1. My number one suggestion - have intellectual curiosity to the point of obsession. You can succeed without this quality, but you won't be as forward looking a

1. My number one suggestion - have intellectual curiosity to the point of obsession. You can succeed without this quality, but you won't be as forward looking and will be doing what is required by the task at hand. 2. Heathcare has been secretly booming for the last 10 years without very much attention at all. The convergence of regulation and technology leaves a _huge_ opening for innovation right now. Specifically, as of this year the patient will own their data and can use whatever application they choose to ingest and utilize that data. It's a big deal. I wish I was in a place where I could be part of the end-user experience. > there are many tracks one can go down I think this one is very important - both for the person giving and receiving advice. There are so many paths just for software development specifically. The paths absolutely endless. And that might be exciting or present opportunity. But it's also a responsibility of someone giving advice to make the person aware of the vastness but also to help them navigate it all. Yes there are three or four major languages, but you could find yourself working in one of hundreds. There are many support technologies - front-end, back-end, api specific, frameworks, hosting, data storage and models. And related to but not specifically software development, there is QA, devops, project management, and many other support fields that require an understanding of how software works.