Competent Programming and side projects do help in establishing you as a competent programmer. Hours of practice and perseverance.
What makes you a good programmer is your ability to make non trivial programs that can do complicated things and do them correctly and efficiently so that the user feels like they are using a well made product and not some unfinished half-baked thing.
The only way to acquire that ability is by practicing. And what I mean is actually creating programs that are just a little bit outside your comfort zone, enough to be challenging and engaging and interesting and fun to work on, but not too far out of your comfort zone to be scary and overwhelming.
So look at the last program you've made and think about the areas that you feel you're good at and the areas that need improvement, and work on the areas that need improvement.
Actually, I think what it makes you a competitive developer it's to dominate very well a programming language.
For example, if you are a company that needs a development team for the company website (supposing it's a very complex website 😂) what would you contract?: A Pro in PHP or one that knows php, but he is not a pro,but he also programs in JavaScript but he isn't a pro, and he knows HTML and CSS but he isn't a pro. Well I don't know you but I would contract the Pro in PHP.
Hope was useful!! Good luck!
Neither... adhering to good practices, putting in actual work, solving people's problems, and finishing actual products is what makes you competent.
Jonathan Vega
On top of just writing code regularly you need to also show interest in it, of the few people iv'e worked with since starting out in tech too many got "comfortable" way too quickly, writing quick untested code that just works (without caring about how readable it is) can get to your head, as long as you realize how much there is to learn and show interest in what your peers have to say, you'll be fine.