I wrote this advice for one of my departing development interns this summer regarding how to demonstrate your skills to get a full-time job. The bottom line - no one will know your skillset unless you demonstrate the skills plus show that you can communicate about the subject matter to the people you'd be potentially working with.
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Rather than showing off isolated snippets of code from coursework or contracting work (where you can't show off the entire application), I’d recommend there’s a better path. My advice would that it would be a great investment of time to take a few weekend, create a sample application using the best practices and skills you’ve learned this summer (proper MVC structuring of code, agile development, DB design and migrations, etc.). It should be a pretty straightforward app that doesn’t require a ton of explanation. Host it for free on Heroku or comparable. Place the code in a public repo on GitHub. Create a readme that explains 2 things: (1) how to download and run the application, including all dependencies and commands. (2) what the application shows about your development experience and how you followed best practices. In the readme, include a link to the app running on Heroku.
Then, put a page on your personal site that links to GitHub and explains what it shows at a high level. Link to this page from your resume and LinkedIn.
This will go much farther towards demonstrating your programming background than snippets of code. Why? (1) it shows a fully functional app that people can look at, understand, and even run if they so choose. (2) it shows that not only can you write code, it shows that you can document it and explain why you wrote the code. Finally, it shows that you respect an employer’s intellectual property and won’t go around showing off their confidential code (even if you are cleared to release code / demo the app – potential employers are going to wonder if you had really gotten clearance and if you’d be running around showing off their code and IP assets. Don’t take the chance and put even the hint of that in their heads.)
Most corporate HR departments won’t look at your sample app. It won’t mean anything to the recruiters. However, if you’re really going to go after startups and small companies where the person you’re talking to is almost always the hiring manager, where they don’t have recruiters in the middle, where the hiring manager writes code – which sounds like the kind of position you’re interested in?? – if you can demonstrate all of the above with one prepared link to your personal site > GitHub, you will really, really stand out. I can’t tell you how many "professional" software developers I’ve interviewed who can’t show me the same thing. Do all of the above well and you’re easily in the running for the position.
If you put a few weekends into that – won’t even take that much time to do well – you will be heads and shoulders above 90% of the other students you’re graduating with who could do the work, but won’t bother. They’ll be out drinking the weekends away. If you want to get a really solid programming job, take it from me – staying in a few weekends to do the above would be well worth the investment.