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

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

#251

Post by shultays »

I think the best thing I did back at university was doing lots of personal projects and doing more than asked for my term homeworks/projects to make them more presentable. Not only it helped me developing my skills but also I had lots of stuff I could put on my CV or talk in interviews. Especially when you are a new graduate, stuff like that can easily separate you from the rest.

I disagree with people that puts more emphasis on "social skills" "connections" etc. Good programmers are still hard to come by. If you are good and you can show that, that would be sufficient. Even grades are mostly irrelevant.

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

#252

Post by toomanybeersies »

bmikaili wrote: post #239
toomanybeersies wrote: post #205

In my experience, social skills tend to be far more important than ability of knowledge when it comes to getting a job. Personal connections are also very useful when it comes to finding internships and graduate jobs, I had a B- grade point average and still managed to get an internship that led on to full time work when I graduated, purely by knowing the right people (completely by luck in my case) I'm not a bad pro…

You guys really exaggerate how much people lack social skills in our field. Most people have perfectly good social skills (at least those I'm friends with). Someone that exceeds you in technical skills is gonna snag that shiny internship away from you AND have the social skills to boot.

I guess I'm being unfair when I say that most software developers lack social skills, it's rare for me to run into another dev who I can't hold a decent conversation with (it's rare for me to run into another dev at all to be honest). It's more that most devs are usually bad at workplace communication with non-technical people.

Besides that, most software developers just aren't that great. By definition half of them are below average in their ability, so if you're an average programmer with good business communication skills you're ahead of the curve by a good margin.

At the end of the day, the best way to get an internship is to know the right people. My brother went to university with the lead developer of the company I got my internship at, it wasn't the only reason I got the job, but it was definitely a big contributing factor. My B- GPA definitely wasn't why I got the job, and I had literally zero experience with Ruby on Rails or JS at the time either.

Upon saying that, my experience doesn't necessarily map to everyone else. At the risk of sounding arrogant: I'm a very talented, although not necessarily motivated, programmer. I managed to get my degree without attending more than a week of lectures each semester, while at the same time feeding a pretty heavy drinking problem.

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

#253

Post by _v7gu »

If you are not struggling academically, you can learn more by taking higher level classes. Talk to your advisor about balancing this.

Learning applied subjects is easier than learning theory, so make the most of your limited time with the professors by learning the most amount of theory.

But most importantly, go out. Find friends from as many departments as possible. Get into mamy clubs (you can just drop the ones you don't pike later). Much of the personal growth from college comes from being exposed to different perspectives, so don't miss out on that.

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

#254

Post by heresie-dabord »

As rewarding in many ways as the computing field is, you should know that you are self-selecting for a narrow understanding of people, history, and economies. You will need to find the time to condition yourself to be a thinking, compassionate human.

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

#255

Post by eythian »

nlawalker wrote: post #15

Not to imply you're not ready, but in response to "I've been coding since I was young, so I'm not worried about struggling academically": "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." Depending on the nature of what your department offers, be prepared to learn about, spend time on and potentially struggle with concepts that have nothing to do with coding or software engineering as…

> Not to imply you're not ready, but in response to "I've been coding since I was young, so I'm not worried about struggling academically"

To add to this, I thought the same would apply to me when I went to uni. And it did, until about half way through second year. Then I discovered that the classes were passing the boundaries of what I'd self taught myself, and I had a big rush to catch up.

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #9
zekehernandez wrote: post #3

You should know why you want a degree in CS. Because if it's solely to get a job in software development, know that it's one of the longest and most expensive ways to reach that goal, especially since you've been coding for such a long time. There are many other reasons one would want to go to college, and if they apply to you, feel free to disregard this comment. But to reiterate, if your only goal is to be a softwa…

Disagree. Skip a CS degree and be instantly skipped over for coveted jobs. Sure you’ll still get a job. Ask me how I know.

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by blaser-waffle »

helicalspiral wrote: post #126
andreilys wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to pay tens of thousands of dollars to for a second degree when you can just go to the source material yourself? Project Gutenberg exists, as does Youtube, Khan Academy, and many other free resources.

In most (all?) universities/colleges in America a double major doesn’t cost extra financially. You might have to give up taking more electives in one or the other programs however.

Yeah I can't speak to other Uni's but I went to a very large school in VA, and we had plenty of extra credits for electives. With a some creative picks, and a couple of summer courses taken for fun, I was able to tack on a 2nd major and a minor.

Disclaimer: I was former military and had a GI bill, plus a job with reasonably flexible hours while in school. This might not be a universal case for folks with lots of loans in an isolated college town.

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

#258

Post by scottLobster »

bmikaili wrote: post #250
scottLobster wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also some people don't particularly value FAANG tech. Speaking for myself and some of my co-workers advertising algorithms, consumer, enterprise and financial tech just aren't that interesting. Sure the engineering can be impressive, but all that effort for what? So Adsense can be better convince people to buy crap they don't need, Apple can make its products even less practical, Amazon can more efficiently abuse its…

What's an example of a company with an interesting vision for you?

Well SpaceX/Tesla are easy ones to point to, Blue Origin as well although I'm not sure what's holding them up, Sarcos Robotics perhaps with their robotic exoskeletons, some medical device and defense industry work that isn't executed half-assed, basically anything that links back to the real world with real stakes beyond shareholder value and/or moves the technological ball forward. Probably a lot of mid-range companies I don't know about because they lack broad marketing budgets, for agricultural software/train coordination/power grid management and such.

To be fair the FAANG companies fit that description the early/mid 2000s, back when their various technological niches were less developed. They've since become the establishment, and some like Apple/Google/Facebook have started the descent into downright decadence and complacency.

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

#259

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

Lots of good advice in this thread about paths to learning in CS, etc. Two huge items for a software development career I haven't seen (near the top at least) and I don't know if are covered in college these days (they weren't for me):

1. Learn version control. Work towards becoming adept at the different things you can do. Pick git to start.

2. Learn overviews of various development methodologies - Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, etc. Just the basics of the process and terminology.

Your git-fu could save you when working on projects for school, learn to incorporate using it as you do work. Knowing project management terminology will help you at least be conversant about these during interviews for internships or jobs after. You won't be in charge of what methodology a company uses - learn trade-offs for them all.

If you find the deep CS curriculum hard and wonder why you would care about compilers, assembly, etc. if say you want to be a web developer: they all help teach you how to think like the computer. When some new fad language comes out, the basics are still the same - processors, memory, disk, IO, etc.

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

#260

Post by m463 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #205

In my experience, social skills tend to be far more important than ability of knowledge when it comes to getting a job. Personal connections are also very useful when it comes to finding internships and graduate jobs, I had a B- grade point average and still managed to get an internship that led on to full time work when I graduated, purely by knowing the right people (completely by luck in my case) I'm not a bad pro…

social skills are one part of a bigger whole - communication.

Looking back, two classes that I should have doubled down on at school are: written and oral communication.

Think of it as a multiplier for the skills of your tech tree.

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