Programming career?

How can I start preparing for a Programming Career? (Finishing my B.A in CSCI)?

• I'm finishing up my B.A. in Computer Science at E.C.U. and I'm on my 4th year, just a few more classes left and I truly feel like I've learned nothing. At best I'm an amateur Java programmer with basic knowledge of programming basics (data structures such as stacks, queues, lists, basic algorithms and error checking) but to be honest, I have to rack my brain when just creating new classes from the lack of ACTUAL programming that is done. I'm terrified that I'm about to graduate with a degree with no idea what the hell I'm doing. I'm not a stupid person, and I don't have trouble doing the work, but none of it in the past 4 years has been focused on actual programming. I'd LOVE to sit down and start learning new languages, and I have a professional library of O'Reilly, SAM, and Pragmatic Programmer books on Java, C, Python, Ruby, but I struggle to get through them because I have nothing practical to apply the knowledge to. I WANT to learn as much as I can, I want to be a great programmer, but it turns out that the University has given no structure or basis on where to start my learning. Do I go the way of web development, general OS applications, server-side applications, or mobile development? Let's say for example I'd like to start with something easy and do some Python. I get all the key syntactic rules and understand the formatting of a program, but what do I...DO with this knowledge? I make a Python script to move files around my desktop? Then it's more understanding Windows scripting than it is Python, what's the point? There's no way to store it in my head without something practical to apply it to. Should I have a series of projects to apply it to? Is there a way to do basic programming on the side to start off with applications? I'm just terrified that I'm going to get hired by a company to start doing real work in coding an application, then have to get my hand held until I catch up with real programmers (which I don't expect to happen in the first place.) I'm not a dumb person, I DO want to learn, and I want to be DAMN good at what I do, but I can't figure out how to get there. I kept telling myself that at the end of my 4 years in college I'd have a great understanding and the hard stuff would begin and I'd be writing my own programs left and right, but instead I'm drawing diagrams, doing math, and taking terrible ethics courses. I want to be eligible to apply for a company like Google, M$, Apple, or at least to be able to get the chances, but as it stands now I don't believe I've got enough on my own to even give it a shot. What should I do? (wow, that was a long rant)

• Answer:

  I completely understand what you are going through. You can learn the basic concepts, but knowing the concepts and applying them can be two totally different things. I had the same problems coming out of college. What I would recommend is to find some not for profit organizations (churches, Police Athletic League, Boys and Girls Town of America, etc) and offer to do some projects for them. Let them know that you are still figuring it out and learning and that in the very least you would like to have their help in learning about what computer-related needs that they need filled. Then you can try to fulfill that need. Even if they never use it the experience can still be invaluable. Ask some of your professors if they know of some places that could use that sort of help. That is how I ended up creating a volunteer and participant logging system for the Kansas City Police Athletic League. I know that they ended up having the next class rebuild it, but so what, I still learned a ton and helped them out at the same time. Volunteer work is a great way to get your career off the ground.