For a fair number of budding developers like myself, learning software engineering has proven to be quite tricky. It's easy to get caught between using AI and feeling fast, and learning the fundamentals and taking it slow - as it should be.
To some extent, we were all sold the same story, "Go get a CS/IT degree, get an internship afterwards and land a junior role."
Then random bootcamps started popping out of every crevice of the planet, that all promise to make you a senior developer in three months. Fast forward, the AI hype train: "You shouldn't learn to code in 2025, AI will do it for you." It gets very confusing and frustrating when you do not know what to filter out, and what actually matters.
Now if you're older in this industry you've probably always seen right through the lies and marketing. But for relatively young new devs, it's different. You keep running around chasing the new shiny thing, and when you're told that one of the new shiny things is going to take the job you've been studying four years to get, it makes you question your choices.
But the you gain knowledge of experienced developers. You observe how calm they are in the midst of what you believe to be a storm, and you realise, that maybe you've just been a bit naive. Maybe you need now more than ever to gain a deep understanding of programming concepts. Maybe you've played around with enough new shiny things and it's time to settle with one and master it.
Slowly but surely, you actually understand what it means that software engineering isn't just about coding, it's more than that. There are architectural, social aspects to it, coz after all, you're not just building software for the sake of it, you're building platforms for people to interact with.
You realise that you've been sprinting in random directions on a track that's meant for a marathon. You realise that you don't learn to become a senior developer or engineer and say you finally made it - you really learn to know what else to learn, coz there's always more to learn. And that's a passion you need to have for you to stand out.