>Since that conversation, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are three main pillars of being a good software engineer: writing code, debugging code and reviewing code.
Not even close, my guy.
Not even close, my guy.
I'd argue the more important big 3 are obsession, organization, and ambition
Sometimes you need to get better technically, sometimes you need to get better at figuring out the problem (solving the wrong problem isn't worth a lot. regardless how "clean" it is). Sometimes you need to get better at figuring out what you need to get better at.
What that means is taking fuzzy human problems, expressing them as rigorously as needed, and solving them as cost-effectively as possible.
Code is the means by which you express and solve a problem, not the whole process. Saying software engineering is about writing code is like saying civil engineering is about arranging girders in CAD: it's funny, has a grain of truth to it, is probably what your mum and dad think you do, but is a very surface-level understanding of what's going on.
Where's the requirements-gathering? Where's the scoping? Where's the evaluation of different implementations? Where's the risk analysis? Where's the human planning for change management? Where's the part where you go and read a textbook on dimensionality reduction to try to understand the recommender system? The empirical understanding of the running system? Where are all the other things that go into building and running a software system that are the engineer's responsibility and aren't just code?
EDIT: Not to say that getting good with your tools isn't a massive part of the job! It's just...the part of the job where you plan everything out is as important as the part where you pick up your tools and begin. When you start working as a software engineer, everything is about code because you need to know how to code as a foundation. All the other stuff comes later.