Unpopular opinion? To succeed in algo trading, you have to be a trader first and a coder second.
When I see the rate of failure in the algo trading community I wonder how many people are actual traders themselves? I see people complaining about not being able to build a single bot that can be profitable for more than "just a year or two" when there is simply no real trader in the world who trades the exact same way all the time! They all adapt their strategy to the market.
To "make it" in algo trading I believe you have to be a trader first with robust knowledge of the market you trade, and a developer/programmer second. Unfortunately I see too many people who are inexperienced with the markets who think their background in programming is enough to help them build profitable trading bots.
All profitable algo traders I know are seasoned manual traders first who transition to algo trading and then they usually only use scripts/algos to help them execute in a semi-automated fashion. They all like to keep some level of discretion, monitoring market sentiment, bond yields, news of the day i.e. stuff that's not so simple to code into a bot, then when it's time to execute they let the machine do its thing.
Algo trading isn't a magic wand that lets you bypass the hard work of acquiring real screen time and market knowledge. That has to be your foundation. It's like a weekend golfer buying a set of Tour-level clubs hoping it will magically fix his terrible swing. The clubs might be state-of-the-art, but if you don't understand the fundamental mechanics of the game you're still going to slice the ball into the woods on every drive!