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Choose a track

~8 min

In short

A track is a direction for your second and third years. This page describes four of them: software and product, systems and backend, data and AI or machine learning, and government and bank exams. For each, it says what the work looks like day to day, what to study first, and which pages on this site to use. You do not need to choose before the middle of your degree. Choose once you have written a few programs and know which parts you enjoyed.

How to read the descriptions

The day-to-day descriptions below are based on the kinds of tasks this site's projects ask you to do. They are not a survey of jobs, and they do not say what any employer wants. If you want facts about hiring, look at the sources your college's placement office uses, and check them against what you see in practice.

Track 1: Software and product

Day to day. Reading a feature request, writing code that changes an existing program, writing tests for it, and explaining your change to someone else. Most of the work is reading code more than writing it. You will spend time deciding what the program should do before you write anything.

Study first. The first four parts of the Python course, then functions, files, and objects. Read a design guide for small programs before you build anything bigger.

Use on this site.

Track 2: Systems and backend

Day to day. Building the parts of a program that handle requests, store data, and keep running when something fails. You will read logs, think about what happens when two requests arrive at once, and test how the program behaves under load or failure.

Study first. Operating systems and computer networks, then databases. After that, a backend framework and a language built for concurrent servers.

Use on this site.

Track 3: Data and AI or machine learning

Day to day. Cleaning data, checking whether a number means what you think it means, running experiments, and writing a short report on what the results show and how sure you are. Much of the work is checking, not building a model.

Study first. Python, then the parts of mathematics you need for probability and statistics. The discrete mathematics and probability material in the core subjects is the place to start. Only then go to machine learning.

Use on this site.

Track 4: Government and bank exams

Day to day. Practising reasoning and numerical questions in short timed sets, reading current affairs, and writing essays or summaries if the exam asks for them. The work is regular practice over months, not project building.

Study first. Read the official notification for the exam you are targeting. It states the eligibility rules, the syllabus, and the stages. Syllabi and dates change, so do not rely on a summary, including this one.

Use on this site.

  • The exam hub, which has past papers and worked frameworks.
  • Official sites to check for the exam you are targeting: IBPS, SSC, and RBI. Use the notification on the exam body's own site, not a copy.
  • You can combine this track with a computer science degree. The programming pages are optional for it.

Choosing between them

Pick the track whose daily work you would not mind doing for a year. You can switch later, and the early programming material is shared by the first three tracks.

Try this

Pick two tracks. For each, spend one evening on the first page it links, and write down three things you did not know before and one thing you still do not understand. Bring that list to a senior student or your advisor.

Sources