I had the same thought as PG (although I'm considerably older than 17). The playing field in software development has been leveled by AI, which led me to wonder

I had the same thought as PG (although I'm considerably older than 17). The playing field in software development has been leveled by AI, which led me to wonder how you can get ahead of the curve. My current answer is to understand both AI and data intensive systems at a deeper level than 90%+ of people. For the AI part, I recently started working through this CMU course on Modern AI which teaches you how to build an LLM from scratch. It was posted on HN a few months ago and has been great: https://modernaicourse.org/ https://modernaicourse.org/ If anyone has other recommendations for beginners, please share them!