Samyutha Katikareddy

Starting My Coding Portfolio

16th Mar 2026 - This week I created my portfolio website to document projects I will build in AI, cybersecurity, and software engineering. My goal is to build real projects that demonstrate problem-solving and programming skills.

Building My First AI Chatbot

20th Mar 2026 - I built a Python chatbot using a Naive Bayes model and CountVectorizer to classify user input into intents.

One challenge was understanding how text is converted into numbers, which helped me understand how machine learning models process language.

Why Strong Passwords Matter More Than You Think

25th Mar 2026 - I created a password security tool that checks strength, estimates crack time, and demonstrates hashing with bcrypt. While building my password security tool, I started thinking more deeply about how passwords are attacked in the real world.

I explored brute-force attacks, where attackers try every possible combination. This showed me how quickly weak passwords can be cracked.

I also learned about hashing and why secure systems store hashed passwords instead of plain text.

Debugging My First Real Bug

28th Mar 2026 - Today I ran into my first real debugging challenge while while I was updating my portfolio website to better present my projects and it was surprisingly difficult to figure out.

After adding new blog entries, my file suddenly refused to save and showed errors in VS Code. At first, I thought it was a HTML issue, but it turned out to be a Git merge conflict, which left duplicate and broken code in my HTML.

The hardest part was that the error wasn’t where it appeared, so I had to carefully go through the file and fix it manually. In the end, I fixed the issue by resolving the conflicts and recreating a clean version of the file.

This experience taught me that debugging isn’t just about fixing code - it’s about understanding how tools like Git work and being patient when things don’t behave as expected. Although it was frustrating at the time, it felt like an important step in becoming more confident as a developer.

Deploying My Portfolio Website

29th Mar 2026 - Today I reached an important milestone by deploying my portfolio website and making it publicly accessible online.

This was my first time moving from a local project to something live, which made it feel like a real product rather than just code.

I also updated my GitHub README to include the live link, creating a central place to showcase my work.

This helped me understand the full development process - not just writing code, but sharing and presenting it effectively. It also made me more confident in my ability to build and publish real-world projects.

Going forward, I plan to continue improving the site as I build more advanced projects in AI, cybersecurity, and fintech.

Starting Ledger

8th Apr 2026 - I started building a project called Ledger, which is basically a web app where you can upload a CSV of transactions and see your spending analysed.

This was my first time properly using Flask, so I focused on getting the basics working — uploading files, reading the data in Python, and displaying it on a webpage.

It does not sound like much, but getting everything connected (frontend + backend + data) was actually a big step for me.

From Data to Insights - Improving Ledger

12th Apr 2026 - I worked more on Ledger today and made it way more interesting than just displaying data.

I added automatic categorisation for transactions and built logic to analyse spending. One thing I did not expect was how easy it is to get misleading results — at one point it said I was “spending” the most on income.

Fixing that made me realise that coding is not just about making things work, but making sure they actually make sense.

I also added a pie chart which makes everything look a lot cleaner and easier to understand.