Ask HN: About to start CS degree, any tips?

Take public speaking. And don't slide by, ace it.

Use your elective credits to soak up business, finance, marketing, etc. classes.

Start working with web frameworks (django, rails, node) before you graduate.

Hit up those conferences while you can, most offer student discounts. This is a good way to explore the different sectors of the software development world. You can walk around the vendors areas and talk to recruiters at most companies this way, and you can often find engineers who will be happy to kill a few minutes talking about their company culture, etc.

Google Summer of code.

Get involved in open source communities, who always need volunteers. This can be a good segway into getting your hands dirty and contributing.

"Here are Joel's Seven Pieces of Free Advice for Computer Science College Students:

    1. Learn how to write before graduating.
    2. Learn C before graduating.
    3. Learn microeconomics before graduating.
    4. Don't blow off non-CS classes just because they're boring.
    5. Take programming-intensive courses.
    6. Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
    7. No matter what you do, get a good summer internship."

Find the best professors and take all of their classes. Set your sights on the 400-levels.

It's not a race to the end.

The CS courses cross-listed as SOC, ECON, etc will tend to be interesting. There will be Linguistics majors in NLP.

Keep reading RFCs.

Keep all your code private, on a remote server, and version-controlled.

Double major in a non-CS degree.