There are a plethora of resources for those just getting started with software development, and best I can tell, most of them will do the job adequately well. But there isn’t nearly as much on what is needed next: guidance on how to get from “early intermediate coder” to “seasoned software engineer”. In brief, here are some suggestions:

1. Study existing high-quality code; if you don’t know what good looks like, it’s nearly impossible to produce it.
2. Write a lot of code. There’s no substitute for practice and putting in your time.
3. Find someone who can give you feedback on the code you write, and humbly iterate per the guidance.

In my experience, an efficient way to do all three is to find a couple open source projects that need support, dig into their code, and submit contributions. You start from a base of quality code, get to write more, and you’ll get feedback through pull requests. And the icing on the cake is that it’s all done in public.

Spend a few years of doing the above and you’ll be well on your way to next-level programming expertise. It’ll also teach you how to code with a distributed and decentralized community of stakeholders, and that’s no small thing.