IMO: Writing, extending and fixing bugs in nontrivial programs, collaborating with others, reading a lot of documentation of the things you use, discussing prog

IMO: Writing, extending and fixing bugs in nontrivial programs, collaborating with others, reading a lot of documentation of the things you use, discussing programming with other interested people. The scientific part is usually not at the fore in practice and your courses will be plenty for that. Working on some large FOSS project will teach you most of the skills, though maybe don't specialize too much. Some people seem to mostly fix bugs, others design and half-finish stuff before switching to something else, etc. It's best to know the full lifecycle in order to have relevant experience for all situations.