physloop

I'm seeking a summer 2013 internship in the San Francisco Bay Area. There's tons of opportunities available, but after doing some research it seems like only the most elite students get these positions. Folks from Cal, Stanford, and Ivy Leagues snatch these positions without any trouble.

I'm just a guy who is finishing his community college classes and wants some work experience before transferring to a 4 year college. I've taken various math, C++, Java, and UNIX classes but I don't have much experience outside of that. I'm currently teaching myself data structures/algorithms and try to code little programs implementing them. There's a few other languages I'm playing around with, but its nothing serious. Aside from that, my programming ability is a bit weak, and I'm worried I won't be able to compete with the other applicants.

My main strength is that I'm a fairly quick learner. Given a language or technology, I can probably learn it pretty well in 1-2 weeks with lots of studying. When it comes to actually implementing that knowledge, I'll need a bit of guidance. I'm still a newbie after all.

So what kind of qualities in an intern are companies looking for? Do they expect the intern to be a "rockstar coding ninja" or are they willing to take in a complete newbie and let him try to stay afloat? Also, would I be expected to do whiteboard coding during an interview to one of the smaller companies? I'm obviously not applying to Google or Facebook, but smaller companies. For instance, I'm interested in: Ooyala, Evernote Corporation, Terravide, and a few others like that.

I'd appreciate if someone could give me any insight, and perhaps even suggest any places to apply to that are willing to take in people like me. Thanks.

I'm a college sophomore. I've taken various C++ programming classes, and I'm currently in C++ Data Structures. While my assignments have been fairly challenging, I was never really taught how to think about tackling programming problems. I'd write down some pseudocode, then proceed to hack code together until the program met the professor's requirements. The whole time I feel like I'm shooting fish in a barrel hoping I get something instead of coming up with a proper strategy for achieving what I want.

I've purchased tons of programming books, but they merely explain language syntax. I don't want to learn how to declare variables and use loops, I want to learn how to approach a difficult problem, break it down, and come up with a proper solution. I want to develop a mindset for problem solving and programming, not learn more syntax.

I know the only way to improve in programming is by practicing, but programming is hard to do without a proper foundation in problem solving.