Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

That depends on what type of job and career you are looking for, CS is a pretty broad field.

If you are looking for one of those high paying jobs in the top companies and want them without a degree, you will need to impress much more than your graduated peers.

My advice might be controversial, but here are some thoughts I have...

My big piece of advice: Major in something useful (CS, check!), minor in something fun. A lot of the computer science classes you take will be boring AF, or you'll start to bang your head against the desk wondering why you have to know how operating systems work when you just want to make iOS apps (or vice versa!). Some of the classes will be deeply math heavy. It can and will seem overwhelming at times. So minor in something fun. Pick something that has no bearing on your chosen career path. Minor in Theater or Music or Art or Literature or Physical Education. The best part about minors is that you generally get to take all the fun classes and not the terrible ones! You'll meet a whole bunch of people with diverse interests that aren't solely computer nerds.

As far as the CS stuff is concerned, focus on absorbing as much as you can. Contrary to what other people said, don't sweat the details. You should have a fundamental understanding of all the big areas (databases, languages, algorithms), but you don't need to be an expert in any of those things to get a job. In fact, 90% of the subject matter you learn in college won't be relevant to whichever job you get. BUT... the act of learning is important, and the fact that you have fundamental understandings of those things will get your foot in the door

Think of your college degree as a ticket to an interview, and your first job as the real education. Your degree is proof of two things: 1) that you can learn, and 2) that you can start, stick with, and complete a large, multi-year project. Nobody expects someone with a Bachelor's degree to be an expert programmer, but they _do_ expect critical thinking skills and the ability to learn. You'll learn more on the job in the first 6 months than you will in 4+ years of college education... so don't put too much stress on yourself there.

So... take it seriously, but not too seriously. Study hard, but take fun classes too. Make connections in your computer classes, but make friends across a wide variety of interests. Learn the fundamentals, but don't sweat the details.

(Also, pro tip: nobody gives a shit about your GPA. A 4.0 doesn't get you anything in the real world except a rude awakening. By all means, try to get all A's if you can, but don't burn yourself out by trying to get perfect grades.)

Make friends with the TAs. In a year or two, they’ll be able to refer you for internships.

In recent times I have been taking night and weekend classes to finish my CS bachelors along students half my age, so I will tell you what I told them.

One thing is we took CS classes, and also some English courses in writing. Even on the job, those writing classes are important. You will be writing e-mails, documentation etc. and being able to be clear and to the point is helpful.

Also, in my eyes, some students were not doing enough to get an IT job out of school, never mind a good IT job with an upward trajectory. One guy told me "I don't study for quizzes since they are only 10% of the grade". I studied for quizzes because they were 10% of the grade, but also because I wanted to keep up with the subject and know about it for the future. Then part-way through a semester, or after a semester, I would often manifest whatever I learned. So if I learned Java, I would write a project in Java for myself. Or at least go on Github or somewhere and fix an issue on a Java project. Or if I learned graphics programming I would write a graphics program, or at least contribute to a free/open-source one. Through this, I would take all the theory I had learned over some months and ground it and manifest it in real work.

Also you would probably do well to get on CS department mailing lists, and check the bulletin board or whatever for internship listings.

I was surprised how lackadaisical some kids took it. Maybe it was their youth. I have seen many people parlay their CS skills into everything from a well-paying job, to parlaying it into an enormous amount of money. So I went above and beyond. I recall one homework where we had to talk about process schedulers, something I was always interested in but never stopped to read about. I figure in the first half hour of work, I already had gotten an A, but I spent hours and hours reading about process schedulers before turning in my homework.

I recall speaking to a bunch of the brighter CS seniors, and I mentioned something about version control. "Version control?" one said. I said, "Yes, you know, like git". "Git?" he said. None of them knew what version control was. You should know things like that before your first job interview, taking classes is not enough. It's good to know what algorithms are linear big O, and which are exponential, but you are going to have to learn some things they won't teach you in class to get a job. I would suggest going to Github, finding a project that has merged pull requests from a number of contributors recently, and looking at contributing a pull request to that project. Then at least you'll get an idea of what work is - someone posts a bug to issues, you look at it, you fix it and put up a pull request, then someone with more (or equivalent) experience looks at it and either gives you some pointers, or merges your changes. At work you will be doing similar stuff.

look into ACM aka ICPC programming competitions -- super-fun, you'll learn tons, & job interviews will seem easy in comparison