Computer Science Guide for 2026

These past few years, students have been using AI to solve questions they do not understand (I have done that before). However from my experience, using AI to solve questions related to critical thinking have been nothing but detrimental for you. So I also want to talk about how you should use AI properly.

AI Usage

  • Use AI to research things (instead of opening 5 different websites and gathering resources, you should use AI to fasten your work)
  • Use AI to generate questions, flashcards, notes (It can save you time if you are the one solving the problems and AI is the one giving you questions)
  • Use AI to do mundane tasks such as generic email reply, generic making connection etc

Now once you have learnt how to use AI properly, you will need resources to level up your skills

Resources for CS students

  • The best resource in my opinion is CS50 and its variations
  • I did CS50 AI and it gives you interesting problems to solve
  • Coursera Machine Learning/Deep learning by Andrew Ng (You can also access videos for free on Youtube)
  • Also free resources like Leetcode/Codeforces to prepare for algorithm questions (this can improve your critical thinking)
  • Topics such as OOP, System Design are interesting as well
  • You should learn more about generator, lambda functions, one liner tricks like
numbers = [x for x in range(10)]
square_numbers = [x**2 for x in numbers]
  • Since this is becoming AI era, no matter what other are talking about AI, you should buy Claude or use AI tools such as Cursor to build something for experience and learning. In the future you will definitely need it.
  • Learn how to prompt to AI

CS50 ML Certificate

Edexcel IGCSE Students who took CS

  • For you, you should expand your knowledge by learning a lot of things like algorithms and website design and system design etc.
  • IGCSE CS isn’t enough to help you in your journey.
  • You should try to take CS50X alongside your IGCSE journey
  • You should work on projects and improve your coding skills
  • You shouldn’t rely on iGCSE CS to understand a lot of concepts as some materials might be outdated and CS/AI is very volatile in the sense that it can change very quickly
  • For example people were talking about Cursor last year as if it was going to be the future of AI, but now you see no one talking about Cursor but Claude