My undergrad degree was in music and when I decided to move into software development, I got into a master's CS program that was heavy on theory, light on pract

My undergrad degree was in music and when I decided to move into software development, I got into a master's CS program that was heavy on theory, light on practicalities. I graduated quite green and unconfident with basic tools/systems like vi or Unix. Hell, I could barely type. Once out of school, I opted to take a software test development (SDET) position, which provided the sort of hands on training and practical exposure I needed at the time. And, while technically it was a "QE position," the role did provide opportunities for coding in the form of automated tests, deployment scripts, test frameworks, etc... Although I ended up staying in QA longer than I desired -- the bursting of the web bubble in 2000 sort of pulled the rug out from under me -- I eventually laterally shifted into a dev role and have been quite happy ever since. I think this sort of path is still a viable option for aspiring Jr. devs, especially given our increasingly complex ecosystems/stacks. It's a great way to learn, and these days there seems to be less clean separation between QE/Dev roles in any event. QE people write code, devs write tests (or rather, they should ;)). (Note, I'm explicitly recommending an SDET role, not a manual testing role.)