How do you build a portfolio as a computer science student?

Hi,

I'm currently in my first year of uni as a marketing student, but I'm really not enjoying it and am considering switching to computer science (a major change, I know haha). I'm interested in going into games design/development postgrad, but upon researching more into the degree and the role I want to move into, it seems a strong portfolio is essential to get your foot in the door in industry.

I don't have any sort of portfolio, as I have no experience in computer science at all and would be going into the degree blind. Can any CS students/graduates advise on how I'd go about building a portfolio during my studies? :smile:

Thanks in advance!

Reply 1

Pedr0

i personally didnt do cs but a good friend of mine got a job in gamedev (on the software/programming side) after doing a compsci degree - they did hackathons/game jams during uni, and made games as personal projects, and their final year project was a game engine from scratch using c++. these all went into a 'projects' section on the cv with info and github links

Reply 2

vnayak

Original post by Dingnoom

Thanks in advance!

I am a current A level Computer Science student with a few game dev programming projects and I am applying to study CompSci at uni (with offers from competitive places like Imperial, Edinburgh and Manchester).

Now, you don't have a portfolio but neither do many other people who have done Computer Science before - people have some level of experience with programming but absolutely to no standard that is of interest to a university.

Now, you have an arts background so I think you would benefit from doing C# and Unity because they are super languages to learn for game development because of the quality of the game. For our CompSci NEAs, there is one person in my set who does A level Art and self-taught themselves C# and Unity for his programming project.

He made all of his assets himself and hands down, I can categorically say that it's the best project out of all of the ones in my set and with some more functionalities added, it could be added to Steam to download and play. It is genuinely AWESOME!

However, I would say that in order to learn C#, you need to learn a more simpler language so you can grasp basic concepts before moving on. I would say that you should learn Python because it is the simplest language there is to learn but supports more or less all programming concepts so it's a good starting module, not to mention the wide range of libraries that are available. Once you have learnt Python, expand into the PyGame module, which is Python-based syntax. Follow some YouTube tutorials to familiarise yourself with methods and functionalities that are possible.

After this, you can do one of two things: You can either go straight into C# if you think that you will be able to grasp it now you've had this programming experience or you can explore Java as well, but Java isn't used as much and I wouldn't really recommend it compared to the first approach. Java supports a lot of game dev and prior to C++ and C#, Java was used a decent bit (you may be familiar with it through the Java edition of Minecraft).

However, before you do any of this (including learning Python), I would do some basic programming first across all paradigms to get some basic understanding of programming before going language-specific. I would recommend pursuing the CS50 Introduction to Computer Science courses and then following it up with the other CS50 courses if you want to improve your Python and other programming aspects. They explain stuff as though they are explaining it to a beginner and it is really good. You can audit the course for free or you can pay £200 and get a certificate upon completion. This also includes weekly assignments that you must complete in order to get there.

In terms of programming languages for industry, I would recommend doing a couple of long term projects - you need to show that process of continuous improvement and how you went about doing it. For instance, I've made my own arcade simulator. I started initially with Space Invaders but have gradually continued to expand to the likes of Mario, PacMan, Donkey Kong and many others. No doubt, they will be interested in your journey and how you went from doing an arts degree to wanting to get into CompSci so you might want to develop a project about your journey itself? I'm not too sure.

Another good thing to have is a Github profile. Once you have built some cool things, upload it to a GitHub repository where you can store your code and everything for everyone to see, sorta like a portfolio flexing website. People can view what you've done and it gives you a place to add things. You can also create your own website to host and show off your portfolio like my friend has done (but all of the code is in GitHub so it doesn't actually have its own domain name yet). You can concisely talk about the things you've done with your art, your journey into CS and then branch off into different projects. You can draw like a tree and have the different projects you've done branching off of it. It's sort of like an e-resume because it gives you an opportunity to show them what you can do but also showing substance through showing them the programming languages you are familiar with, your artwork because art will be useful in game dev, and also a growth timeline.