Free resources for Computer Science students

As I complete my placement (third) year, I wanted to share with you these free resources that I think every Computer Science student should absolutely use.

W3Schools

This website explains how to use the most important built-in methods and functions of programming languages such as Java, C# and Python.

You can find out how to use things like arrays, lists and dictionaries.

Stack Overflow

This is a free discussion forum where developers ask questions about programming topics such as how to sort arrays or how to convert and process strings and substrings. This would be your bible whenever you have problems with solving a coding exercise.

Leetcode & Hackerrank

These are platforms that allow you to solve coding exercises covering different topics, from data structures to distributed programming. All the exercises can be filtered based on their difficulty and topic, and they come with both the solution and the discussion panel, where students discuss their implementation approach. This is a fantastic way to practise in your own time and grow your understanding even further.

What is really great about these platforms and these exercises, is that they are widely used by big tech companies when they are recruiting for software engineering roles. This means you can ensure you are in the right place for your future career and you might even be familiar with tasks that are set in any interview exercises.

There are some options to paid platforms that can really help your learning. In fact, this year on our course we are gathering interested students together to put forward a case for a paid subscription to extra Leetcode resources. We hope that we will demonstrate the value of the added extras on Leetcode (although much of it is free) and hopefully the school will be able to add this membership to the student’s benefits package in the future. ARU is a great university for listening to your voice and your lecturers will support and encourage you to make a change if you are passionate about it.

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Simone studies Computer Science at ARU. You can find out more about this and other computing degrees, such as our Software Engineering degree, at one of our Open Days.