Programming Projects EVERY Computer Science Student Will Build

Across all computer science programs, while there are differences, there are similarities that cannot be changed. Computer Science theory & most software engineering fundamentals remain the same.
Not too long ago I went over my favorite computer science program of all time with y’all, which was a Wrestling Tournament Simulation from my Advanced Data Structures & Algorithms course, because that was the program that just made everything click for me. But again, that was never the plan for that video. I had wanted to go through a handful of different programs & explain what the point of them were, which was implementing the theory that we had just learned, using code. That is now this video - remastered.
We take a look at a handful of different programs that I wrote as a computer science student for a specific class. So I take you through what CS class it was, what we learned in that class, how the math or computer science theory translates into programming, and the program itself. Enjoy!

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📓 Learning Resources:

👨‍💻 My Coding Gear:

🔧Coding Tools:

[miladhaghpanah]

the first complex project that I did as a beginner was a phone book!
With ability to save names, numbers and basic functionalitys such as search, edit and delete
It's a good practice for beginners.

[chef_jakobe]

Hey Forrest, I found your channel recently. I want to say I appreciate the kind of content you put out about the reality of CS and how to truly be your best and get ahead. There aren’t many trustworthy creators like you out there. You have a lifetime sub 🤞🏼

[kell]

I like this type of video. Sometimes, as students, we get really great assignments that teach subjects perfectly. My Java II prof made such a great program for learning polymorphism, information hiding, and scalability, and we iterated on it throughout the entire semester as we learned new things. It was called Quizzard, and it was a console app that generates a math quiz of various types of questions depending on the options the user selects. We learned to create an abstract class that had a few operands and an operation symbol, then we would make an AdditionQuestion class that extended it, a SubtractionQuestion, a UnitConversionQuestion (and many more), and we made an Answerable interface to allow for implementing how each question's answer should be calculated, a MathQuestionFactory to generate a list of questions that conformed to Answerable (showing polymorphism), an Input Controller and a beautiful program loop to demonstrate scalability, and so on and so on. Such a brilliant learner project.

[tomhands]

The hard part is studying this on a hot day while people outside enjoy themselves and you sit there glued to a screen as your posture slowly morphs into a hunch, but you tell yourself it will be worth it because in 2 years youll be making 6 figures, but in reality an ai will do your job and you'll have to compete with half of india and they'll do whatever you can do for half the price

[erbenton]

Why do you index your arrays starting at 1? In C arrays are zero based. With this in mind your for loops use <= which will also index past the end of the array. Specifically, look at lines 15 & 16 and lines 19&20 in main (at about 6:00). Can you comment on this?

[Chewy]

I just finished my CS degree from WGU and it's really cool to see the projects you made compared to the ones I did. Some are pretty similar and others are way different lol I start with C++, did some Java and then did a lot with python at the end. But also had those random projects done in some crazy language no one uses I guess like you said to learn how to carry over what you learned in one language to another one. Love your videos man hope you and the family are doing good.

[Nikki_the_G]

POV-Ray, omg, blast from the past! That was the first 3D program I ever learned because (I'm old) it was the only free one available back then, haha.

[Mutual_Information]

Wow just discovered this channel.. it's masterful. The style makes the subjects approachable and friendly.. while covering some pretty technical topics. Very cool

[catrinacraft]

Mines was a little bit easier! Yours is more math based! You definitely earned that degree!

[zikangjiang]

cool vid, i plan on taking the harvard cs50 course

[ditznfitness]

Just graduated gymnasium yesterday! Next year I'll go onto my bachelors in Software Technology! Can't wait

[bernardoolisan]

Forest, is it normal to forget Data Structures? I always forget them!!

[SpaceTimeBeing_]

Are you always on windows now? What happened to Linux?

[AlokSingh-rjgt]

As a student of Mechanical Engineering, I had to learn a lot of methods to solve equations (with single variable and multi variable). Fundamentally, We use those basics to solve bigger problem that is design optimization, which reduces cost and material while sustaining desired qualities. We used MATLAB by the way.

[IffyEdem]

I am an embedded programming student, so it will be cool to see what projects I work on while going through!

[epso]

What I as a beginner programmed was a vending machine

[noid]

I really had fun making black jack in console but with UI made from pipe characters and stuff. Similar project was Hanoi tower problem with X amount of towers and rings that visually shows rings switching in console

[willculpepper]

I genuinely forgot that I programmed in POVRay back in the day.

[petevenuti]

What can I do to specifically learn whatever the heck you were saying between 6&8+ minutes? I somehow graduated without ever getting exposed to any of that. Math.
If I wanted to work on an otherwise unimplemented neural network from scratch I apparently need that.

[mrmartinwatson]

3:58 pretty much how every cs course goes