If you have 15 minutes now , and the whole world is listening to your advice to be a software engineer.

What would your advice be? (Your advice will some how reflect WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW when you were beginner)

I will go first, "Do not compare yourself when you pick up programming, it take times, understanding and passion to lead you to become one. Be consistent in aspect of learning more. Focus one , master one language and master another one. Don't look down on yourself."

I'd give them 15 minutes of peace because if everyone is getting 15 minutes they're gonna hear enough BS as it is.

Cocaine.

Run, run as fast as you can.

Know your basics really well. Everything else is just details.

Don't make a career in software development a personality trait.

As developer, your natural way of thought is how to make shit work - but that will yield fragile and insecure shit code. From the get-go, you must review your design and implementation from the opposite point of view!

What would have to happen, or how would you have to feed your code, in order to break it? How do you harden your stuff against that? Or could it continue at least in some sort of degraded mode? That's the difference between quality code and nice weather hobbyist shit.

One of the finest examples is the legendary Quantas flight 32 where one of the engines exploded shortly after take-off. It sure took a magnificent crew to handle this, but also top-notch engineering, or else the crew wouldn't have had anything to work with.

Lots of shit didn't work, there was considerable wiring damage (with fly-by-wire, electronically!), and that thing still was so rock solid that they managed to land it with no casualties or even injuries.

10% code is functionality you want in your program.

90% code is to prevent users fucking up the programs inputs.

Find a good mentor, and don't take criticism personally.

@N00bPancakes How so?

@HiFiWiFiSciFi no drugs man... Not cool

@Jilano o.o

@RememberMe Accurate

@AtuM This is Motivational.

@AleCx04 at first don't understand this, but then think deeper , this make so much sense.

@Nanos You sound like the person who taught me To be a software engineer.