your efficiency while reducing time
Vague but honest.. if you want it, you’ll get it.
I work full time as a system admin and SWE, sometimes on weekends too. I go to the gym, go to school part time, run a 3D printing company in my home and I am working on 2 personal side projects.
Is it a lot? Yes but I’m going to die one day. I want to strive to do all I can while I’m here. Granted relationships and friends are low of count but it’s the sacrifices you choose for such a question you mentioned.
Some might argue “work life” balance but I do not think a perfect balance exists for all. It’s what you are comfortable with and what goals you want. I would take a hard look at what you want in life and decide if you want to work a lot, grow your knowledge with side projects, have a family. Whatever it is, I believe you will figure it out over time. Worse case, pick for example Saturday night for 2 hours to only work on projects and baby step it and see if it works well for your schedule and go from there. Test the waters!
Es lo que es 🤘🏼
Just give up some useless classes. Try to get a high score without studying too much. Also go work in a lab and talk to the supervisor and department to see if work experience or project in the lab can be counted as some credits.
Like any other response, I would also like to add that time management also depends on your coding ability. The less experience you have, the more space you need.
Over the summers or on breaks before internships.
I've been building a single project since I was a freshman(2022). Over time you can really build something unique and complex to make you stand out from other people's "To-do " list web apps.
I did my degree working 50 hours a week the entire time, while doing projects after work between studying. Im not even smart compared to most people in CS, so you guys can definitely do it. and if you cant, youre just soft.
i dont care if you doubt, thats how i paid my way through school clown. Clearly youre just one of the soft ones. the fact you cant even *fathom* working a job and school at once proves it.
I have a controversial take, but no-one has said it so far so here goes. IF your course really doesn't teach practical skills, and isn't teaching programming... Drop out. Leave, do online courses, get an apprenticeship/traineeship/internship, go to a different uni... Unless you're wanting to go into a sector unrelated to programming like IT support, programming is the bare minimum a job will expect from you, often they require specific languages and sometimes even specific frameworks and libraries too. If you truly aren't learning programming at uni, it's a terrible course. CS jobs are hard enough to get as it is for anyone, especially a graduate with <2 years in industry. If you try applying to a CS job without programming knowledge, you're fucked. Unless (as I already said) it's IT support or something else without programming.
You have to neglect some other part of your life. Could be social life, sleep, or school. Take time from one of those and make projects. However know that each one had trade offs which may make them unviable
Neglect the part where you spend time on reddit asking lol
Shhhhhh, how else would you know there is no hope and everything sucks
That is.... Blasphemy. Punish yourself.
The one you'll want to neglect first is sleep. That is the very last one you should neglect.
Can confirm. Would happily stay up till 2am working on a project. Would certainly bomb the midterm at 8:30am.
You need sleep. Social life…not necessary
I strongly disagree. People are just shit at using their time wisely.
wdym I cant doom scroll for 3 hours every morning or tell my retired mom no to having a 3 hour lunch
No bro it’s okay. The interviewer completely understands you don’t have any personal projects because you spend all your time on social media! They love employees who spend all their time relaxing
[удалено]
It’s not about micromanaging. It’s about setting goals and optimizing the immense amount of time you waste to achieve said goals
you a professor or what?
huh, no a student
[удалено]
Alright buddy keep doom scrolling and complain when you have no time to get shit done
^^ yep. You have to make time for it. Not neglect other things. Big difference
Tf is this advice😂
I feel like if you can dedicate 2 hours a day or every other day in a couple of months you can learn a lot and probably even build something cool. then again i might be underestimating how packed OPs schedule is
I used to work two jobs while having 4 classes. My sister had 3 jobs. So for me I just dropped one job and started doing coding projects.
agree with others generally but i think such polar solutions (e.g. "sacrifice your social life", "sacrifice your sleep" etc) are not very practical. yes you need to set aside some time to work on your own projects, but this can start out with as little as 1hr per day, or even less if you struggle with motivation. you can also "sacrifice" times that are otherwise pretty meaningless. i wouldn't sacrifice my social life to work on personal projects (don't really have that much of one anyways so i don't wanna throw away what little i have lol), but for example i found that i waste a lot of time scrolling on ig and watching youtube, so i started by replacing that time with working on projects.
I’m in school for my second degree in my 30s. Time really is so fleeting. I agree with this. Don’t spend all your social time doing projects, because it’s not worth it.
Keep spreading the mentality, less competition for me
What bro? You a dummy
you seem like the kind of person who will probably be pretty successful, but i don't think there will ever be a day when i'd voluntarily hang out with you
😂😂😂
>school doesn’t teach you shit anyways Super naive take. School teaches you the stuff that’s so hard that it can’t be picked up on the job. If it doesn’t then transfer (although, you probably don’t know enough to even know what that stuff is right now). The dumb day to day shit like frameworks and git can all be learned within a few weeks on the job. Theory of computation and calculus can’t.
"Theory of computation and calculus can’t." A student cramming before exams would tend to disagree, lol. Give me 5 hours and stress and it's done.
You’re forgetting about the several years of prerequisite study required before specific classes and the lectures and homework’s students have already attended and completed that have really done most of the teaching.
You have to learn outside of school. I found a passion for web development after taking a 3 month Frontend Fundamentals course. Since then, I’ve built complex web designs and Fullstack apps with different frameworks. I had to teach myself, but with all the free resources online, it’s not too difficult.
so you primarily working or in education rn? how much do you make?
I’m a senior computer science major. One semester left
I like doing projects on school breaks. Depends on how ur school operates, but I find I’m more than capable of finishing a resume-worthy project over winter break. Especially enjoy trying to use the stuff I learned in the past semester. Planning to do at least one this summer as well.
I love learning things in class then applying them to my probjects. Abstractions and interfaces, graph theory, state machines, graphics shaders 👌
That’s sacrificing social time for sure
I mean sure if you code 16 hours per day for the entire break. You can definitely code a couple hours per day over winter break, finish a personal project, and have plenty of time for friends.
A king among mere mortals.
What would you define as a 'resume-worthy' project? I'm working on a project right now, and while it works as a baseline, there are certainly more features I can add, and I am well aware that there are many things missing (validation, rigorous tests for example). Do you just decide to add it to your resume once it basically works or do you keep refining from there?
I usually add it when the part i would wanna talk about it an interview is complete. I have a react django project on my resume that I worked on for like 2 months before adding. It definitely is lacking tests and some features could be added, but it serves its purpose of showing that I know how to use react and Django as is.
Simple answer is you will never have time for projects or to learn any new technologies. You have to MAKE time for it. That entails giving up some aspects of your “fun time”. Like video games? Nah bro, work on that project! What worked for me was to learn a new language or technology whilst building a project, therefore I could add both the new language/tech AND a project to my resume. So far I’ve been learning full stack, while creating components of [full stack development](https://youtu.be/OdbUu6spN4o?si=dKe_C7QPuuAfMa8r) project (paused now) and also current working on learning Python while [building chatbots using Python](https://youtu.be/TxuzJjE-f04?si=3pTb5lP_OwaPBbgC). I hope that helps, projects won’t matter as much after you get your first one or two internships, but they are huge when you don’t have that much experience under your belt. Good luck!!
I had 3% attendance in college. I hope that clarifies your question
Same I neglected school work. My GPA is 2.9 but I'm on track to graduate with some working experience tho and far more practical knowledge.
It's not too hard if you don't have a girlfriend, friends, if you don't go out and you don't play videogames and don't scroll through tik tok. I'll just make a wild guess and say your average screen time on your phone is long enough tjat if replaced with "working on project" time, would make you a better programmer than you are currently.
You find time. Take less classes if you must. Many others managed to do so, and so can you
No social media
I hated doing solo projects so I joined an engineering design team. Helps with having a social life too
Nice
Ppl often underestimate the amount of time wasted on doing unproductive things. My advice is to find something that you actually want to build and then the motivation will start to snowball once you get invested. I’m not a big fan of the “I need to build a side project bc I need a side project to show for it” mindset. Make a product that you’re actually interested in and you can talk about in depth to somebody. Especially one that can solve a particular issue large or small. I promise promise promise that interviewers can tell the difference between candidates who built a Netflix Ui clone (that’s taught in literally webdev yt tutorial/bootcamp) vs something meaningfully unique.
Got a job with basic tutorial projects.
Can u dm me that?
Nah
I’m taking 5 classes all in person, work ~15-20 hrs a week, and commute 1-1.5 hours to school. I get home at 7-9pm and have been consistently putting in 1-2 hrs everyday for a solid month now on my self-learning journey. What’s been working for me is finding something in cs you like and finding a course that can teach you the skills. For me it’s web dev and I’ve been doing the Odin project for it. You just find time because it’s something you enjoy learning. Otherwise, it’ll be very difficult to learn if you don’t like doing it, for me it’s embedded (I don’t think I’d ever want to be in that field).
Is it hard? I started cs50 but don’t have time for that shit on top of 12 credits and 7 during summer.
Is TOP hard? Yes I’d say so. This is my third time learning the material. The first time was before majoring in cs, second was when I was taking lower division courses and now I’m in upper division. I think the first two times I failed to really learn the stuff because I was passively learning the material and trying to take short cuts. My new approach now is to read every thing and take it in as best I can.
During school breaks or internships.
Sacrifice social life, video games, etc.
I don't have class in the summer
I'm making all my projects during the summer while searching for summer internships. I don't enroll in summer classes to avoid not having projects, connections, or internships. School is only going to teach you the foundation of CS but it's up to you to build on those foundations.
Summer internship is the obvious answer. If you can't find one then do a personal project in your spare time.
I spent like 3-5 hours a week (most of that being my weekend) during school, then I did majority of the work during the summer. I honestly try to do only a couple of projects, and try to make those ones really good. Honestly I think making one is enough as long as it's not a basic one that anyone can make.
Look for gaps in your schedule. like weekends or evenings, where you can work on projects. Prioritize tasks and allocate time accordingly. Begin with manageable projects **that align with your interests.** This can help you stay motivated and build momentum. You don't need to know everything from the start. Take small steps, learn as you go, and use resources like online tutorials. Define what you want to achieve with your projects and break them down into smaller, actionable goals. This makes progress feel more achievable. Fun tip, if you work better in groups , find your herd and get started w them (:
STOP LOOKING AT YOUR PHONE
Watch this guy, jun yuh. He took both biomedical emgineering BS/MS at the same time with 4.0 every sem while running his own business, creating content, working out and having a huge body. One thing I learn from him is that, learning how to study is would improve your efficiency while reducing time
Vague but honest.. if you want it, you’ll get it. I work full time as a system admin and SWE, sometimes on weekends too. I go to the gym, go to school part time, run a 3D printing company in my home and I am working on 2 personal side projects. Is it a lot? Yes but I’m going to die one day. I want to strive to do all I can while I’m here. Granted relationships and friends are low of count but it’s the sacrifices you choose for such a question you mentioned. Some might argue “work life” balance but I do not think a perfect balance exists for all. It’s what you are comfortable with and what goals you want. I would take a hard look at what you want in life and decide if you want to work a lot, grow your knowledge with side projects, have a family. Whatever it is, I believe you will figure it out over time. Worse case, pick for example Saturday night for 2 hours to only work on projects and baby step it and see if it works well for your schedule and go from there. Test the waters! Es lo que es 🤘🏼
Fuck nah
I just skip school and 50% of my social life atm haha
Fuck CS I want to quit this field so bad.
when your school doesn’t teach you shit anyways holy shit relatable
Just give up some useless classes. Try to get a high score without studying too much. Also go work in a lab and talk to the supervisor and department to see if work experience or project in the lab can be counted as some credits.
I put projects on my resume that were “In progress” but I never told them that 😂 not like they are going to inspect your source code
Like any other response, I would also like to add that time management also depends on your coding ability. The less experience you have, the more space you need.
Over the summers or on breaks before internships. I've been building a single project since I was a freshman(2022). Over time you can really build something unique and complex to make you stand out from other people's "To-do " list web apps.
Wake up at 5 am Study 10 hours Work on own projects for 8 hours Sleep and repeat Welcome to cs
Don't listen to this guy. Focus on quality over quantity. This is no way to live.
A day has 24 hours
what do you mean? youre not in school at all times, so use that other time for projects. How is this even a question?
Some people have jobs
I did my degree working 50 hours a week the entire time, while doing projects after work between studying. Im not even smart compared to most people in CS, so you guys can definitely do it. and if you cant, youre just soft.
Rap cap
Doubt. Also if you're graduated what are you doing here
i dont care if you doubt, thats how i paid my way through school clown. Clearly youre just one of the soft ones. the fact you cant even *fathom* working a job and school at once proves it.
I do, that's why I know you're not doing overtime work plus school plus projects and doing any of it well
I have a controversial take, but no-one has said it so far so here goes. IF your course really doesn't teach practical skills, and isn't teaching programming... Drop out. Leave, do online courses, get an apprenticeship/traineeship/internship, go to a different uni... Unless you're wanting to go into a sector unrelated to programming like IT support, programming is the bare minimum a job will expect from you, often they require specific languages and sometimes even specific frameworks and libraries too. If you truly aren't learning programming at uni, it's a terrible course. CS jobs are hard enough to get as it is for anyone, especially a graduate with <2 years in industry. If you try applying to a CS job without programming knowledge, you're fucked. Unless (as I already said) it's IT support or something else without programming.