While I generally agree with this sentiment, I think there are other good reasons to intern at big companies: getting contacts, learning from more experienced e

While I generally agree with this sentiment, I think there are other good reasons to intern at big companies: getting contacts, learning from more experienced engineers, learning industry practices that you would never pick up through tutorials, and getting active criticism on your code from other professionals. The peril with being self-taught is that you'll pick up a few bad habits along the way. Money is also an issue. A viable option for students is to try and freelance during one of their summers. You would need to spend some time before the summer trying to drum up a few months worth of work, but this might offer an acceptable compromise: if you're the sole freelancer, you'll have full ownership of the product, you'll learn a tiny bit about being entrepreneurial, and you'll also have spare time to work on your own projects. You might even make more than you would interning (assuming you're a Facebook-caliber intern). Maybe the best "path" for a student to take is to spend his/her first two summers at a big tech company and a startup, and then spend his/her last summer freelancing and working on personal projects.