I’m a junior CS major (cognitive science minor) with a 3.2 GPA with no resume, no projects, no experience / internships, basically nothing. I wasted my first two years being lazy, and now need to relearn the fundamentals I should already know. Realizing that the best time to start is now, not wanting to be unemployed postgrad, and actually wanting to have a better life, I want to actually start building towards getting internships / experience and eventually employment. I'm also planning to do my master's program at my uni, but I know I am definitely not getting in with what I have now, so also trying to build towards that. Still unsure atm for regarding that though. I know that CS is clowned on for being the declining major and the "ai is going to take over", but I choose to believe that I can still get a comfortable and stable job hopefully after grad (god please let it happen). Honestly, I just need to hear advice for what to do resume wise, or just in general / motivation / success stories / any really useful resources. I know that my life isn't over just because of this, but I have lots of regrets and I'm still scared for my future. Starting now I really don't wanna live the life that I currently have. My current plans are to just vibecode up some 3 solid projects (i have the chatgpt $20 plan for free until december cause of student plan, thinking of getting claude sub if chatgpt isn't good enough) and make sure to understand them and how they work. After that, planning to fix my resume with these projects (for now) and spam apply to internships. While that's being done, I'm going to have to use a fundamental CS course and then go on to do DSA, OOP, comp arch, and leetcode as fast as I can for interviews. And hopefully by the end of my junior year I will have an internship and a better understanding of the fundamentals and what I should have been learning.
>>35050909No one can make you passionate and hard working.I didn't go to school when I was a lazy 19 year old, instead I went off and lived on my own for a bit then worked my ass off to become a great programmer because I knew what it was like to work manual labor.I don't know how to speedrun this. Maybe try working a single shift at the factory? Larp as a homeless for a day?I know I'm probably not very helpful as my success started at an earlier point than you, but at least I can tell you that you can make it even if you have a late start.
>>35050960yeah true, i didn't make this post wanting people to make me passionate and hard working, just moreso advice and maybe some motivation. for the most part though, i'll just have to discipline myself into working hard unless i wanna be jobless and then eventually homeless.
Do not vibecode any fucking projects are you retarded? You will be filtered out hard and blacklisted for the companies that care. Actually do a decent project for the skills needed at the company you want to work for, gear it towards the one that recruit on your campus first. You'll be fine if you have a couple under your belt by the end of junior year but a lot of the companies now aren't looking for the next airetardcoder like you, they want you well rounded, leadership,community service. Anyone can create a project, thats your job as a student, but what else do you bring to the table? How do you approach problems? Do you even have professors that can realistically vouch for you?Lock in and get your fundamentals down otherwise you are wasting your time.
>>35050909>I wasted my first two years being lazy, and now need to relearn the fundamentals I should already know. Use Claude to generate practice files with drills (pic related). Draw the code out on paper and grind the practice files. Then take what you learned and make a project. Do not use Claude for the project, you'll get smoked in interviews. The idea is to internalize what you learned. Getting an AI to vomit out the solution or a project for you doesn't actually make you internalize it, you have to struggle with the material. Neuroplasticity is triggered by friction. You can lean more on AI once you already secured the job.
>>35050909>I just need to hear advice for what to do resume wiseAlso, you don't need to be worrying about this right now if you don't even understand the fundamentals. You're just procrastinating what you need to do by day-dreaming about things in the future. The daydreaming gives you a fake dopamine hit and tricks your brain into thinking you're accomplishing something. You're spending too much time thinking and not enough time doing
>>35051265Dont use slop at all. An AI isn't going to craft you a cohesive lesson plan that covers everything you need to know the same as if an AI image generator is just going to make slop if you're not creative. You're advocating for learning before relying on the AI, yet saying you should rely on AI for everything you learn. It doesn't make sense, you're right that you can't just rely on AI for everything with domain knowledge so take that to its logical conclusion. Do not just use AI for creating exercises.All the old learning paths are there. Kerninghan and Ritchie. Kerninghan and Pike. Project Euler. Design Patterns. Why risk your learning path being slop when you have resources like these?
>>35051349*Without domain knowledge
>>35051349>>35051351I feed it assignments from my class and have it mirror them for additional practice. Which seem to be keeping it from becoming too sloppy, since it has a high quality base to work off of. But I agree with you that OP should not *entirely* rely on AI. Books are good too.
>>35051365In my experience the schools are putting out trash. Even MIT is dumbing down their programming. If you read the old tomes you will be a god, but if you just follow what's in the dumbed down courses they give you now, you will be less than nothing.The truth is you already had a computer and the complete library of human knowledge, you never needed school except for connections. Programming courses are increasingly becoming targetted at people who couldn't figure this out, and this was a problem before AI. God help your generation of programmers.
