Not sure how this is supposed to help earn money or be a path to financial independence. Can you elaborate?

By understanding computers and enjoying the field you are in you will be more skilled then someone who says "tests pass", "worked on my machine", "maybe it's a good idea to run agents on my companies live prod database". Anyone can learn to slop it up, including someone who is passionate about writing code as a hobby.

Not everything is about making money anyways.