I'm a student hacker currently in my third year of a 4 year masters course. Last summer I interned at a startup in London working on iOS apps, some from the gro

I'm a student hacker currently in my third year of a 4 year masters course. Last summer I interned at a startup in London working on iOS apps, some from the ground up, some just updates. It was a good experience, although I had to work on my side project during my lunchtimes, evenings and weekends. This summer I plan to work with a buddy of mine on my CS course. We have an idea in mind that I've already been working on (www.housequest.co.uk), but really we just want to work on something for three months and try to create something useful. In the end, I'd say it's a good idea to obtain an internship for one of your summers in university. Although you don't get much time to work on other cool stuff, I believe you'll benefit from it in other ways. It's a good fall back plan for when you leave university, as past experience accounts for a lot. Secondly, you learn a lot. I was building iOS apps before my internship, but building them professionally was completely different. I was doing silly things. Lastly, it's good for networking with professionals. The other summers you can then use to build even better software.