CSE Helper — Daily Learning Blog
React · Express.js · MySQL
A full-stack daily blog where I document my learnings, notes, and progress through Computer Science. Built with React, Express.js, and MySQL, it hosts a structured competitive programming roadmap and CSE core-course notes — Theory of Computation, OOP, and more — so every study session leaves behind a searchable, reusable reference.
Project Overview
CSE Helper is my personal daily-learning blog — the place I write down what I learn each day so it sticks and so I can find it again later. What started as scattered notes turned into a full-stack web app built with React on the front end, Express.js on the back end, and MySQL for storage. The site is organised around two main content pillars. The first is a competitive programming roadmap: a structured, ordered path covering the topics and problem patterns I work through, from fundamentals up, so progress is visible instead of random. The second is CSE core courses — Theory of Computation, Object-Oriented Programming, and other core subjects — broken down into topic lists with course-wise notes, explanations, and examples. Because everything lives in a database rather than a static file, new posts, topics, and courses can be added without touching the code. The goal is simple: a single, well-organised source of truth for my own learning that doubles as a reference for anyone else following a similar path.
Key Features
- Daily blog posts documenting learnings, notes, and progress
- Structured competitive programming roadmap — ordered topics and problem patterns
- CSE core-course notes (Theory of Computation, OOP, and more)
- Course-wise and topic-wise organisation for easy navigation
- Topic lists that break large subjects into manageable, trackable pieces
- MySQL-backed content — posts and topics are stored in a database, not hardcoded
- Full-stack architecture: React front end + Express.js REST API + MySQL
- Built as a personal single source of truth for daily CS learning
Challenges & Solutions
Scattered notes across notebooks, chat messages, and random text files meant past learnings were effectively lost — I could not easily revisit or search what I had studied weeks earlier.
Built a single full-stack blog where every learning is written down in a structured, database-backed format. Posts are stored in MySQL and served through an Express.js REST API, so everything is searchable and permanent instead of scattered.
Competitive programming has a huge number of topics with no obvious order, making it hard to know what to study next or whether I was actually progressing.
Designed a dedicated competitive programming roadmap — an ordered, structured path of topics and problem patterns. Each topic lives as its own entry, so the roadmap doubles as a progress tracker rather than a loose list.
Core CSE subjects like Theory of Computation and OOP are large and dense — reading them linearly in a textbook made it hard to isolate and revisit specific concepts.
Broke each core course into a topic list, with each topic getting its own note page and examples. This turns a monolithic subject into small, revisitable pieces that are easy to navigate and review before exams or interviews.
A static site (Markdown files or hardcoded pages) would mean editing code every time I wanted to add a post or a new topic — slowing down the daily-writing habit the blog depends on.
Chose a MySQL-backed architecture with an Express.js API so new posts, courses, and topics can be added as data, not code. The React front end simply renders whatever the API returns, keeping the content layer and the UI fully separate.
Project Info
- RoleFull-Stack Developer (Solo)
- StatusCompleted / Live