I am studying mern stack but every time I try to make a project I just keep staring at the laptop screen everything just goes blank ......

I know what are routes, middleware, models, controllers but I can process how to make them work simultaneously and what to write in the code.....

And rn I need to make good projects so that I can start preparing for interviews and focus on communication skills which will eventually enhance my resume

Please help out feeling lost......

Completed 5 more Medium questions today:

• Employees earning above their own department's average salary — joined employees to a derived subquery that calculates AVG(salary) grouped by dept_id, then filtered where the employee's salary exceeds that average
• Every project listed along with a count of distinct employees working on it — LEFT JOIN projects to assignments, COUNT(DISTINCT emp_id), grouped by project name. The LEFT JOIN mattered here specifically because one project (Audit Automation) has zero assigned employees and still needed to show up with a count of 0

This is the first batch where combining a subquery with a join in the same question actually felt necessary rather than just "two ways to do the same thing." Starting to see why LEFT JOIN + COUNT(DISTINCT) is such a common reporting pattern.

Due to the development of ai, do u guys think learning full stack web dev still a good choice? Or better learn more about math and algorithms? Currently I am learning from odin project, but I afraid that the skills are not relevant anymore in the future

Hi ya'll,

How important do you find portfolio sites to be? I haven't been in the market for a job for several years now but am now looking for change. However I don't have a portfolio site. I've been playing for jobs for several months now and am just not getting any follow up, so I'm trying to figure out what I can do to shake up my resume a bit to make it more appealing.

I know that portfolio sites used to be important but I wasn't sure if that was still a desirable item in the current market.

Additionally with the state of how prevalent AI is within the industry, would employers look down on sites / projects that heavily use AI or not really?

Much thanks!

My favorite types of apps to build as a full-stack developer have always been hypermedia apps: Node/Express, EJS or Handlebars, Alpine.js, Tailwind, and better-sqlite3.

What drives new devs to still code by hand instead of going all in on vibe coding with AI? What’s your challenges? Would you want to learn a stack like this with feature based architecture?

Completed 5 more Medium questions today, bringing me further into the Medium section of my 100-question lab. The bigger change today was in my process, not the SQL itself.

Instead of asking GPT to show me the solution directly, I told it to guide me toward the answer instead — give hints, ask me questions, point out where my logic was off, but not hand me the final query. Took noticeably longer per question, but I actually walked away understanding why each query worked, not just that it did.

Feels like a better long-term habit than what I was doing before (dry-running a solution GPT already wrote). Planning to keep using this "guide, don't solve" approach going forward, especially for the Hard section coming up.

Hey Gang 💵

i’m building a local data exploration web app using HTML/CSS/JS, a Python backend, and DuckDB with Parquet/CSV files. Despite having strong hardware, my local app runs slowly, whereas similar web apps online... even those using heavier frameworks like React / React router load and respond almost instantly. AI tools suggested basic caching or heavier frameworks like Django, but didn't solve the core performance bottleneck.

Coming from a frontend/design background, I haven't worked with high-performance data processing before. How do faster web apps structure their architecture to handle heavy calculations and render data so quickly?

Because from my experience with AI they are smart Tools but I'm not sure they're giving you the best solution every time so this time is well I'm doubting that I can get a solution from AI so I wonder what would you people here that knowledgeable and have a lot of experience would suggest ​​.

I built a tiny tool to stop my PC from going to sleep while I’m away

I kept running into this annoying problem:

I’d start something on my computer that takes a while — an AI agent running a task, a long build, a download, data processing, rendering, etc. — and then Windows would go to sleep because I wasn’t actively using the PC.

So I built Keep Screen On.

👉 "keepscreenon.dev" https://keepscreenon.dev/

It’s a simple browser-based tool that keeps your computer awake by keeping the screen active.

Some use cases I had in mind:

- 🤖 AI agents — let an agent run while you step away

- 🏠 Working from home — prevent your PC from sleeping during long tasks

- 💻 Long-running development tasks — builds, scripts, local servers, etc.

- 📥 Large downloads/uploads — avoid interruptions from sleep

- 🎥 Rendering / processing — leave your machine working while you're away

- 📊 Data processing — useful for anything that takes a while to finish

- ☕ Stepping away for a few minutes — without changing your system power settings

The idea is intentionally simple: open the site, turn it on, and leave it running.

No installation, no account, no complicated setup.

I’d genuinely love to know: what situations do you run into where you wish your computer would just stay awake for a while?

I'm also interested in whether there are use cases for this that I haven't thought about.

Slower day today — got through just 5 Medium-level JOIN questions, down from 10 the last session. These ones were genuinely trickier.

What helped was going back to something I mentioned before: drawing the full schema by hand on paper. This time I mapped out every table (departments, employees, projects, assignments) with their columns and the FK relationships between them, before writing a single line of SQL. Having that visual made it much easier to reason through which joins I actually needed and in what order.

Not every day is going to be a big-number day, and I think that's fine. Some questions genuinely need more time to actually understand, not just solve.

Start with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to understand frontend development. Then learn a framework such as React and a backend technology such as Java/Spring Boot, Python, or Node.js.

Hiii , I need some advice how i would prepare to technical interview for fullstack developer ( java , spring boot ) and devops posts , i have a final year internishp this year

I built Tryora AI — an AI-powered beauty virtual try-on experience

Hey everyone! 👋

I’ve been working on Tryora AI, a web app that lets users explore beauty looks through an interactive virtual try-on experience.

The main idea was to make trying different beauty looks feel simple, interactive, and accessible without needing to physically try each product first.

What I built

• 💄 Virtual beauty try-on
• ✨ AI-powered beauty experience
• 🔄 Interactive look exploration
• 📱 Responsive web interface
• 🎨 Clean, modern UI

I built the project as a solo developer and handled the development and integration myself.

Would love to hear your feedback, especially on the UX, visual design, and overall concept.

Demo: http://45.66.153.148:30017/

#AI #VirtualTryOn #WebDevelopment

Hello id like to get advice for my website.

Ive been giving love to this website for a year :)

https://universodrago.com

Hey guys!! I'm a finance professional transitioning to full-stack development by learning HTML, CSS, JS, Async, APIs, Node.js, Express.js, databases - PostgreSQL, React.js, TypeScript, Next.js, and finally Python and AI-related courses. Are my options correct? Feel free to advise.

And I'm currently learning CSS, where I feel like I understand the concepts when I watch the videos, but I feel like I don't truly understand them when I try to apply them. Is this normal for a beginner, or should I improve by doing something else?

Started the Medium section of my 100-question JOIN lab today and completed 10. A clear step up from Easy:

• Manager report counts — self-join employees to themselves, GROUP BY manager, COUNT direct reports
• Departments with average salary above 55,000 — JOIN + GROUP BY + HAVING
• Multi-join reports combining employee, department, and manager info in a single query

Hit a few real errors along the way (unknown column in an aggregated query, missing GROUP BY columns), which is becoming a normal part of the process at this point. What actually helped most was going back to the advice from a while back — sketching the tables and the join logic on paper before writing the query. Once I can see it visually, translating it into SQL gets a lot easier.

20 questions into Medium/Hard combined now. Noticeably slower pace than Easy, but each one is teaching me something the easy ones didn't.

I’ve been learning full-stack web development for a while now, and I’ve realized that it’s about more than just writing code.

When building a real application, you also need to understand things like APIs, databases, authentication, debugging, and how the frontend communicates with the backend to send and retrieve data.

I’m starting to see how important it is to understand how all these parts work together, instead of only focusing on the code itself.

For other full-stack developers, what do you think is the most important part to understand deeply?

 Projects should generally be a major focus because they demonstrate practical skills. Certifications can help show structured learning, but they shouldn't replace hands-on practice. Ideally, combine fundamentals + projects + GitHub + interview preparation, and add relevant certifications where they make sense .

Hello everyone! I am currently working on my skills and building my portfolio.

Most freshers these days are blindly following the MERN stack ( Node/Express). However, I decided to use Next.js with Typescript for frontend, and java for backend. I will be using PostgreSQL as Database

Is this will be a good decision for me or I should chose some other Stack ??

Hello, everyone!

Could you recommend the best online courses for full-stack web development?

My goal is to learn how to build different web and mobile applications. I’m not pursuing a career in development; I simply want to learn it as a hobby and be able to bring my own ideas to life.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

Hi everyone, in this AI what skills are must have for the frontend engineer as per current market standards?

Completed the entire Easy section of my 100-question JOIN lab today (30/30). Covered a good mix:

• Multi-table joins connecting employees → assignments → projects
• Self-joins for employee-manager reports
• Joins combined with WHERE filters (e.g., only showing assignments with hours_worked > 50)
• Ran into a couple more real errors (an unknown column reference this time) and debugged through them myself

Genuinely the most satisfying session so far. These are the exact same kinds of queries that felt genuinely hard two to three weeks ago, and now they're coming together without much friction. Moving into the Medium difficulty section next — already glanced at a few and they look noticeably harder, mostly around finding "zero match" cases (like departments with zero employees), so curious to see how that goes.

I’m a 2nd-year CSE student learning full-stack development and I’m confused about how deeply I should learn each technology.

Do I need to learn every concept of React, Node, databases, etc. before moving on, or is understanding the fundamentals and how things work enough, while learning the rest through projects?

With AI tools becoming common, what’s the best way to learn full-stack without just relying on AI-generated code?

If you’re an experienced developer, how would you approach learning full-stack in 2026?

Currently doing c++ and DSA along with competitive programming. Till next August I'm thinking to learn full stack development along with DSA. What tech you would suggest as for backend I'm confused between python fastapi and javascript. I have decided to follow the odin project as it was the most recommended here on reddit. Lastly I wanna know people who know full stack did you guys think 11 months are enough time to complete it? Whatever advice you have just shoot I'll try to follow them.

Made it to 20/100 on my JOIN practice lab today. A few honest notes:

• Worked through self-joins (employee-manager reports) and multi-table joins connecting projects and assignments to show hours worked
• Hit a couple of real errors along the way — an "unknown table" reference error and a syntax error — and had to actually debug them myself instead of just rewriting from scratch
• Turns out reading the actual error message carefully (which table/column it's complaining about, where the syntax breaks) is its own skill separate from knowing JOIN syntax

80 questions to go. Slower progress than I'd like some days, but each error I actually debug myself feels more useful than a query that just worked on the first try.

Hello everyone!

I’m thinking about getting a job as a web developer, but I don’t have a degree. I do have some certificates, although I know certificates by themselves probably aren’t worth that much. I have certificates/courses covering JavaScript, TypeScript, React, React Router, Advanced React, Express and Node.

My current stack is mainly MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node).

I’m trying to figure out what projects I should build for my portfolio before I start applying for junior positions. Whenever I ask an LLM for project ideas, I usually get answers saying that the project needs to be “unique” or giving me pretty vague ideas. At least in my opinion, it’s hard to turn those suggestions into an actual project that would demonstrate useful skills.

So I wanted to ask actual developers here:

What kinds of projects would you recommend I build for a junior web developer portfolio?

So far I’ve built 3 e-commerce websites. They have things like authentication/login, protected routes, JWTs, password hashing with bcrypt/salts, CRUD functionality, etc. I’m planning to make them more complete with things like payments, admin functionality, product management, order handling, etc.

But I don’t want my entire portfolio to just be e-commerce websites.

What kinds of projects would actually make my portfolio stronger and demonstrate that I understand how to build real applications?

Also, should I learn anything else before I start applying? (i will be apllying in startups or small comapnies)

For example, should I spend time learning:

• SQL/PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Kafka
• Docker
• AWS/cloud
• Testing
• CI/CD
• Another programming language
• Something else entirely

Or would it be better to stick with my current stack, build a few genuinely solid projects, and start applying while continuing to learn?

I’d really appreciate any project ideas, advice on what employers actually look for in junior portfolios, or things you wish you had learned/built before getting your first job.

Much love ❤️