Beseech thy lord

[ArchAngel]

Of which college?

[Chozon1]

The one at which you are the dean. I think it's CGNU. And I am jealous.

Space Captainface?

[ArchAngel]

Dangeresque, Too?

[Chozon1]

*gasp* O_O

Do you watch Strongbad?

[ArchAngel]

Why would I not?

[Chozon1]

I dunno. Some people are haters.

Artichokes?

[ArchAngel]

alright, I'm tired of the socratic method.


No, not a huge of fan of dressing up in artichokes.

[Chozon1]

Eh. Socrates was overrated anyway.

"Dude, I can't find a page on Socrates".

"No, remember, you have to look under So-crates."

?

[ArchAngel]

Everything is dust in the wind

[Chozon1]

Bill and Ted's Excellent adventure. But yeah, that was close. >_>

Pizza?

[ArchAngel]

If any food item and pizza as part of it's name, I'd eat it.

[jester747]

Y U DESTROY MY LIFE YOU CRUEL MONSTER?


WHYYYYYY

[ArchAngel]

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

[Deepfreeze32]

So you're a software engineer, correct?

If you had to give advice to an enterprising programmer (Such as myself) who is still in college, what you say?

[ArchAngel]

That I am.

Advise for a enterprising college student?

Joining an open source project is a great way to get your hands in some real development and an easy way to start small and work your way up. This is something I wish I did when I was in college. You can get feedback from some very talented developers this way, too. Reading code reviews from an epic engineer can be far more of a learning experience than any class.
Not to mention, It looks great on a resume, and when it comes to competing in today's economy, you're going to need everything you can get.

Independent development is great. Shows you are self-motivated and capable, and you can learn a lot about the development process in the meanwhile. If you can collaborate with someone, great! The CDN speedgames I mentioned in another thread is a great way to jump into this. The quick 2 week dev time is amazing for getting a birds eye view of a project's lifecycle and I've learned much about development, project management and how I am as a coder from it.

Network. Get to know your fellow coders. If you have a CS, software development or game development club, join it! Participate in the competitions or projects. The people around you will go places and it's good to have friends recommending you to their bosses. Or better, when one of you want to start a company, you'll have people to pull from. On top of this, working on teams and learning from one another will do wonders to your skill sets.

Keep an eye out for new technology. Companies love to see initiative taken by engineers having at least a handle on multiple (and new) technologies, and it gives you a whole lot of great new toys to work with. When you get in the field, you'll have to be prepared to use a variety of different tools; being accustomed to various IDEs, revision control systems and other dev tools will help you get a leg up.

Get an internship as soon as you can. Don't hesitate, no matter what year you are. This saved my butt. I left college at a time when as an entry level programmer, I had to compete with people with 2-3 years of experience. I shudder to think how I would have fared without my 2 internships. On top of a resume filler, I got good experience and recommendations. I had a friend who kept bothering me to get "a better job" during college to thank for this. (Also, many dev internships pay far better than any "college job" you'd have. Experience and better pay, with a side of doing what you love? Score.)

But most of all, love development and technology. No way you can compete in this field without it. But, I'm getting a feeling this isn't a problem for you.


I gave a pretty general advice, since I don't know how far you are. Where would you say you are as a developer and what year in college are you?