

Ask HN: What can a first year CompSci student do extra to be successful? - gck2702

I'm a first year CompSci student and after doing an internship at a web/mobile company, I've realized that there are limited similarities between what I'm studying and what they're doing.<p>I want to go into that field when I'm done with my degree, but I do feel as if it's not going to prepare me fully.<p>What areas/technologies do you recommend I (try to) master in my free time?<p>I'm proficient in Java and C# and I have a bit of experience with Ruby, Python and Databases (MongoDB).<p>Thank you.
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mchannon
Even a lot of CS Ph.D.'s aren't quite sure what they want to do in their
field, so don't feel bad about having a bit of uncertainty associated with
your career.

Ask yourself what sort of subject area you'd be thrilled to hack on and learn
about for 12 hour days, and focus on that. It could be anything from disk
drivers to communications protocols to fast fourier transforms to Arduino to
role-playing games.

Get thee to GitHub and look for some unsolved bugs or features in an area you
consider worthwhile. Pretty easy to get far in your career if you have a large
portfolio of open-source code.

Lastly, there is always a large need for legacy programmers; people who
understand how to use COBOL, FORTRAN and other things they don't really teach
students these days. As your forebears grow old and retire, someone's going to
have to modernize their works. There aren't a lot of freshly minted software
engineers who know these environments.

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helen842000
Knowing the creation process end to end is invaluable. Maybe build something
that your class would find useful. Then you get first hand experience &
feedback. It would probably be good for your resume too. Hmm, maybe something
like a video repository to store recorded lectures, that works on mobile
devices.

Lecturers might get on board if you point out that students will retain more
info if they can re-visit tough topics. It also makes an awesome revision tool
which might deliver impressive test scores.

Or you could build a site that lists all the tools out there for hacking
projects together. Balsamiq, MediaLoot, themeforest etc. That would go down
pretty well here too. You could also let people add suggested sites so it
continues to grow.

You could probably even get some affiliate links in there too so it shouldn't
cost you anything to run.

