Practical software development tips

Take a course like lynda, treehouse, udacity. College courses are more interested in computer science theory. Software engineering is both a field of study and a trade.

Get enough reputation on stack overflow so that you can upvote on posts. This will allow you to come back to a post and see you've looked at it before, and see an answer you've upvoted. Try my browser extension for this too: refined stack overflow

Learn a command line editor. I recommend vim. Read a book about it. It's got its own whole language and ecosystem. It'll allow you to edit remote files.

Track your config files in a repository. Mine is called dotfiles.

Take breaks from your computer. If you have a hard time with this install an app like stretchly or rsiguard. It's not as distracting as you might think, if you spend the time actually stretching rather than getting on your phone for example.

Go to events. Meetup has a bunch of software oriented groups, depending on your location. But recognize that any hosted by big companies are likely to be big advertisements. Those are still a good way to meet people, and get a read for where the industry is headed.

Have fun. Make a passion project if you have the time and energy. It's where you can really learn and share your discoveries freely.