Maybe 15 years. I've realized that I should have learned other professional skills, and that there's a tremendous amount of personal investment I should have av

Maybe 15 years. I've realized that I should have learned other professional skills, and that there's a tremendous amount of personal investment I should have avoided having in professional projects. As a professional programmer, there was what I thought was important based on what seemed to be best practices, and there was what was actually important, which was probably getting something visibly completed regardless of quality as fast as possible, and improving if there was any extra time. Importance and value are determined by who's paying you, not what you'd like to imagine is important in some hypothetical world, and getting paid is the most important thing outside of side projects. I also wish I'd have realized earlier that at least in western culture, people rarely say what they mean and it's absolutely crucial you learn to read the room. The word "ostensibly" is quite useful. If you're working on anything but open source or a side project, your goal as a contributor is to infer what the goals actually are of the people who have the power to fire you, even if they state the goal of the project is "to make the best x" or "make the world better". If you spend time making something accessible, but it doesn't ship on time and nobody asked for it to be accessible, you've fucked up and nobody will thank you. If your company says they care about your well-being, and you take an in-opportune mental health day, you'll realize pretty quickly what your manager actually cares about, and it's probably not you. Other than that, programming is awesome and powerful and mentally stimulating and potentially profitable, and it's pretty cool to get into, so welcome to the fray.