The goal is to regularly provide proof to both your professional network and to selected potential employers that you are highly competent and will be a decided advantage to their organization.
Some people don't know what github is and won't care, others really like live sites even if they're modest, and still others really just want to see resume bullet points about dollars saved / created. Eventually you can put all of that together, but naturally it'll help when your prospective hiring manager has the same ideals you're demonstrating with your portfolio.
Portfolios are secondary to name recognition and social proof. Let me reemphasize that sharing your goodwill, your skills, and your successes with your professional network is probably more valuable than anything else you can do - develop a local or national reputation as a top gun and work will come to you as long as you keep your connections warm.
As a small company owner I want to completely endorse this comment. These "proofs" of a developers skills and technical interest are the hard requirements I have before conducting any interview. Naturally the "social proof" is also important but less common and more difficult to attain.
Even tiny personal projects demonstrating ones interest in keeping up with newer hot technologies like node, redis, backbone, etc mean a lot.
tl;dr Having a set of quality personal projects (github, live, whatever) is absolutely critical.
I am trying to set up my github and work on side projects as I really would like to work on a startup...however I never really know what to build, what to "hack", coming up with ideas for side projects is where I always fail, and when I do find something that interests me I find that I lack the skills to finish it and I lose motivation....
I really don't know what to do, should I focus on the fundamentals first algo's, data structures, linux, software engineering, compilers etc...or just start "building things" ? I am constantly amazed at people with so many repos on github(not forks) with so many interesting projects...where do they find the time? how do they do it? I can't compete with these people, looking at them I can't even call myself a programmer, I feel no passion could ever help me reach their level...I keep thinking I am either doomed to work for the rest of my life as a mediocre developer or I am going to have to switch careers.
That's exactly why having completed projects on github (and actually working on a live website with a domain) will put you in the top 10% of developers. Isn't that a good leg to stand on when looking for a job?
I feel you man, it definitely isn't easy. One huge point to note is that HN is extremely biased view of the tech scene. We are bombarded with so many elite programmers and projects that we forget this only represents a fraction of the entire tech scene. This is GOOD thing. You want to be in the presence of elite company. But it's super important to not let it deter your motivation. It may look like everyone is ahead of you because they are. But so too are 100x more people behind you. In the end, it really doesn't matter.
I started the same way, hacking spaghetti PHP and being a really poor programmer - I just wanted to make a website to sell some shirts.
The best thing I did and you can do is just keep at it. If it feels like work then you are probably in the wrong industry. You have to have a passion for building stuff, that's what keeps me going. I never thought I'd be able to stand 8+ hours staring at a computer screen. But it's not about that is it? It's about being able to see your creation realized.
Anyway, I'm by no means an elite programmer, but I have a very active GitHub profile =) http://github.com/plusjade.
Email me and we can work on something together. I agree shipping a complete project from top to bottom that actually runs online is hard. I'm stubborn so I just willed myself into doing it. But everyone can use help so please take my offer seriously. Also put contact info in your HN profile.
I tried the entrance exam puzzles but they are just too hard! how can I get good enough to solve these puzzles and get in? I really feel I need some kind of mentor and I could benefit from a program like this.
Keep trying the puzzles. If you are really stuck you can always look around GitHub for solutions written by other people, or jump in #rmu on freenode and ask for help. Of course you don't want to look at other people's solutions if you are applying for the core course, but asking for help with problem definitions is totally fine.
We had originally hoped that the introductory Ruby course at P2PU would serve as an entry point leading up to the Mendicant University core skills session. Unfortunately that class hasn't quite come together and we don't have an immediate alternative path that is both free and of sufficiently high quality to recommend.
What you can definitely do (as Jordan mentioned) is get some help from our mentoring program. You'll be able to study at your own pace that way, but get some guidance as needed along the way: https://github.com/rmu/mentoring/wiki/Instructions-for-stude...
