I think we're teaching software engineering the wrong way

One thing I've noticed is that most learning paths follow the same progression:

• Learn from courses.

• Solve coding challenges.

• Build a few portfolio projects.

• Apply for internships.

The problem is that when you join a company, almost none of your work starts with a blank project.

Instead, you're dropped into an existing codebase that someone else wrote. Your first task is usually something like:

• Fix a bug.

• Understand why a feature behaves a certain way.

• Make a small change without breaking everything else.

• Read a lot more code than you write.

Those skills are difficult to develop when every project is your own.

That observation is what led me to create VirtInt.

Instead of asking users to build another CRUD app, the platform gives them an existing repository and assigns a real issue to solve. The challenge isn't just writing code—it's understanding the codebase, navigating it, and figuring out where the fix belongs.

I'm curious what other founders and engineers think.

If you've worked as a software engineer:

• What was your first task?

• Did your personal projects actually prepare you for working in a large codebase?

• If you were mentoring someone today, how would you help them bridge that gap?

I'd love to hear different perspectives because that's the problem I'm trying to solve with VirtInt.