A simple Thank You note and a piece of advice

Hi CEans,

This post is a simple Thank You note to all the moderators of CrazyEngineers for building this amazing and extremely helpful website. I want to give special thanks to Mr. #-Link-Snipped-# for giving me helpful advice when I really needed it. You know everyone can give you advice for free, but very few of them are helpful. This post will be quite long, so please bear with me if you can.

So to begin with, this is who I was 5 months before:
#-Link-Snipped-#

As you can see, I was extremely confused as to what do with my life and had several questions whose answers I could find nowhere. You can also see Mr. Katdare's advice there.
All I can say is that I am now interning at an amazing Startup in Bangalore as an Android Developer, which is about to turn into a permanent employment and this is the reason why Mr. Katdare deserves special thanks.

So how did I do it?
I took up Android Development in that month itself when I made my previous post and gave my everything to it. I started developing actual apps within a week or two and started applying for jobs / internships immediately after that. I shamelessly pinged every HR of Startups that were looking for Android Developers & made the best use of Google to learn everything I could about Android. It took me about 2 months to land my first internship at a fast-growing Startup and it was at that moment when I realized my hardwork started paying off.

So I have a few things to share with people in similar situation (or worse).

Firstly, NEVER GIVE UP. Life is nothing but a bunch of tests. If you're passionate enough about something and look hard for the right things at the right time, you will become successful.
Now how would one know what the right things are and what time is the right time? For that, you need to ask yourself what you want to do. This is the most important thing we fail to do. To know the right things, you need to ask yourself the right questions. I knew from the very beginning what my interests were, hence I didn't have to invest time figuring that part of my life out. But if you haven't decided that part yet, I suggest you start doing it now.

Secondly, and this applies to students willing to become Software Engineers, understand the fact that there's a cut-throat competition out there. This is NOT to discourage you, but to inform you of what you're about to face. For every position, there are at least 1000 applicants willing to work day and night. But does that mean you get all hopeless and give up on your dreams? Certainly not, but it's very important to know what is expected of you.

When you call yourself a CS student, know that you're expected to know at least some form of development apart from knowing how to reverse a string in C and stuff like that. Employers look for freshers who have tried things just for fun. Even if it's a crappy app or an absolutely ugly Web page you made, it still shows your interest and your potential to become a Developer. Know that for the company you will be an investment, so they don't want to take risk with folks who are absolute noobies or have shown little or no interest in Development

Here are a few things you MUST do in order to get those opportunities you're so badly looking for:

1. Keep yourself updated, be curious about what's new in the industry, look up a few languages that are in demand, check with job sites and sites offering internships and see what skills are in most demand and start training yourself on them. I took up Java and started training myself in Android
2. Besides training, start developing actual things with the language or technology you're learning. Trust me, when you start developing something on your own, you get a much better and more in-depth understanding of the tools or languages you use. It doesn't have to be big, start with something small and fun. If you're into Web Development, then design yourself a small website just about yourself. The first app I designed was just a simple Gallery app in Android. But by doing that, I had a far better understanding of Android than what was covered in the tutorials online. And this also shows that you're interested in Development.
3. Make the best use of Google. The Google is a giant book with never-ending pages. It has a huge amount of resources that is readily available online and is all FREE. So learn to use it properly because most of the Software Developers today depend heavily on Google for their resources.
4. Learn to use Git. Trust me, this has become one of the most important requirements in the Software Industry now. In any Software Company, Git plays an important role. So if you don't know about it, chances are you won't even be considered. So learn about version control and start using GitHub. Contribute to Open Source, Upload all your works on GitHub and attach a link of it to your resume. In that way, the employer can see what skills you have, what work you've done with them and how good you are at those skills. This is a way for the employer to be sure that you are interested in Development, that you are not an absolute noobie and that you're a risk worth taking. Besides, contributing to someone else's project is fun and it makes you a better developer.
5. Make your basics strong. Be good in Algorithm and Data Structure because these are the two most important components of Computer Science. Many times people get rejected because they're not thorough with Algorithms and Data structure. If you want to get comfortable with Algorithms and Data Structures, start taking up programming challenges online. They help you improve your algorithmic thinking. Learn about the basics of Operating Systems and Networks as well.

If you try hard to achieve the above-mentioned points, you will be way ahead of those 1000 candidates standing in the queue.
I don't want to make this any longer than it already is, so I will finish it here. If you have reached the end of this post, then thank you for bearing with me for so long.
I hope this post helps and wish you all the best for your future endeavors.