Past Austin:
Hello, I am your future self, writing you a letter today to give you some encouragement and inspiration, so that you can have a smoother four years in college. At this time, I am about to graduate from my senior year and have signed a three-party employment agreement at the end of September last year. I am about to become a working professional. However, you have just entered the campus and are wandering among the beautiful scenery, immersed in the infinite beauty of the future.
Time passes by, spring and autumn take turns. People often say that time is precious and should be cherished. But I have to admit that I am always good at realizing the former, but it is difficult for me to do the latter. According to my current understanding, cherishing time means doing things seriously. When studying, study seriously and truly learn something. When playing, play seriously and strive for happiness.
You have never failed any courses in these four years, and even your academic performance is among the top, but these professional courses still need to be studied seriously. You are currently majoring in automation and will transfer to the CS major in a year. Although you may look down on it, I hope you can study these courses seriously, including computer organization principles, data structures and algorithms, operating systems, computer networks, and database technology. Especially the last four, they are of great importance and are the foundation of your professional skills. It is crucial for you to learn and master them early on for your future development.
Programming languages are important, even though you have been exposed to C language since elementary school, learned Java syntax in middle school, learned CPP in high school and participated in the NOIP competition, and even learned Python and basic web scraping techniques, you haven't been able to produce any technically valuable or valuable code, just for your own amusement. I often compare programming languages to natural languages of humans. Just learning how to write is only the basis of writing, whether you can write good poems and articles is another matter; just as you have mastered the basic syntax of many programming languages, but can you write valuable software or technically valuable basic components, all of these are closely related to the four basic courses mentioned above.
Participate in college life moderately and try to participate less in college affairs. In these four years, you are the dormitory leader and also a member of the community psychology committee. These two useless titles kept you busy in the first two years, including collecting materials, filling out forms, and participating in activities, which will waste a lot of time and cannot be resigned. The teachers may call it exercise, but it is actually meaningless consumption. These tasks are of no help to your studies and have no meaning for your future work.
Speaking of moderate participation, this also includes participating in competitions moderately. Participating in competitions can be exhausting and often difficult to achieve satisfactory results. You already have rich competition experience in high school, participating in international invention competitions, robotics competitions, and algorithm competitions. You know more about competitions than most freshmen, so I hope you participate cautiously. For example, spend some time taking a higher-level software certification exam. This certification has a high value, can be used for tax deductions, can be used for job titles, and can also earn special credits, so this investment will be very cost-effective.
Next, let's talk about internships. You started interning in the summer of your freshman year, and the treatment was excellent, with a daily salary of 1000 and hotel accommodation. Even in later remote internships, your salary remained high. This made you a bit arrogant and made you think you were great, to the point where you forgot about studying and started fooling around with reverse analysis. I want to say that you did one thing right during this experience. That is, when facing an opportunity and you are not sure if you can handle it, you didn't choose to refuse, but instead learned to handle it through studying. This is great. People often say that opportunities are for those who are prepared. But I think that's bullshit. Opportunities sometimes come suddenly, but opportunities are just opportunities. They won't always come and won't give us enough time to prepare. So don't rush to refuse, give it a try. Remote internships have no time and space restrictions, you only need to occasionally write some code, but I hope you can study professional courses and knowledge in both front-end and back-end development during this time, so that you can find and handle work well.
Now let's talk about open source and technology stack. You would never have expected that for a long time, your most welcomed open source project would be the Java language that you disliked the most. Actually, you don't really hate Java, but you started early and arrived late. You learned the basics of Java in middle school, but it was limited to that. This made you feel regretful, so you chose to give up directly. You are someone who is very interested in computers, it is your best teacher, which can give you continuous motivation to learn computer science, but at the same time, you also like to tinker with various technologies and programming languages. In this era that requires technical accumulation, it may not be a good period. Because after work, there is no such large amount of time like in college to study.
Therefore, you need to stay focused, at least stay focused on a certain direction. And try to actively participate in open source projects, which will not only make you happy but also bring great benefits to your technical growth and career development.
Read more books, read a lot. You have been a person who loves reading since childhood, but you haven't read many books in college. Books are great learning materials, most of them are systematic, but I hope you don't touch many discouraging books.
Many so-called experts recommend some seemingly famous and authoritative books, most of which are translated by publishers. Take my advice, read less, try not to read them. Many books are translated poorly and reading them will pollute your mind. Moreover, books that are too thick will directly discourage you, at most they can be used as reference materials. You have done well, always focusing on practicality, promoting learning through projects, which makes you learn fast and effectively.
In the era of the Internet, even the aroma of wine is afraid of deep alleys. Don't be trapped in an information cocoon, try to expose yourself more. Here, exposure mainly means showcasing your work on platforms like GitHub and Twitter. It can be applications you have developed, open source projects, or study notes and articles. These platforms are very inclusive and will not ban you for sharing links. In addition, constantly sharing will also allow you to meet more like-minded people and even bring unexpected opportunities.
Finally, try to simplify your life, which will make you more efficient in doing things.
Wishing you a bright future and smooth sailing.
Future Austin, written on April 12, 2023.