I’ve always done software engineering that wasn’t programming: QA, QA automation, devops, operational sustaining (legacy maintenance).
The whole reason I got into software (besides it being easy money) was my childhood of typing in code from magazines and making it my own.
I didn’t go to university, and I didn’t focus personal time in developing coding skills enough to get me a job in it full-time. I know lots of the fundamentals I’m just not fast, and I fail to memorize lots of idiomatic stuff that’s necessary.
What changed for me? Two years ago I discovered Golang, love it. In the last few months I set aside my aversion for AI, and it’s amazing. I know AI code is mediocre sometimes, so is what I write myself. But the feedback loop is way encouraging. It has me engaged. I feel I can maintain the code. If I don’t feel comfortable with anything I take the time to review and rewrite, or run just that piece of code through a different AI.
Whether it’s right or wrong, I’m now engaged daily, instead of working a full day in “adjacent” engineering and then trying to push through tutorial hell.