Advice for first-year college student?

Learn how to learn. (and college/university is the perfect place for that). That is the one skill that will really be with you your all career, as illustrated by the question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/68862

Mine would be more focused, because I think that it's more likely to affect a first year student: Don't skip class - ever. No reason is good enough except for violent illness. If you show up, at least you'll hear the material once. Divide your fee bill by the number of classes you can attend during the year. The per-class fee will astound you. Don't blow that cash. Show up. Don't wait until the week before an assignment is due to start thinking about it. Dive into that prototype on the day it's assigned. Last minute work is never good, especially in computer science. Talk to a professor or a TA when you stumble into a black hole. Don't wait and let it fester into a real problem. Learn another domain well besides computer science/programming. Accounting, engineering, physics, biology - domain knowledge will be as helpful as programming languages. Know something about the kinds of problems you can solve. Attend seminars that are over your head. You might not understand the topic when you hear it, but you will someday if you keep at it. The other stuff about learning, reading widely, thinking, etc. - I agree with all that. But these are things that I wish someone had told me when I was an undergrad.

Go to parties and have fun. You will regret that more than not reading about code later on in life, if you miss out. ENJOY college. It's supposed to round out your education and make you a well-rounded citizen, not just a specialized subspecies that can bend machines to your will. (Although that latter part is fun too!)

Learn to negotiate. Dealing with people is considerably more complex than dealing with machines, and fresh college graduates are at a disadvantage due to inexperience.

Classes will sadly not teach skills needed for software development in the real-world. Thankfully most universities have many programs that allow the students to work with professors or at companies through interships. Do it every semester and every summer. Seriously. If you can, do 2-3 at a time. For a while I was working 60 hours a week while in full-time school, the experience was well worth it. I feel sorry for Seniors who are just starting their first internships, they've already lost so much time to learn.

Learn the principles of http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.PrinciplesOfOod. Its the one thing I regret not learning at university! Yes I was taught it...and yes I thought I understood it...but years later I'm looking back at how I've programmed and realized that I have not been programming in an Object Oriented manner....even though I thought I was. I'm fixing this mistake now...but I wish I had understood that the abstract and difficult to understand theories being taught in Programming 101 were more important than getting my hands dirty in code. Learn the basics first and experience (and others experiences) will teach you the rest.

Learn SICP from abelson-sussman-lectures http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ Work out exercise in http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html.

I'm going to reiterate a lot here because I think these statements are important. Go to class. SO IMPORTANT. Read everything, ask questions, and do the assignments. Pick the brains of your professors and teaching assistants. They've walked a similar path before you and they are there for a reason. For that matter, pick the brains of software developers outside of academia. They will be able to give you advice on where the industry is heading and what they are seeing show up on their desks. Focus on the fundamentals so that you will be able to apply what you've learned to whatever is thrown at you in the future. Don't stop learning when the class is over. Pick out the parts that interest you and delve into those subjects. Finally, for fun, don't start playing an MMORPG till they hand you your diploma.

If you're just going into college now and you can't touch type... good luck to you! With all the instant messaging and texting these days they ought to be pretty darn good at that. My suggestion would be to read the programming books. That was the single most important thing that I did my freshman year. I learned a lot and in the later years I didn't have time to read all of the stuff and I felt that I missed out because of it. With all due respect, you can write code all day long. But unless it is good code, you're not really learning much in my opinion.