Dare Obasanjo has a great post on the "Three Things I Learned About Software in College," while Jeff has a fine post called Learning, or, Learning How to Learn that points to a great post called Why Is Forever. Jeff says "How lasts five years, but Why is forever." This is a great lesson to be reminded of and a pithy, but true, statement.

Here's Dare's three things learned in College. Be sure to check the comments on his post, there's some great stuff in them.:

Operating systems aren't elegant. They are a glorious heap of performance hacks piled one upon the other. Software engineering is the art of amassing collected anecdotes and calling them Best Practices when in truth they have more in common with fads than anything else. Pizza is better than Chinese food for late night coding sessions.

[Dare Obasanjo]

I learned some stuff in College, but here's the "Three Things I Learned About Software WHILE NOT in College" as well

Things I Learned about Software in College

Everything has already been done before and will continue to be re-written over and over until the whole world embraces Lisp. TCP/IP is a beautiful soup. Beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes through to the bone. This statement often applies to software. Don't go digging if you don't want to find a hack.

Things I Learned about Software While Not in College

The more complex the software being created, the less the problem becomes about technology and the more it becomes about interpersonal communication and group dynamics. You're not going to need it (YAGNI). You'll always want to add one more method to a utility class, or speculate on how your software will be used, but ultimately you need to keep code and features as constrained as possible. Every line of code you write that you feel gross about will ultimately come back to haunt you. Therefore, avoid writing code that makes you feel dirty.

...and I'd ask you, Dear Reader, to share your three things, learned both IN and OUT of college. I'm especially interesting in those who didn't go to college at all, to add yours.