Simran Kaur: An accidental Computer Engineer

Simran Kaur: An accidental Computer Engineer
Simran Kaur: An accidental Computer Engineer

Computer Science was never a part of her plan, let alone coding. She always aspired to be a fashion designer as she relished sketching as a child. Provided that design and fashion wasn’t an ideal career for her, she opted for non-medical in 11th grade and enrolled in Computer Science Engineering at Chitkara University.

“I started coding in my second semester with C, then C++ in the third semester and Java in the fourth semester, which I liked the most. In addition, in the third year we had to choose a language and had Coding Ninjas course as a part of our curriculum,” she states.

She recalls that she had a unique experience while studying with Coding Ninjas. “We were provided videos for DSA with Java Course along with a follow-up timeline. Navdeep Sir and Ahmad Sir used to come thrice a week to our college to take our doubts,” adds Kaur.  

During their initial classes they had pattern questions. They had solved them earlier as a part of their college curriculum. However, usually she used to mug-up the codes, but for the first time, she was able to understood the logic behind them. Whenever a difficult question came, they were taught to solve it on a paper and figure out the logic/solution/pseudocode instead of directly jump to coding.


“It is the moot lesson that they taught us which no one teaches. He also taught us to think about the question and learned to think about the solution and reach at it by myself, without any assistance,” she said.

In the Interview Prep course, she got a chance to meet other students from VIT and other colleges in Bangalore. Explaining further, she mentioned, “Sometimes they had a different approach to solve a question from mine through which I was able to learn dynamic approaches for the same question. Because, we used to discuss the interview questions asked during placements by different companies which helped me in networking as well,” she recalls.

She also undertook the 30-day challenge on LeetCode wherein they used to solve atleast three questions of varying difficulty levels regularly which gave her a hang of coding tests. “Whenever we used to get stuck in any question, Navdeep Sir directed and pushed us to think about the solution with a hint without giving us the solution to let us arrive at it on our own. After the course, even Hackerrank questions became very easy,” she stats.

She was recently shortlisted for a test for Google Internship (GSOC) in which she was able to successfully solve more than 50% questions. Soon enough she cracked a product-based company-MericStream in Bangalore.

Explaining her interview process, she said that only 10 students from our college were shortlisted on the basis of E-Litmus test scores. Basis to the advice she received from her seniors, she thoroughly revised OOPS, DSA etc.

They had two technical and one HR round at MericStream. In the first tech round there were questions on OOPS, SQL, Data Structures, Stacks and Queues, BFS, DFS, Implementation of Dijkstra Algorithm etc. She was asked to code a very simple question, printing all multiples of 3 and 5 between 1-500.

The second round was equally easy because he was assigned to swap two numbers without using the third variable. Lastly, in the HR round, there were questions related to her portfolio and soon after she was among the six shortlisted candidates.

Kaur is currently on an 11-month internship with MericStream with a stipend of 25K and will be joining them as a full-time engineer in Bangalore with a 5.5 LPA, after finishing her engineering in 2021.

“I really liked the course and it was a game changer for me. I don’t know where I would have been without it. I am really grateful to Coding Ninjas and wish to stay connected with it in some way in the future as well,” she adds.

Kaur is now associated with Coding Ninjas as a Teaching Assistant and shares that being able to solve queries of others feels good. “When students say that they liked the way I explained the question, my level of accomplishment reaches its peak,” she states.

She has some remarkable projects to her credits which includes Covid-19 Update App that displays worldwide live data through an API using HTML/CSS, AngularJS and JavaScript. Another one an Inventory Management System, a console-based application to manage sales and stock in the inventory using Java and Oracle. Lastly, a game made in Java-Smash The Bricks in which the players have to smash the bricks using a ball and a moving paddle, which boasts of a scoreboard and an option to restart.

To read more success stories, click here, or explore our Interview Prep course.

By Vidhi Agarwal

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