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

Re:Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS majo... by aaron_seattle on Sunday May 31, 2020 @06:24PM (#23373412)

"Real life has no curriculum".

~80% of what I've learned vocationally, came after school, under the informal mentorship of seasoned practitioners.

Arguably the #1 exportable skill you gain from college is metacognition - learning how to learn. So that the next time you find yourself staring into a "I have no idea" moment, instead of being stuck, you'll be able to iteratively expand your mental map of the territory; form and test hypotheses; sketch out needed or missing tooling, etc.

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Re:Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS majo... by aaron_seattle on Sunday May 31, 2020 @06:28PM (#23373453)

i.e. remember this when you find yourself deep into some "am I ever going to really need this" curriculum. Directly, probably not. Indirectly, you are rewiring your neurons for generalized problem solving to the nth degree.

Also, this "missing course": https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

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