Whatever you do, make it publicly-visible. Companies will not hire a software developer with no work experience, who can only say that they are able to program

Whatever you do, make it publicly-visible. Companies will not hire a software developer with no work experience, who can only say that they are able to program in X. If you are able to... * Demonstrate your abilities in programming language X by showing them your code through a public repository (i.e. Google-code, github, bitbucket, etc...) * Demonstrate your communication abilities/soft skills by showing them the supporting documentation (i.e. a development blog, user documentation, etc...) * Demonstrate your ability to explain/defend the design/implementation choices made in the development of your application ...then you have a pretty good foot in the door for getting into the software development industry. On the converse, however, not all hiring managers will/are able to take this much time when investigating potential candidates.