It would help if you could tell us a little more about what kind of software development you are interested in. It's a very wide field - what I do, writing code

It would help if you could tell us a little more about what kind of software development you are interested in. It's a very wide field - what I do, writing code for embedded devices, is not all that helpful for people writing web applications (except maybe as far as striving to embody general software engineering best practices).