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Ask HN: What Should I Focus on Learning Over the Summer?

by JCordeiro on 4/19/12, 9:39 PM with 6 comments

I'm currently finishing up my first year of college for software engineering and I plan on taking the initiative to learn on my own over the course of the summer.

My question is: What should I focus on learning over the summer?

The one thing I know I do not want to learn is Java, as it is the one language I am already familiar with, and will continue learning when I return to school in the fall. I'm interested in developing for the web, but my goal is to just become a more knowledgeable, and better developer/programming by the end of the summer. What do you guys suggest I do?

  • by MCompeau on 4/19/12, 10:19 PM

    Do the Udacity course on Web Application Engineering (CS253 http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr20...). It just started a few days ago and goes for the next few weeks. It will likely provide you with the baseline skills to build a small project of your own before your next semester starts.

  • by msluyter on 4/20/12, 7:04 PM

    I recommend exploring your day to day tool set. By that I mean things like your text editor / IDE, various OS features/hotkeys, the unix command prompt, scripting languages, etc...

    If you have some spare cycles and the motivation, focused learning on such things can pay off a lot in the future.

  • by dieselz on 4/19/12, 9:43 PM

    Figure out a niche market opportunity that could generate revenue. Learn whatever skills you need to to build that product. Aim for break even by the end of the summer.

  • by pasbesoin on 5/3/12, 6:24 PM

    Depending upon your current familiarity with them, read Jeffrey Friedl's O'Reilly book on regular expressions.

    http://regex.info/

    Something to fill the odd moments or hours, unless it becomes a page-turner for you, as it did for me.