They don't, unfortunately. In my case I was very lucky. One of the first things I did was Google about what programmers would do -- as opposed to programming wh

They don't, unfortunately. In my case I was very lucky. One of the first things I did was Google about what programmers would do -- as opposed to programming which I was scared of in the beginning days -- and I found out about Joel Spolsky very early on in my studies. Getting a bit of breadth about the culture and more about the philosophies and theoretical underpinning, from various writers, has been quite helpful to me. This is what he said: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html You may guess what his number one tip is ;) My number 1 'hack' that I learned from these classes is to eliminate every unnecessary word and be as short and concise as possible. That way, I make fewer mistakes, get my point faster across and I communicate more clearly in general since there's no risk of being long winded. I never do it in HN comments though, it takes a lot of time.