One opinion I have about studying technical subjects in general: don't let yourself believe you understand something until you are confident you could teach/explain it to someone else. And do that (modestly) when you get the chance to.
Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
101–110 of 278 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
double majoring is a hilarious waste of time and money. don't do it.
False. I was a physics/philosophy double and I haven't regretted it for a second. Physics was profound (although somewhat disappointing!) but philosophy is the home of ethics, and lots of writing, and the study of both of those will serve you in good stead.
Why not major in one and minor in the other? Even though my only major was Computer Science, I still took enough English classes to minor in English. Took a class on the History of the English Language (learned how to read Old and Middle English), two American Lit classes, a Middle Eastern Literature class, the Technical Writing course I needed for CS anyway, and a couple of composition classes (maybe one or two others, I don't remember). And it didn't take any more time than I needed anyway.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#1031: Understand the difference between software engineering and computer science. A lot of "computer science" will help you write a compiler, but you probably won't write a compiler on the job. Software engineering will help you when you're trying to make a bulletproof, scalable application.
2: Seek out internships.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#104start doing competitive programming as early as you can , enroll in ICPC https://icpc.baylor.edu/ and join competitive programming weekly group at you school (or start one if you don't find any) this is a good book for preparation https://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Programming-3rd-Steven-Ha... participate in contests on https://onlinejudge.org/ , topcoder or similar on weekly basis (you will hear a lot about leetcode…
Biggest regret in college/HS/right now is not getting good at competitive programming.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#105Ignore 90% of the advice in this thread, although well intended is just unrealistic.
Work on yourself, your knowledge, start creating things, no matter how shitty at first. Do not drink the Kool Aid of any professor, company, open source leaders, youtubers, etc. Remember they are for themselves no matter how altruistic they sound. You are an adult so you can have all the rights of any person, dont get intimidated by older/more experienced people.
If you sell your soul to the devil it is OK, but please dont pretend it was because of a noble goal. It is OK to like money but it is rarely if ever compatible with making the world a better place, no matter what the Zuckerbergs and Gates of this world say.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#106Get as many internships as possible. All that matters.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#107Join your school's ACM Programming Contest or ICPC team. It will prepare you well for whiteboard coding interviews. Also try to do at least two internships; they'll teach you a lot about what professional work is really like and once you've graduated a lot of companies will like seeing this experience on your resume.
I did 4, but the people OP will want to be compared with will have done 5 or 6. 2 is a bare minimum.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
False. I was a physics/philosophy double and I haven't regretted it for a second. Physics was profound (although somewhat disappointing!) but philosophy is the home of ethics, and lots of writing, and the study of both of those will serve you in good stead.
You don't need to double major in philosophy to be exposed to it. For a fraction of the money you paid, you could've tapped into free online resources and paid for a philosophy tutor to walk you through the classics.
How do you know how much money I paid? I was a bit of an overachiever and took a lot more units per quarter than average.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#109Make sure you get out often, have fun every week, meet people. I wish I'd have come out of college with a group of close friends and more people to talk to about jobs.
Also, go to the career fair every year and attend other employment events. Having interview experience and a couple internships under your belt will help a lot after graduation.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#110A lot of the advice so far is general "what to do in college" type stuff, but to specifically address the OP's question, "what should I do now (entering a CS program) to give me an advantage getting a job"? It's a pretty shortlist:
1) Work on projects that matter. In college this would mean finding a professor who does research, and working your way into the lab. It could also mean building apps for friends, or helping out in open source. Just solve problems you think are important, and where the solution is visible.
2) Get good grades and take an academic approach to classes. Don't grade grub or complain, just try to learn.
3) If it hasn't happened during the above two tasks, make sure you learn a toolchain that is similar to the industry workflows people are using with source control, testing, deployment, et cetera. You don't have to do this, but it will be easier to hire you into jobs using X if you have used X non-trivially.
4) Look hard for summer internships, and if you can't find one you like, do a part time project over the summer.
Good luck!