As a mathematician who successfully made the leap, I think the biggest requirement is ability to swallow your pride and "lower" yourself to seriously study prof

As a mathematician who successfully made the leap, I think the biggest requirement is ability to swallow your pride and "lower" yourself to seriously study professional coding. There's too much temptation to hack something in Python or whatever, google as you go, etc. What I did was sit down and practically memorize entire programming manuals. Many academics would refuse to do something so plebeian.