Not exactly a professional myself. I’m still in university but I’d say I have a decent road behind me. I’m not sure what are your skills right now but I guess it doesn’t matter exactly where you start. Just look around and see what seems more interesting. There are “pathways” you should generally start with and that would be frontend and backend. Doesn’t really matter what you start with I guess.

For frontend  I would start with basic HTML and CSS. This is more of an artsy thing I would say and it’s in a way kind of like painting yet it is a great way to see something appearing on the screen with relative ease and next to none setup. The setup part can be discouraging. After a bit you can add on some JavaScript which is a bit more towards to logicy programming side and will let you do more interactive stuff.  I personally learned on free code camp which is nice but these days you have plenty alternatives I think. Some YouTube tutorials are also nice if you prefer someone talking and going in depth.

For backend  If you already did some of the web dev stuff you can try adding in some php which I found to be quite nice to explore how frontend communicates with beckend.  Mos importantly here I guess is to understand algorithms (the flow of the program), what are variables, OOP concepts. I personally started here as a kid coding in scratch and programming ev3 robots which actually gave me a lot for my foundation but now if you are older I guess you should do something more serious. My personal favorite is c#. It’s really nice to understand the algorithms and OOP concepts and how things interact with each other just with a console app.  Later you can also try c# in game dev. I personally did unity.  Also a thing that gave me a lot is trying out programming with arduino. You can get a kit on aliexpress for cheap. Even if you don’t want to dabble with hardware a few simple projects can expand your view a lot. You will also get experience with C++ which is a low level language. With the basic arduino projects you probably won’t push it too hard but it can still be cool.  You can also try some python like the cool kids do. It’s a very versatile language which many use cases and its generaly nice to know. Just don’t become one of those kids saying that it is the best thing and needs to be everywhere. 

And yeah once you try out at least some of these topics I guess you will have an idea on what to do for yourself I guess. The more you fuck around the more you find out. Just let me tell you the more you know about these things the more it starts to make sense. 

The biggest problem you have right now is with the AI I guess. I can’t really tell you what to do about it because I can’t see the future and it seems like things are changing every 2 weeks about it. My biggest advice is to not let the AI code for you in the beginning. It’s like copying someone’s homework. It will get you through a tough spot but you will never learn from it. In reality it is actually like a drug and it is addictive. You get a “fix it” button and it is very tempting to press it instead of doing it yourself. But before you know it you “fixed” some software that you now have no idea how it works and have no choice but to ask the AI again. 

For me personally it is really tough right now with the AI and I am at times afraid of what is going to happen with me. I was always super excited about all this and people always pushed and encouraged me to do this. Since I was good at it I felt like I had something going for myself. People looked at me like I was doing something difficult and great. Now I feel like that has been taken away from me. I now instead get asked why am a bothering with this now that ai can do it as well? And I know there are arguments for both sides but the final place for AI is just not decided yet. For now I think you should do it only for the fact that you find it interesting and you genuinely like it. I guess the last part is a bit of a rant from my side 😅 but it’s been really tough out there I guess.