The Tipping Point

I always tell Computer Science students about this so called Tipping Point. When you are studying Computer Science, you'll obviously take tons of courses about programming: Introduction, Design and Development, Structures, Computer Organization, Computer Architecture, Object-Oriented Programming, Web Programming, etc... Most of the students should know at least the basics of a couple of programming languages by their second year and by their third year they should be able to know about databases.

But most students I've met at this point can't hack something useful up. I suggest them to think of a problem they know of and hack a solution for it, no matter how rudimentary or basic it may be, and to just get it done. After that you can always go back, work on it, and learn how to do it "correctly", turning it into something more complete and less hackish. Once you achieve this... congratulations you are passed that Tipping Point, and hacking will come in a more natural way to you.