The thing that is ESSENTIAL to any Computer Programming field is PRACTICE. This is a field where I honestly don't believe you really understand what you read until you try it. Do not wait for a project to fall into your lap, start seeking them out. Writing a database backed MUD server in C++ would teach you a lot about general practice programming. Need to sort your music collection? Learn a scripting language and have at it. Build a blogging engine or perhaps an online calendar with schedule functions from scratch to learn about web programming. Any computer programmer I'd even consider hiring needs to know enough about networks (client\server, TCP\IP), web standards (xhtml, css, javascript), databases (SQL, management), and general algorithms for it to be worth my time having them as an employee. If you're not willing and able to learn on your own via reading books, blogs, magazines and experimenting, you're going after the wrong profession.