Summary

There's more to software engineering than just writing code. Experience; attention to detail; and asking questions about how the code functions, interacts with the rest of a system, and so on; are important aspects of evolving from a programming to a software engineering mindset. The time required to acquire experience can be shortened, perhaps significantly, by simply asking the right questions.

There are also factors completely outside the realm of creating and managing code that require examination and questioning. They mainly focus on what can, or should, be expected from the pre-development planning around a developmental effort, and that starts with understanding a typical software development life cycle.