Your experience can be measured in the amount of problems you've observed. So gain experience, observe problems. Then in the future, you will have the answers.
Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
241–250 of 278 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Try to code something everyday. Learn to use tools. fish45 made it clear they're already an experienced programmer, so I don't see that it makes sense to emphasise this. They're more likely to struggle with theory than with their programming tools.
Disagree here, myself and many many peers considered ourselves "experienced" programmers before college (starting at 7 years old etc), and we were barely intern material in reality. Push yourself every day and learn tools (there are always new tools to learn) to be relevant--this goes for students, new grads, seniors, etc.
Sure, I think we agree really.
My point was that for the programming material, they're more prepared than many of their peers. For theoretical material, they're on the starting block with everyone else.
It's good to work on your developer skills beyond what your degree gives you, but no-one should expect that their undergraduate studies will be easy simply because they're already a programmer. That's like assuming your degree in pure math will be easy because you studied algebra in high school.
If you have a choice between doing well in your degree course, and learning additional developer skills, you should go with the former.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#243Do some opensource work, from fixing typos, to small bugs. Go to -meetups/events, and talk with people there (if someone needs a coder for , and they remember you from there, they just might call you). If you have enough free time, try getting a student job (even on campus) that has you doing programming related stuff.
Also, use github! Need a script to do some random task? Publish it there. Made an android app, to show you (or post, or whatever) some crap... publish it! Script to create a single page gallery of your instagram feed? Post it!
When i worked in larger companies, and also had to read CVs and give my opinion on students and fresh graduates (I hated that), I always prefered someone who had a github profile full of random scripts they wrote, no matter what their grades were (because they were lazy and decided to automate stuff, and that's always good), than someone with great grades and not a line of code to be seen.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
The average for Google is 3.2 years. For most, that is not FU money.
Just long enough to open the doors of any other job interview and bail to a company that doesn't shuffle them and their team around the office like game pieces in a never-ending re-org, a company that makes actual products instead of surveillance advertising systems (as the latter is impossible without the former), or a company that makes decisions not to work with oppressive governments based on more factors than if…
So, approx. 3 years == disillusioned?
Unless it was a planned stepping-stone all along, to land the real "dream" job and have the credentials to command a more magnanimous compensation than they would without that Google tenure.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#245> I've been coding since I was young, so I'm not worried about struggling academically, at least in my CS classes.
Lamentably, this sentence tells me you think coding == computer science, which betokens you are not prepared. How's your discrete math and computational theory? Coding is scratching the surface of CS. A programming language is a software engineering tool, software engineering is a branch of CS, but CS encompasses much more.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#246The best advice I can give is do not take advice from anyone who graduated college more than 10 years or so ago. The problem is that their advice is woefully out of date and even worse, they’re incredibly confident that it’s still useful advice. Most people are wrong about most things most of the time. Keep that in mind when listening to any advice (yes I am aware of the irony).
Ah, the arrogance of youth still shines like a quasar.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since when is this the worst case scenario for a CS grad? Last I checked, FAANGs value and compensate their engineers more than basically every other industry. Presumably this is considered a worst case by someone who values other aspects of life more than money. Sure, the FAANG companies are great for highly technical meta-work. And this is good for some people. Other people may prefer a more direct, less corporat…
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…
> facebook can sell your information more effectively while it keeps you up to date with relatives' conspiracy theories
The best one-line definition of FB I've ever read.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#248Not CS specific, but generally speaking, in college you should feel dumb. If you don't, you're not pushing the limits of your knowledge and skills. If you find yourself breezing through all the classes, speak to the teachers/professors about things you're interested in to find something that might challenge you. They might have a project you could work on.
Do it without coming off as being arrogant though.
And it will probably help if you've already aced a couple of courses before you approach them.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#249HN is probably the worst group to ask for advice. Most people here take their careers way too seriously. You’ll notice that most people here are telling you to do some specific set of actions but few of them overlap significantly. That’s because there aren’t “right” things for you to do. They’re just pushing their biases on you. I’d argue that you just take it easy and do whatever makes you happy. You can definitely…
100% agree. Just have fun and be happy. You'll have your entire life to work after you finish college. Meet people, make friends, do stupid shit and party. Your college friends will be the last big influx of friends in your life so make lots of them. Also, you get to completely reinvent yourself aka grow, so don't worry about who you were in high school, you get to be an adult now. Enjoy!
Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since when is this the worst case scenario for a CS grad? Last I checked, FAANGs value and compensate their engineers more than basically every other industry. Presumably this is considered a worst case by someone who values other aspects of life more than money. Sure, the FAANG companies are great for highly technical meta-work. And this is good for some people. Other people may prefer a more direct, less corporat…
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?