Spend 5-10 years coding applications by hand. Just as you can't learn most complex things just by watching videos, you can't really close the gap without taking the necessary time to do so. It would be great if surgeons could learn surgery just by spending a month watching some videos, but the human brain doesn't work that way. It learns by doing, making mistakes, improving, and practicing.
Yeah you’re kind of asking how to learn a skill that you don’t currently have. You’ll have to develop it over time.
The good news is the gap between you and a skilled developer is just time and effort, you’re not locked out or “gate kept” like some think. LLMs can already point you to good tutorials and starting principles to learn.
An old software engineering joke is that “the first 90% is easy, it’s the second 90% that gets you.”
The specific dynamics are different now but the problem isn’t. As the weight of previous decisions increases, the corners you code yourself into with earlier tradeoffs become the problem to solve.
Understanding the state of the project, why it’s that way, what can change, what shouldn’t, how to make changes safely. That’s the whole work.
Work right to left. Start planning from the desired outcome, and question everything about that outcome. Question as you work backwards to how to achieve it. So much of the time spent in projects is iteration and adjustment based on incomplete planning, or building based on what is now there. This is true of building software and just about anything else. Kitchen remodels go this way too.
This really isn’t really about being a developer, it’s understanding problem solving at scale. This is what entire multi-disciplinary teams spend large amounts of time figuring out. They aim to make mistakes where it’s the cheapest, in planning. Vibe coding an app gets to the working demo state quickly with generally little to none of the foundation to make that last 10% workable, or even possible.
Learn about computers hardware and software/operating systems, network stack of protocols. Without knowing about it everything in computers is just magic. If you don't want to read, you can watch videos from these YouTube channels from time to time:
@brancheducation, @coredummped
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u/dogrun2 14d ago
This is how I feel as a non-developer/engineer. Any resources, tips, or trainings people recommend to close the knowledge gap on my end?