A big suggestion missing here is a CS degree. I like Steve Yegge's take on it[1]:
> The best tip is: go get a computer science degree. The more computer science you have, the better. You don't have to have a CS degree, but it helps. It doesn't have to be an advanced degree, but that helps too.
My own take on it is that most programming languages are like cars and the skill of driving computer science: if you can drive one car, you can learn to drive the other and with programming if you can program in one language you can probably program in the other. Knowing the fundamentals about computers, how information is represented as bits, how they store and process information, how they communicate over networks, how you can use them to solve problems like sorting, cache invalidation, etc is really important stuff that is orthogonal to learning a programming language. Personally if I am using programming language X at my job, and you have 0 experience with it, but are a good programmer, I may not give a shit and hire you anyways.
> The best tip is: go get a computer science degree. The more computer science you have, the better. You don't have to have a CS degree, but it helps. It doesn't have to be an advanced degree, but that helps too.
My own take on it is that most programming languages are like cars and the skill of driving computer science: if you can drive one car, you can learn to drive the other and with programming if you can program in one language you can probably program in the other. Knowing the fundamentals about computers, how information is represented as bits, how they store and process information, how they communicate over networks, how you can use them to solve problems like sorting, cache invalidation, etc is really important stuff that is orthogonal to learning a programming language. Personally if I am using programming language X at my job, and you have 0 experience with it, but are a good programmer, I may not give a shit and hire you anyways.
[1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.de/2008/03/get-that-job-at-googl...