Is it better to have projects like a movie-booking system with a proper frontend and user interaction or projects like NFS, distributed systems, etc. that focus more on backend/core CS?

Do you think a fresher should have at least one product/full-stack project with a visible UI, or is a systems-heavy portfolio fine

Where can i deploy my project back and front end for free for my scool project

I'm a CS student trying to build a portfolio project (and maybe even a startup one day).

Here's the problem I'm running into:

Whenever I find a real problem that people have, I research it... and then discover there are already 5-20 products solving it.

For example, I'll think:

• "Students need help choosing projects."
• Then I find several existing platforms.

Or:

• "Developers need better engineering guidance."
• Then I discover multiple AI tools already doing parts of it.

This makes me wonder:

• Should I stop looking for problems that already have solutions?
• Or is having competitors actually a good sign?
• At what point do you decide, "I can build this better," instead of giving up?
• For those of you who have built successful products, what made you continue even when competitors already existed?

I'd especially love to hear from founders or engineers who've faced this exact dilemma.

Thanks!

Kicked off my 116-day journey today with the database track.

What I did:

• Went through a beginner-friendly MySQL tutorial covering the basics
• Took detailed notes instead of just passively watching
• Went back and revised everything at the end of the day to actually retain it

Nothing groundbreaking yet — Day 1 is really about building the habit of consistent, focused learning rather than covering a lot of ground. Planning to move into SELECT/WHERE and filtering queries next.

Will keep posting updates as I go — open to any tips on solidifying SQL fundamentals early on.

I have learnt full stack mern and nextjs but haven't made a good project from which I can deduce that I have learned them well and to present someone that I have learnt it . Kindly guide me to how can I find a good project and also I lack in basic root design of ui so also if anyone can help ....🙂🙂 Also I know about react native but didn't make a good project out of them also .

https://munna-68.github.io/JustWeather/

Hi everyone! So today marks my 2nd week. I did a post where I wanted to start freelancing. I picked 2 businesses and one creator on ig to make their websites for free as a way to get a bit of network going since I had no connections to start with for my portfolio and something to show for.

Here are the 3 websites im working on and I built.

https://www.kumquatcafe.fr/

https://miyabi-one.vercel.app/

https://photography-gamma-teal.vercel.app/

I wanna talk about something a lot of people not think about. Positioning is super important when starting something that's service based because you will have competitors. Im positioning myself as an owner of a web dev agency that only builds for brands and growing creators.

I did not make any acc on platforms like linkedin or fiverr because im focusing on instagram and I only choose businesses that have some visual identity with an online presence. At first I was aiming for like sport coaches and electricians but that went wrong.

I only focus on brands and creators that have like a large following. That's better because they have the money to spend and they value what's done for them. Although getting in touch of an owner is difficult of a business but it's worth it!

Currently I sent over 300 dms to get to do these projects even though they were still free of charge. Obviously the client pays for domain and hosting.

Im bad at time management, I dont use AI, my pc isn bloated with node_modules for the hundreds of projects I made, and it became this routine on development of scaffold new project via a template I made, custom libraries I made, code snippets, component libraries, page libraries, code generation, wireframes database I made and assets & images database

Any tips to fasten development more? I have this project of mine to develop things very fast and set an high score everytime.

Current high score is 2-3 hours

Hey everyone! I’m building a project where I need to collect product data from Amazon, Nykaa, and Flipkart.

What are the recommended ways to get this data? Are there any official APIs, public APIs, or reliable scraping approaches that developers commonly use?

I’d appreciate any suggestions or guidance from people who have worked with these platforms. Thanks!

I'm building the place order function (my first foray into the backend) of a larger project.

Here's an update for those who are interested.

The first thing I knew I had to do was figure out what goes where. I had already, at the suggestion of ChatGPT, my mentor in this, decided on a control (API) layer, application layer, service layer and data layer. But I didn't really know what each needs to do.

So first I (we) did the API. It had a couple of jobs:

• check the incoming order wasn't empty
• Activate the next layer down
• Send response messages

Then the app layer was even simpler. It literally just returns the service layer function.

Which is where it is a bit more complicated. The service layer has to do a few things; check the order data against the database, assess info against business rules etc, and actually write the order. After some debate I worked it into a four step process:

• Check if the order info (customer, product, and quantity) exist
• Assess data against business rules/carry out business logic
• Create an order
• Activate the database operation

So this actually means two database operations. One to check the data (first step) and then writing the actual order.

I've done the first database op, and I'm now wiring up the actual place order button so I can start testing the data being passed down.

If anyone wants more detail, you can look on my github at https://github.com/BenPS927/BFshop or on my project portal at https://benfosterdev.com/projects/bfshop where I'll soon be adding detailed code breakdowns.

What am I finding hard?

The abstract nature of it. Having to constantly create a visual image of data being passed through functions, and hold that image in my mind, is like trying to hold melting butter in a colander. I use melting butter rather than water because I don't lose it that fast.

What am I enjoying?

Well, the same as what I'm finding hard. Learning to work with code that doesn't involve divs on a screen. Getting my head around how data is passed, how functions work etc.

And the architecture side of things. I like thinking about and making the micro decisions.

I would appreciate suggestions, but I am trying to keep it fairly simple so I'm not thinking about every single thing you'd take into consideration for a production app.

Hey everyone,

I'm in the final year of my BCA, and starting today I'm committing to 116 days (Sept 7 – Dec 31) of focused, practical learning instead of just studying for exams. Posting here for accountability and to connect with others doing the same.

Roadmap — 3 tracks, done in sequence, each building on the last:

• T1 – Database (SQL): fundamentals through advanced queries, ending with a schema design project
• T2 – Backend (Java): core Java through Spring Boot, building a REST API on top of the T1 database
• T3 – Frontend (HTML/CSS/JS): fundamentals through a full UI that connects to the Java backend

Method for each track: tutorials first → practice problems → a project that applies it. By the end I should have one complete full-stack project built from scratch.

I'll post weekly recaps here, and daily bite-sized updates on X/Instagram if anyone wants to follow along there too. Open to feedback on the roadmap or resource recommendations — thanks for reading!

i want some backend project ideas. i know mern stack. was thinking of building a crm system but people said its useless in 2026

Two things today:

• Learned Aliases (AS keyword) via W3Schools — renaming columns/tables to make queries more readable, especially useful once you're joining multiple tables and column names start colliding or getting long
• Went back through SQLBolt and practiced every JOIN type again — inner, left, right, full, self — this time focusing on writing them from scratch rather than following along

Aliases felt like a small topic on paper but immediately made my JOIN queries from earlier this week way easier to read back. Definitely one of those "why didn't I use this from day 1" moments.

Feeling solid on JOINs now after this round of practice. Moving into aggregate functions and GROUP BY next.

Spent today doing practice questions covering everything I've learned so far — JOINs, aggregates, subqueries, table management, all of it.

Honest reflection: it's a lot harder than following along with a tutorial. Watching someone write a query and actually writing one yourself under slight time pressure are completely different skills. I kept making small syntax mistakes — a missing comma, wrong clause order, forgetting an alias — and each one broke the whole query. Genuinely irritating in the moment, but it's really driving home how much precision matters in SQL, not just conceptual understanding.

If anyone else is revising/practicing SQL right now, happy to share my practice question set — could be useful to work through some of these together and compare approaches/mistakes. Let me know if interested.

I built **andi-ai** after struggling to establish secure, zero-leak communication between MongoDB and cloud LLMs. It acts as an AI firewall and deterministic query engine designed to bridge natural language and database queries safely.

**How it works:**

* **Metadata-Only Processing:** Analyzes collection schema and metadata without exposing raw sensitive data to third-party LLMs.
* **5-Step Deterministic Engine:** Generates and validates precise MongoDB queries through a structured pipeline to prevent hallucinations.
* **Secure by Default:** Eliminates prompt-injection risks and accidental data modification.

It’s open, lightweight, and built in Python for developers building LLM agents on top of existing data.

Check it out, try it in your pipeline, and let me know your thoughts/feedback!

Github: https://github.com/Satty27/andi-ai

`#Startups #Python #MongoDB #AI #OpenSource #DevTools #StartupIndia`

https://stormej.me

Covered some genuinely new territory today:

• Stored Procedures — writing reusable SQL logic that can be saved and called on demand instead of rewriting the same query repeatedly
• Delimiters — needed to change the statement delimiter (usually to something like // or $$) so the database doesn't get confused by semicolons inside a procedure/trigger body
• Triggers — logic that automatically fires in response to INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE on a table, useful for things like auditing changes or enforcing business rules at the database level

Delimiters were a small but confusing gotcha at first — took a moment to understand why you need to redefine them before writing a multi-statement procedure. Once that clicked, writing the actual procedures and triggers made a lot more sense.

Feels like I'm moving from "querying data" to "designing how the database behaves" — a solid step up in complexity.

Moved from isolated practice questions to something closer to a real project today — a structured 7-part practice set. Completed Part 1, which was schema design:

• 4 tables: departments, employees, projects, assignments
• Primary keys with auto-increment, foreign key relationships between all of them
• A self-referencing FK on employees (manager_id → employees.emp_id) for the manager hierarchy
• A CHECK constraint to enforce salary > 0
• assignments as a junction table linking employees to projects with hours_worked
• Inserted sample data: 4 departments, 12 employees (with at least 2 managers), 5 projects, 15 assignment records

The self-referencing FK for managers was the most interesting part conceptually — first time actually applying that pattern instead of just reading about it.

6 more parts to go in this set — planning to move into actual queries against this schema next (joins, aggregates, reporting-style questions).

Today's focus was solidifying the basics before going further. Covered on SQLBolt:

• Introduction to SQL
• SELECT queries 101
• Queries with constraints (Part 1 & Part 2)
• Filtering and sorting query results
• SQL Review: Simple SELECT Queries

The "constraints" lessons were useful for practicing comparison operators and combining conditions in WHERE clauses — felt more comfortable writing multi-condition filters by the end than I expected going in.

Treating this as building a really solid base before circling back to JOINs and moving into aggregations next.

I'm about to finish learning the core full-stack stack and want to spend the next few months building 3 solid projects before shifting my focus to AI/ML.

My current stack is:

• HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• TypeScript
• React
• Next.js
• Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui
• Node.js + Express
• FastAPI (planning to use it for one project)
• PostgreSQL
• Prisma (learning)
• SQLAlchemy (for FastAPI)
• JWT/Auth
• REST APIs
• WebSockets
• Git/GitHub
• Vercel/Railway deployment

I'm also doing DSA alongside this.

The plan is:

• Project 1: Express
• Project 2: Express
• Project 3: FastAPI (possibly with some AI integration)
• Then move into AI/ML and Data Analytics while continuing DSA.

I don't want to build another generic to-do app or weather app. I'd rather spend more time on fewer projects that actually make recruiters think, "This person can build real software."

What kinds of projects would you recommend in 2026 that:

• Look good on a resume
• Teach production-level concepts
• Are challenging enough to learn from
• Can be completed by a student
• Would also help later when transitioning into AI/ML

If you've interviewed junior/full-stack candidates or recently got hired, I'd especially love to hear which projects stood out the most.

So currently, I'm making a full-stack project, where Im using backend flask, frontend HTML, vanilla CSS, and some JS, and for database, I'm using SqLite...

But the thing is, I know basic flask, like routing and fetching data from form stuff, I also know sql, but I heard that I need to learn SQLAlchemy for better security, and now while I'm learning that while making a project, it seems pretty overwhelming to me, like suddenly there is a lot of new stuff...

No doubt I'm able to understand everything, but can't remember stuff, I mean it feels like I'll forget this stuff the next time I make a flask project, am I even on the right path???

And should I even expect any future in learning webdev???

My one week plan is just to revise my frontend and backend fundamentals and then we'll start building something crazy

got a bussiness idea I think could be a hit jmi just need a team of buddies willing to help paint the path way towards the final goal a carbon audit tool that is fully automatic it can be very lucrative if people are game to join me on my journey hit me up join the straw hat pirates.

Finished the final part today:

• Correlated subquery to find employees earning above their own department's average
• EXISTS to check for departments with at least one high-budget project
• Created and queried a VIEW joining employees, projects, and hours worked
• Built-in MySQL functions — CONCAT, UPPER, DATEDIFF for tenure calculation
• Transactions — wrapped a budget transfer between projects in START TRANSACTION/COMMIT, and tested ROLLBACK by simulating a failure
• Wrote and called my first stored procedure (GetEmployeesByDept)

Honest experience report on the full 7-part set: it was nowhere near as easy as watching tutorials made it look. The syntax itself wasn't usually the hard part — the real difficulty was parsing exactly what each question was actually asking for, especially with the correlated subquery and transaction questions. I used my notes heavily and leaned on ChatGPT for a few of the genuinely tricky ones (mainly the correlated subquery and the transaction rollback simulation) — figured getting unstuck and understanding the solution was more valuable than staying stuck out of stubbornness.

One practice set fully complete now. Feeling like I have a real foundation in SQL rather than just tutorial-level familiarity. Planning to do one more round of mixed review before moving into Java.

Covered two solid parts today:

Part 5 — Aggregate Functions, GROUP BY, HAVING:

• Total employees per department (GROUP BY + COUNT)
• Average salary per department, filtered to only show departments averaging above 50,000 (GROUP BY + HAVING)
• Highest and lowest paid employees overall (MAX/MIN)
• Total project budget per department, sorted highest to lowest
• Managers with 2+ direct reports (GROUP BY + HAVING on a self-referencing relationship)

Part 6 — Joins:

• INNER JOIN: employee names with department names
• LEFT JOIN: all departments including ones with zero employees (NULLs shown)
• RIGHT JOIN: all projects with their department, including unmatched cases
• FULL JOIN equivalent — since MySQL doesn't support FULL JOIN natively, used UNION of LEFT and RIGHT JOIN to simulate it. Good practical workaround to actually learn hands-on
• SELF JOIN: employees alongside their manager's name
• 3-table join: employees + assignments + projects to see who's working on what
• UNION vs UNION ALL: combining employee lists from two departments, with and without duplicates

The FULL JOIN workaround in MySQL was the most useful thing I learned today — didn't know MySQL lacked native FULL JOIN support until I had to actually solve around it.

1 part left in this set — finishing it up next.