In Bruce Eckel's blog , you can read the commencement address he recently gave at Neumont University, a school in Salt Lake City dedicated to teaching computer science. In typical fashion ("So here you are, about to be unleashed upon the world"), it presents the wonders and evils of the "real world", as opposed to the ivory towered fortress previously inhabited by the speaker's audience—a group of graduating students. In that sense, it stands in a long (looong) tradition of similar addresses ( Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien have enriched the world with particularly fine specimens of the species).

However, what is unique about this particular address is, of course, the speaker himself and his place within the Java ecosystem. When one examines the address in this light, with the intent of gleaning "tips and tricks for programming in the real world", one finds many valuable insights. Of course, one can imagine a whole host of suggestions and admonishments with which to leave graduating students. It is, therefore, not so much the tips themselves as which particular tips were chosen out of all those that might have been selected that is interesting to look at. The address is a rich mine of insights in that sense, even though the speaker makes very explicit that things are not deterministic (and therefore doing all the right things doesn't guarantee the desired outcome). A quick overview of the selection that Bruce Eckel made in this particular address:

• Learn continuously and teach yourself new technologies.
• Write readable code.
• Submit yourself to code reviews.
• People issues and process issues tend to have a greater impact on outcome than following the above three pieces of advice.
• Management is hard. Managers aren't stupid. It is harder than technology (it's "all guesswork").
• Pay attention to economics and business. ("Understanding the underlying business issues may allow you to detect the fortunes of the company you're working for and take action early.")
• Listen to books and lectures on tape while you commute. Podcasts too.
• Be careful of fads and always think critically.
• Things are the way they are because they developed that way, one step at a time, so be compassionate (rather than judgemental).

(I particularly like how he ties the real impacts on productivity and quality of agile methodologies to their focus on "people working together and less on technologies".)

Given the same opportunity—a commencement address—and given that you only have a certain amount of time and taking note of the fact that you don't want to bury your audience in insights... which would be some of the particular things you would impart to a graduating computer class?