I have the hunch that software engineering is easier to learn than computer science though (when you studied CS first). Struggling with your nth segfault and ha

I have the hunch that software engineering is easier to learn than computer science though (when you studied CS first). Struggling with your nth segfault and having no clue where it comes from teaches a person a lot of grit to stick with a problem. When software engineering comes along, the person who learned computer science has matured into how to stick tough situations out. The extra practice in being detail oriented doesn't hurt either. In that sense I feel like learning CS is getting a huge IQ boost into everything that is related to CS. But I'm still relatively new to software engineering. So far, picking up about SOLID, design patterns, testing patterns, and what not feels a lot easier than writing a compiler or writing an operating system or performing attacks like Meltdown/Spectre/<insert any research from VUSec>. Don't get me wrong: I should still respect it and work hard, but when I wrote a compiler I didn't even believe I was smart enough to build one from start to finish. I've had this multiple times over my CS student career. Now that I graduated, I still can feel like that but I have experienced it so many times, I simply know it's false. Now I know that I just need to put in hard work, and I'll be guaranteed to understand it. Are there more optimal ways to learn software engineering? Yes. However, the value of CS in relation to software engineering stands: learning software engineering is now easier. Moreover, universities usually don't teach more optimal ways and we're stuck with the toxic narrative that university sets us up for life.