In uni every subject is typically bellcurved but the computing subjects were absolutely ruthless about it. So for a normal subject if you write a bad essay if you at least write something you will get something.

But in computing, it's easy to see if it works and if it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, you get a zero. Then from there the ones that aren't instantly zero, it's an easy way for the lecturers etc to grade if you make them compete with others. Or you score based upon the work that gets produced. Which would lead to one of two scenarios:

• Often, the uni would not teach to the level of knowledge that is required for the projects, so you might get a lecture on how to bang two simple java strings together, but the assignment will want a full fledged application that is capable of resiliently transferring files without any connection issues and it will need to have multithreaded architecture and be asynchronous and use encryption and stuff
• Or it's a basic python subject, introduction to programming and the hardest thing you get from the assignments is reading an image file but the actual assignment is making a card player that can beat anyone. So maybe it's easy for you to write something that can play cards but if you want to beat the neural network that another student managed to come up with and train (which you also don't know you are facing so it's difficult for you to counter, you just see the bot score the highest of all the other bots)

in these cases, the lecturers and the tutors will not offer any hints on how to go beyond the basics so the computing subjects can be a bigger time sink than what people expect and if you fall behind they are also easy to fail (and not easy to catch up on).