You should learn C and Java. These languages seem to be the most commonly used in college classes right now, and if you are already fluent in them, you can focu

You should learn C and Java. These languages seem to be the most commonly used in college classes right now, and if you are already fluent in them, you can focus on the actual lessons much more easily, rather than wasting time with the nuances of the programming languages. Of course, it will also help if you start working on the following things, as they will show up in your classes. Don't worry if you don't understand it all right away, that's why you're going to college, right? :) - How to debug (go read the book by Agans if you haven't already. It's short and fun to read.) - How to do base conversions (eg. how do you convert decimal numbers to binary? decimal to hexadecimal?) - How to work with sets (If you know how to work with list comprehensions or the set objects in python, or have played with SQL, that's quite handy) - How to write a proof. (Here are some handy words to google for: "modus ponens", "modus tolens", "propositional logic", "truth table", "logical fallacies" and, once you get a feel for propositional logic, go look for "first order logic".) - How a computer works at the level of logic gates. (Go play with the java applet "xLogicCircuits": http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/xLogicCircuits/ http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/xLogicCircuits/ and see if you can figure out how to design a CPU. It can be pretty fun, although the applet's a little clunky.) - What state machines are, and how they relate to regular expressions. - While you're learning C, go look at assembly languages and see if you can understand the relation between C and assembly, and also between assembly and logic circuits. - How to study and manage your time (Yeah, I'm still working on that one myself...) :)