[ctdonath]

Seek to find a thread thru the full stack, sand to simulation. Get at least a cursory grasp of silicon-based transistors, binary representations of data, basic binary logic, 4-operation CPUs, simple memory & storage, a toy operating system, C programming, object-oriented C++/Swift/Java programming, memory-mapped I/O & graphics, TCP/IP networking, HTTPS protocols, then pick a major example vertical (PC, Mac, iPhone, Android) and work up to a publishable (if simple) product.

Having seen computing grow from before the IBM PC, my primary lament is new developers rarely have a view of how everything works (however simply) from the very bottom to top, from basic semiconductor electronics to getting something onto an App Store. Most pick a layer and live there, largely unaware of what's happening below or above - and so don't know why things work, and more importantly why they don't.