[s1gsegv]

To add to this, you must try to do something beyond being a software engineer to encounter more low hanging fruit.

Most of the easy “I wish I could” problems that are directly related to what a typical software engineer does on a day to day basis are indeed well solved, because that’s the lowest of the low hanging fruit.

Even going to mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, whatever, you’d immediately be like “wow there’s really no software to do X for you?” Not being an expert in the field will make it easy to underestimate the complexity of ideas, so be weary of that, but there are definitely still low hanging fruit ideas once you get off the beaten software engineer path.

[throwaway14356]

Only slightly less lower: Make tools for unskilled labor. Go do the labor until you are familiar enough with it then talk with people who did it for decades. They found ways to make the simple things into impossible puzzles and solved them for the most part into a convenient step by step process. The software then assists the proverbial noob (without being annoying or getting in the way) and smoothens the learning curve.

How many ways are there to wash a car and when should you pick which?