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Undergraduation

paulgraham.com · 3,759 words · saved by 5 readers

March 2005 (Parts of this essay began as replies to students who wrote to me with questions.) Recently I've had several emails from computer science undergrads asking what to do in college. I might not be the best source of advice, because I was a philosophy major in college. But I took so many CS classes that most CS majors thought I was one. I was certainly a hacker, at least. Hacking What should you do in college to become a good hacker? There are two main things you can do: become very good at programming, and learn a lot about specific, cool problems. These turn out to be equivalent, because each drives you to do the other. The way to be good at programming is to work (a) a lot (b) on hard problems. And the way to make yourself work on hard problems is to work on some very engaging project. Odds are this project won't be a class assignment. My friend Robert learned a lot by writing network software when he was an undergrad. One of his projects was to connect Harvard to the A

Undergraduation --> Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator . Want a summer job? Why not be a Summer Founder ? --> March 2005 (Parts of this essay began as replies to students who wrote to me with questions.) Recently I've had several emails from computer science undergrads asking what to do in college. I might not be the best source of advice, because I was a philosophy major in college. But I took so many CS classes that most CS majors thought I was one. I was certainly a hacker, at least. Hacking What should you do in college to become a good hacker ? There are two main things y

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