1. Have the right infrastructure

• Get yourself a decent laptop. (I prefer Mac but any decent Dell laptop is also ok)
• Get yourself a nice internet connection with highest speedavailable. (Take a cut from your pocket money if you have to but thisis a must)
• Get yourself an iPhone (I know it is expensive in India but youwill have to use world class gadgets to become world class engineer)
• Make your home or hostel room WiFi enabled. (This is not expensive. You will get a decent router in 2-3k.)
• If you are not able to do any or all of the above things, don’tworry you can still become a good computer engineer. So hang on andkeep reading.

2. Learn to use Google Reader

• Google reader will become the best companion of yours for lifetime if you use it properly.
• It is nothing but a cool RSS reader from Google using which you cansubscribe to blogs to get latest updates and posts. So if you have agmail account you are ready to go. What? You do not have a gmailaccount yet!! Go get one right now. Stop reading. Open a gmail accountnow and come back. I am waiting.
• I am still waiting.
• Ok great, so you have a gmail account now, good. Watch this video . It explains in plain english how to use google reader.

• Software, Web Search Strategies, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Blogs, Podcasting and Cloud computing on http://www.commoncraft.com/(Now you understand why I told you get the fastest internet connectionavailable?). You don’t have to see them all at once but do check themall and understand.
• Done? Ok so you are ready to become a world class computer engineer now.
• Now you understand Google Reader, so it’s time to subscribe to interesting blogs. Subscribe to following blogs.
  • Techcrunch.com (King of Technology Blogs)
  • Gigaom.com (Michale Arrington of Techcrunch considers Om as his Guru)
  • ReadWriteWeb.com
  • Pluggd.in (Indian Techcrunch)
  • JoelOnSoftware.com (a must read for programmers)
  • CodingHorror.com (another must read for programmers)
• There are many such blogs but to start with these are ok. You willkeep finding other interesting blogs as and when you will come acrosssome.
• Getting used to read on computer takes time and patience so just keep reading it.
• So I guess we are done with Google Reader part here. This means youhave to open up Google Reader as soon you bunk the classes or as soonas you get the time to check your mails.

3. Academic Earth

• Do you want to see how professors teach in Harvard and Stanford? Doyou want to see how their lectures are conducted? You can now, we werenot able to do that in our time.
• Go to www.academicearth.organd you will see videos of actual lectures and courses of Harvard,Yale, Stanford. Now you know whose lectures to watch after bunking theclasses or after getting back to home.
• You do not want to miss the chance of studying in theseuniversities without going to US to giving them millions in fees right?and guess what? Attendance is not compulsory here

4. Learn any web language quickly and start building

• I would suggest PHP or Ruby. ASP.NET C# is also fine if you already know something about it.
• And start building something on it. It can be anything. But startprogramming on web now. Most of you are never going to write a programC, C++ or COBOL in your lifetime. I would not advise against learningthem though.
• After you know something about web programming, read “Getting Real” from 37Signals.
• Now again build something using whatever you learned from the above book.

5. Assume you are in Sillicon Valley

• I know this sounds little weird but that’s the way it is.
• The best of the minds in the world are there and you do not want to miss out on that right?
• Thousands of things happen everyday in Sillicon Valley and you can remain updated by reading above blogs I mentioned.
• So start feeling the air

6. Start asking why?

• When you are attending a lecture or reading anything, have a habit of asking why?
• For e.g. Why we have to study “Strength of Materials” when most of us are going to write web applications in PHP or ASP.NET?
• When you ask why often, you start understanding the logic, the reason behind doing anything.
• Same as they have said in 3 Idiots, don’t learn to get marks butlearn to know something, to achieve the excellence. When you startasking why, you start on the right path.

7. Understand computer hardware

• Most people thinks this is boring and unnecessary.
• May be it is, but it will certainly make you better programmer, even if you will never touch the inside of the computer again.
• Basic understanding of hardware is necessary to understand how computer works.
• You have to understand following 100% without any doubt in your mind.
  • How your high level programming code becomes 0s and 1s and execute?
  • The text which you are reading now is also consisting of 0s and 1s only then how come you are reading the alphabets here?
  • FYI I am still not 100% clear on this. But I will be one day. Till then I am not a good computer engineer.

These are additional things you have to do. It takes hard work to become world class right?