I’m one of those kids who have been programming since they were 10 years old. My biggest tip is to work on personal projects that you are genuinely passionate a

I’m one of those kids who have been programming since they were 10 years old. My biggest tip is to work on personal projects that you are genuinely passionate about or would use yourself. It’s a great way to experiment with new technologies with practically zero risk. For example, I’m currently working on a web app that started out as a SvelteKit SPA and with two backend “micro services”. I just recently finished rearchitecting the project into a monolith and using Hotwire for the front end. I was able to get experience using both of these technologies risk-free. As a result of being curious and working on things that interest me, there’s practically no area of software development that I haven’t touched. I’ve written Windows device drivers, firmware for an IoT product, hacked on the LLVM source, wrote a (really basic) hypervisor, and made countless web apps. All with no CS degree.