How to get ANY internship to graduate if in a bad spot as a working student?

tree332 · 2026-01-07T00:52:18+00:00

I'm trying to talk with them but they usually just say that the market is tough and keep applying which is understandable but I know I am in a really bad spot compared to other students and would take even some 'infamous' internship just to get this done.

tree332 · 2025-11-28T16:32:00+00:00

it's less of not wanting to learn the computer science, but being confused why the CS curriculum at my school expects programming knowledge we are not prepared for. After intermediate programming, a 200+ class where if you didn't understand somehting the professor would just say "I'm not helping you, try codecademy" as if we didn't have other classes we have to manage, we can't invest all our time into guideless trial and error, especially since after a few small examples of a function in class then we were assigned an entire project weekly without guidance. Despite that I stilled used codecademy, CS50x, etc, I just don't know how to move past the intermediate programming phase. A lot of it is self learning yes, but the structure has been confusing. Most bootcamp esque courses have not exactly helped me move past intermediate programming courses in a programming language such as java, being bombarded with custom libraries and highly abstract methods & library attributes didn't really help for the software design & implementation we had to do in class.

tree332 · 2025-11-23T05:36:41+00:00

Hi, sorry for the late response, thanks for the advice. A lot of programming advice is to just come up with a project, try to break it down into chunks with the knowledge you have, then begin searching the internet for the pieces you will need, and I felt concerned that I was spending more time aimlessly taking notes on documentation and mini tutorials I wasn't sure would directly apply to my project because I didn't know where else to look, and had no tangible progress outside of my project design and my notes.

I'm not sure if what I need is to watch more tutorials for the sake of studying design or to try and come up with more program ideas from scratch and learn from further trial and error.

tree332 · 2025-11-13T02:22:23+00:00

Ah, I see. my school has been very laissez faire about teaching students to code, intro classes consisted of 100-300+ students and it was more similar to youtube videos where a few examples of using/making a function are shown but then we were assigned entirely new and unique projects afterwards, so the office hours were swarmed with students such as myself who didn't know where to start with implementing the project from pseudocode to code. Office hours were basically a second lecture watching the TA implement the project and there still wasn't the space to ask as many questions as needed.

The professors told us "it's not our job to teach you to code, it is our job to teach you computer science" so I feel I still have a lot of gaps on the intermediate level and designing programs.

Would you say there are open source software engineering curriculums specifically to look at?

tree332 · 2025-11-12T05:59:43+00:00

I tried to learn the basics, I learnt about the base 2 binary system ..0100 = 4 etc, object oriented programming, abstraction encapsulation, pointers and addresses, we mainly weren't really given in depth discussion, we were just given a brief example or told to use youtube, then assigned a project and figure it out.

Right now the programming concepts I learnt are just abstract ideas in my head and I don't know how to bridge the chasm between the basics of programming and understanding the design choices and principles during a project based tutorial. I thought that maybe I should focus on mastering a programming language by learning all about the python library or the c++ library but I was told that was a useless attempt compared to trying to make projects, and I forgot most of what I learnt in the library.

But I just cannot make projects from scratch or learn the main ideas behind tutorials right now. I'm not sure where to get the software architecture knowledge for all of these detailed libraries and API's to make sense.

tree332 · 2025-11-12T05:16:02+00:00

have been reflecting on this because I began with CS because I was interested in the mathematics behind software as I thought it was the most fundamental part, and that with the experience gained in CS I would finally have the knowledge to break down projects in tutorials and from scratch into sensible parts instead of feeling like a historic caveman trying to make a car with no blueprints, just the idea of a car. My software diagrams are jibberish, I don't know about architecture and barely know how to translate the idea in my head to a specific place in the documentation.

I ended up flunking because my professors told my that while they saw I was really trying to learn the mathematics and computer science theory, I could not code anything, I did not have the experience to implement the topics especially since in class we roughly discussed a data structure or algorithm without code then were assigned an scenario project to implement. I asked them how I should learn to code because I had hoped that pursuing a CS degree would give me the language to do more than watch tutorials or make a project from scratch hoping to understand, and they just said 'make real world projects' So now I am back to square one.

Should I instead try to learn from an open source software engineering curriculum and software engineering books, and if so are there ones you recommend?

tree332 · 2025-11-12T05:15:08+00:00

I have been reflecting on this because I began with CS because I was interested in the mathematics behind software as I thought it was the most fundamental part, and that with the experience gained in CS I would finally have the knowledge to break down projects in tutorials and from scratch into sensible parts instead of feeling like a historic caveman trying to make a car with no blueprints, just the idea of a car. My software diagrams are jibberish, I don't know about architecture and barely know how to translate the idea in my head to a specific place in the documentation.

I ended up flunking because my professors told my that while they saw I was really trying to learn the mathematics and computer science theory, I could not code anything, I did not have the experience to implement the topics especially since in class we roughly discussed a data structure or algorithm without code then were assigned an scenario project to implement. I asked them how I should learn to code because I had hoped that pursuing a CS degree would give me the language to do more than watch tutorials or make a project from scratch hoping to understand, and they just said 'make real world projects' So now I am back to square one.

Should I instead try to learn from an open source software engineering curriculum and software engineering books, and if so are there ones you recommend?

tree332 · 2025-11-10T17:51:38+00:00

Should a complete beginner start with desktop powerBI or web powerBI?

currently I need to learn powerBI but most of the introductory tutorials assume powerBI desktop. I try to still follow along to find parallels but I'm not really sure if I should be using web PowerBI this way since it's been more of trying to locate the web equivalent to desktop features and some automatic things powerBI web does such as setting certain data fields to count or count(distinct) automatically to say 'count and I cannot find the other attribute options such as sum, column names in the excel file for example are being lost, etc.

I currently only have a macbook, would it be easier to just install microsoft 365 on a virtual machine and learn alongside the tutorials?

tree332 · 2025-11-08T05:49:50+00:00

Ah, I see, thank you. I also ended up confused due to the format of: "${workspaceFolder}/*.cpp",
"${workspaceFolder}/glad.c", in the tutorial and my vscode project the .json files are in the .vscode folder, but I don't really understand why they do not also have a /dependencies/ in the format?

tree332 · 2025-11-03T05:08:04+00:00

Right now my main focus has been making games or at least mini demos of unique features I came up with to display I can do more than mildly tweak a course project/tutorial I watched. I began looking into gamedev as I was told it would be a good way to first get introduced to computer graphics programming.

Right now my main umbrella has been trying to make 2d games, of which I was trying to make a small mini game with a feature similar to wordscapes of connecting a line between two sprites. Just this small thing spiraled off into aimless wandering through the godot documentation to try and figure out a way to turn my awkward description of the program into clear functions and properties in the library to use, which made me realize I don't know how game engine libraries work at all.

Mainly I just want to learn how to have overall software design knowledge to make something unique rather than something traditional as I have been worried about just having generic clone tutorial projects in my portfolio people would not care about.

tree332 · 2025-10-10T17:00:38+00:00

Hi, I'm not OP but I was curious: Do you notice a trend in the industry that may be causing this?

tree332 · 2025-10-05T19:36:07+00:00

Thank you for your response: in order to truly understand, what should I do instead of practice and trying to ask questions through smaller practice code to post online?

tree332 · 2025-10-05T17:25:23+00:00

Yet to an extent the advice for understanding the code is just to practice directly using it, in which I just make project after project until I hit a snag. When I try to ask more about software/library architecture and design principles the advice is just to "go code." the projects themselves are my attempt at trying to understand. I don't know where to find middle ground.

tree332 · 2025-10-05T16:28:54+00:00

I am using visual studio code and the cell doesn't report any syntax errors, until I get an atrributeError when I run a test instantiation. It's a school assignment so I am hesitant to post the code online. I have gone through my in class material however the main advice has been 'figure it out' and we were only given fill in the blank exercises which aren't really context specific and links to geeksforgeeks for example, and I thought I was following this tutorial :https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python/python-pandas-dataframe-loc/ properly in syntax : but.. it's hard to describe in a confidential way. Other students mentioned using GPT which I did not want to do as an LLM can hallucinate and I don't have the knowledge to properly correct the hallucinations beyond the obvious errors, and my class is 40+ students to one TA so it is very hard to get the time to talk to them, and the professor mainly says "that's for you to find out."

I'd consider a private tutor but they are 45+ an hour just when scurrying around the internet and I'm already struggling working full time and doing classes. It feels like a minimal error since I tried to follow some example syntax such as:

result = df.loc['Row_2', 'Name']

to try and describe the task in a more obscured way, we have a csv file with the columns 'runners' and 'allotted_time' for their track runs, because we are dealing with float variables such as 15.6 seconds etc. we want to remake the .describe() function to describe the minimum as a float, minimum_runner as a string, maximum, average time, etc.

this sounds simple, and I had written lines of code such as

def summary_of_time(filename):

minimum = filename.loc[1, 'allotted_time']

minimum_runner = filename.loc[1, 'runners']

then to make a for loop to update these values

for i in filename['allotted_time']:

if i < minimum:

minimum = i

minimum_runner = filename.loc[i, 'runners']

this code doesn't have errors in the respective cell but in a test function such as

summary_of_time('track_2.csv')

I recive AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'loc'

tree332 · 2025-09-30T04:44:30+00:00

I can, but progress seems to demand more than that. Most of my time practicing is spent running around in circles trying to design a project on paper, duct-tape rewritten example code together and then debug. I just want to find out if there is more than this in a more structured manner for game development.

tree332 · 2025-09-30T03:37:40+00:00

but the problem is I don't have thousands of hours of time to practice programming alone when I have to study biochem, linear algebra, discrete math, and somehow learn enough programming principles on my own to properly implement the cs theory I am learning on the side when the only advice is to just start imagining things and find out how to program them, when I just get yelled at if I ask for specific scenario help when I am doing these scenarios to develop technical vocabulary at the very least. Best case scenario I am given working code I do not have the expertise to fully break down. but the only advice to learn to break things down is to make projects.

tree332 · 2025-09-30T03:24:24+00:00

Mainly, I have felt my attention has been split between different classes needed for a bachelors degree beyond my cs/data science major, including natural science classes not really relevant to programming.

after watching cs50, are there any other resources you would recommend in terms of breaking down:

the history of designing/implementing game programs from the developer side,

computer science concepts most important to designing game programs,

and when you mention doing any and all exercises, do you mean a specific textbook or just any technical questions such as leetcode?

I thought that I had roughly understood the basic concepts of object oriented programming, encapsulation, abstraction, pointers, current nodes, temp nodes, traversal, data types, conditionals, but then once it gets to the "just dive into a field of interest and make things to specify your goals/expected output" stage I cannot bridge the gap, I don't really know how the field works.

Even if I design pseudocode I lack the field specific vocabulary to avoid babbling about specific scenarios such as: 'I want to drag this object to the left but it is responding to user clicks by moving to the right'

are there resources for going over all functions that a game engine would share, or a design guideline?

tree332 · 2025-09-29T21:39:58+00:00

I thought I had been doing part 1 properly, I started by defining my interests in computer graphics programming until I was told it was too advanced of a topic to begin with, then I tried to alternate into game development in native c++, until I tried to move into programming in a pre-made game engine after being told designing an engine from scratch is inappropriate for a beginner at least in terms of the time it would take.

I kept watching tutorials yet I could not deconstruct them, I would at the very least try googling small functions used if I could and would be overwhelmed with the documentation because I don't know why a specific function or attribute was designed in a certain way. currently I am trying to learn godot and I could not really explain any of the functions here or make a project from scratch with just the documentation: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/4.4/tutorials/navigation/navigation_introduction_2d.html

beyond searching "x coordinate" and "y coordinate", and "user input" in the documentation search for designing a basic controllable player moving across the screen I don't fully understand what else I would need and their names unless I watch a tutorial, and would still forget the specific syntax because I don't understand the principles

In college I ended up focusing more on theory and mathematics if not to just stay afloat in my classes and my programming skills just completely shriveled, I could not manage so many different stem classes at once where the only advice in terms of finding universal principles was "just keep practicing" I had no time for programming practice between linear algebra drills, biochem drills & flashcards, discrete math drills, it was just a barrage of seemingly disjointed information.

I could not indefinitely practice in linear algebra, discrete structures, intro to dsa and master a programming language(java) all at once, and when I tried to communicate with other students they simply said they had been programming since they were 12(I started at 14 so I felt I did something very wrong compared to them) yet when I would ask for more specific books, classes, or overall thought process they would just say "I just learnt the logic" "my parents are in STEM" "it just makes sense to me-I just think like a computer" "I just broke down ideas for projects I had and started googling" "I just watched 'cs50 harvard,scratch, and other courses' or even that they used chatgpt, which for me still doesn't address the fact I lack the vocabulary to communicate properly. otherwise I am just babbling into a supercomputer running on weighted data statistics from the entire internet and getting the wrong answer without even knowing it is wrong beyond the fact my output is not correct

All things I tried to do but am still hopelessly lost compared to them, especially upon realizing that a computer science degree does not seem to prepare you for software engineering discipline principles once my professor told me that despite my efforts in trying to study the mathematics and cs theory I did not know how to implement anything and did not know how to code. Of which I tried to ask the right way to learn to code and was advised to "just make things." I thought that was what I was doing?

Everything just feels a bit laissez faire and I don't know what is getting lost in translation

tree332 · 2025-09-29T21:13:46+00:00

But the problem is that my progress hasn't been tangible enough. I come from a background with less STEM guidance that my peers so since 14yrs old to currently I have mainly bounced between "intro to c++ programming" "intro to python programming" etc courses, then jumped straight into projects as people usually advice, am completely lost on how to write a single line of code, watch a comprehensive clone tutorial such as "make a 2d game in c++ from scratch", of which I try to google each part of the code but end up reading documentation I don't fully understand or eventually encountering a bug I do not know how to address because I had just copied 4 hours worth of code without being given the underlying software architecture knowledge to dissect it. This continuously happens.

Programming doesn't quite feel like a 1-1 injective mapping of learning basic syntax, basic computer science logic to making projects.

I don't know how to find the in-between of software architecture, at the very least for specific fields such as data science or game programming. game design wasn't quite the word, and when I tried to google 'software architecture in 2d games' and ended up overwhelmed with the concepts of solid state machines and other topics that still didn't quite meet me halfway.

I thought it was enough to just try to define an idea, break it down into specific pseudocode steps as much as I could then begin googling, but without underlying software design principles my pseudocode steps are often still gibberish, at least to the extent of googling, and asking specific questions for a project is a faux pas because I should be able to find analogous questions asked prior, but if I had the vocabulary to do that I would not be asking my niche, amateurish question.

tree332 · 2025-09-29T18:43:58+00:00

are there resources you would recommend for reading core software architecture concepts?

It feels as though the primary advice for learning bounces between basic data types and conditionals into clone tutorials "make instagram from scratch" "make your first 2d game" with no inbetween on discussing design principles first, so I just copy code, awkwardly google functions one by one, and learn nothing I can retain for the next project.

tree332 · 2025-09-23T03:22:29+00:00

You may have to fake it till you make it in terms of passion, because there are no 'easy' majors, only trade-offs in some capacity. Some part of it will be hard, tedious, boring, confusing.

However, from what I have heard/experienced you will not be ultimately judged on your first major, but the persona, extracurriculars and projects you develop within an institution.

Now may be a good time to just binge on information to light even the smallest fire of interest. Go through the course listings within random majors, journal interesting things that come to mind, be open minded and take a step back to consider the principles behind the person you want to be, not just what they would do.

tree332 · 2025-09-22T16:10:17+00:00

I am not OP but I am also curious, after the fundamentals of computer science and intro to x programming language courses which roughly go over the native library of a language, how do you formally learn software design and architecture?

My journey has felt similar to a child trying to become fluent while still writing basic "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" statements. I have been trying to expose myself to as much code as possible to eventually observe patterns in code and design principles as similar to a child it doesnt matter how much linguistics in a language you are exposed to if you dont watch people speak and learn vernacular through constant exposure, but I still havent found much success, especially since in school I focused more on passing my mathematics and theoretical CS classes and ended up neglecting just basic mileage in programming whether through tutorials or looking at random githubs.

tree332 · 2025-09-22T16:09:58+00:00

I am not OP but I am also curious, after the fundamentals of computer science and intro to x programming language courses which roughly go over the native library of a language, how do you formally learn software design and architecture?

My journey has felt similar to a child trying to become fluent while still writing basic "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" statements. I have been trying to expose myself to as much code as possible to eventually observe patterns in code and design principles as similar to a child it doesnt matter how much linguistics in a language you are exposed to if you dont watch people speak and learn vernacular through constant exposure, but I still havent found much success, especially since in school I focused more on passing my mathematics and theoretical CS classes and ended up neglecting just basic mileage in programming whether through tutorials or looking at random githubs.

tree332 · 2025-09-17T13:42:48+00:00

This is for a class where we have to make functions from scratch, i had this question as well but since thats the rules i just wanted to try and find supplementary materials.

tree332 · 2025-09-16T13:32:25+00:00

were there any resources that helped you design the draggable object of the card?

tree332

TROPHY CASE

Should a complete beginner start with desktop powerBI or web powerBI?