If you end up building anything that has an online frontend, and you'd like some feedback on security or infrastructure, I'd be happy to give it a thorough look over. Send me a message at femme@femmeandroid.com.
A GitHub profile is definitely valuable, but also just being able to describe what you've built and how it works can also be a huge help in interviews. Ask questions, try things, and be curious.
There are also some really good books out there. It depends on what you want to do, but since it sounds like you're able to be pretty self directed, just skimming a number of software development and design books can really help you go from having a lot of thinks that you don't even know exist, or what they're called to at least building out a framework of what exists in the industry.
Also, watching talks and listening to podcasts can be a nice break from the reading and the programming. They can give you bite sized insights into wildly different parts of software development. If you're planning on doing tech interviews, you're going to end up talking to developers, and when I was going through that the first time, I initially found that transferring my development knowledge from a thing I read about and practiced in isolation to a thing I could talk about was difficult.
I'm always working on improving my communications skills, but I do think listening to a diverse range of people discuss tech can get you more used to talking about it. If you have meetups or other ways to interact with people about development, that's going to be the best option. Also, feel free to check out some open source communities, especially if you're particularly interested in them (or the way they're built.)
A GitHub profile is definitely valuable, but also just being able to describe what you've built and how it works can also be a huge help in interviews. Ask questions, try things, and be curious.
There are also some really good books out there. It depends on what you want to do, but since it sounds like you're able to be pretty self directed, just skimming a number of software development and design books can really help you go from having a lot of thinks that you don't even know exist, or what they're called to at least building out a framework of what exists in the industry.
Also, watching talks and listening to podcasts can be a nice break from the reading and the programming. They can give you bite sized insights into wildly different parts of software development. If you're planning on doing tech interviews, you're going to end up talking to developers, and when I was going through that the first time, I initially found that transferring my development knowledge from a thing I read about and practiced in isolation to a thing I could talk about was difficult.
I'm always working on improving my communications skills, but I do think listening to a diverse range of people discuss tech can get you more used to talking about it. If you have meetups or other ways to interact with people about development, that's going to be the best option. Also, feel free to check out some open source communities, especially if you're particularly interested in them (or the way they're built.)
Good luck!