I have around 1.5 years of experience as an QA Engineer. I am from tier-3 college and have worked in one of the service based company as a manual tester for 8 months and then switched to another service based company. Here I am made to work more as a support engineer than QA.

I aspire to switch to software development role, but I lag on programming and problem solving skills(get stuck on easy questions) and also don't have exposure to backend/frontend technologies. I applied for QA/SDET in multiple other product-based companies but am either getting rejected or not getting the calls as I only have exposure to UI testing, and no experience on API testing.

I am also getting rejected in some of the interviews, on topics like OOPs, SQL, REST APIs, Programming.

Seeking guidance on :-
1.) How shall I continue learning all these things, Programming, Development projects, Basics of Computer Science likes OOPs, Databases along with my daily office tasks?
2.) Shall I try to switch from my current company as QA/SDET now as my testing skills is also decline here and I am working more as a Support engineer.
3.) Which role shall I target to start with - frontend or backend?
4.) Since I don't have the basic such skills shall I go for some online paid courses that helps in developing these skills like Crio, Scalar Academy, Coding Ninjas (conidering the current job timings)?
5.) With this level of learning is it a sound decision to switch to SDE or shall I prepare for other roles like Analysts?