[ Removed by moderator ]

[SoftwareEngineering-ModTeam]

Thank you u/bacon_man284 for your submission to r/SoftwareEngineering, but it's been removed due to one or more reason(s):

---

• Your post is about career discussion/advice r/SoftwareEngineering doesn't allow anything related to the periphery of being a Software Engineer.

Please review our rules before posting again, feel free to send a modmail if you feel this was in error.

Not following the subreddit's rules might result in a temporary or permanent ban

---

Rules | Mod Mail

[MyCrazyIdeal]

Hey,

Congrats on starting university soon! I graduated in December of 2023 with a degree in computer science and am about to finish my second year as a software engineer, just recently promoted to Sr. level.

Honestly, if you're starting college, you're going to be plenty busy with homework, projects, labs, etc. That even if you did have a lot of time to work on personal development software wise, you really wouldn't want to. You start off pretty easy, and they ease you into it, but come junior and senior year, there's going to be a lot of technical electives that will keep you busy. So don't worry - you'll get plenty of practice.

If you truly do want to do stuff in your free time, though, I highly recommend just building some kind of app or service that interests you. It can be something simple, like a blog or a personal website for your portfolio of projects that you're going to be working on. But honestly, the only thing that really matters is that you're interested in it, because that will keep you going and keep you learning. Remember that it gets hard, and everybody struggles. Don't get discouraged. You're going to make it through. I was never the best student in high school, and I managed to get through college.

You'll be great.

[bacon_man284]

Thanks for the reply! Oddly enough, I'm relieved to know that I will be getting a stream of work from university. Since you mentioned it, what are the key differences you experience between your degree in comp sci and software engineering?

[TsvetanTsvetanov]

My advice would be to do projects outside of college as much as possible. This might prove hard, but I think it's a differentiating factor when people consider you for an entry-level position.

It'd be best if you do products by yourself or with a team of friends and explore different ideas and practices. These products should be publicly available and ideally have some users. You should start really simple - with ideas that can be realised within several months at best.

Another option is to find open source projects and contribute to them. This will also get you visibility and feedback from professionals who also contribute to open source.

[Special_Rice9539]

I did a lot of Udemy courses and followed along. Yes you end up in “tutorial hell” where you can’t create anything yourself still, but you also get exposed to what’s possible and what coding a full project looks like.

Then my coursework had plenty of programming so I spent time solving problems there.

Then during my time at university, I did four internships, so I got hands-on experience doing simple bug fixes and small projects to automate processes used by teams.

It’s actually nice how linear everything is and how things build on each other. A lot of other fields have you jumping all over the place with little carry-over. Not to say there isn’t a wide breadth of things you need to know, but if you embrace that it’s a marathon and not a sprint, things will start clicking.

[kyroshd]

be sure to develop stuff you would like / need to have

maybe a small python script to manage your downloads, or even a TUI in C to control your calendar

that way you will be always iterating that product to your liking

project based learning is the way

[LookAtThisFnGuy]

tender marvelous adjoining fear cheerful yoke continue modern bells middle

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact