These are mostly my thoughts about what I was expecting as a junior and how I perceived senior developers. To be honest, I was romanticizing them quite a
I like to remind juniors that you can only become an expert on something temporarily, especially on large teams/projects. Between skill atrophy and the foundations shifting beneath your feet as other developers continue working, it’s not possible to truly understand a complex system in a state of flux for very long.
That’s a really great lesson to teach them. I’m a self taught programmer and for years I was troubled, wondering how in the world I’d ever learn and remember all this stuff. I was terrified when I got my first programming job. I thought all of these young, highly educated, hotshot coders would know everything and make me look like an incompetent idiot. As it turned out, I knew 10x more than any of my colleagues, just because I had to learn to find answers very early in my coding life, and I thought I needed to memorize all of it, so I took tons of notes and made an effort to remember as much as I could. I even used to re-type code that I wanted to re-use, just as a memory exercise. Anyways, it’s really good that you’re teaching them that lesson. Hopefully it’ll help them avoid imposter syndrome, and feelings of inadequacy.
I like to remind juniors that you can only become an expert on something temporarily, especially on large teams/projects. Between skill atrophy and the foundations shifting beneath your feet as other developers continue working, it’s not possible to truly understand a complex system in a state of flux for very long.
That’s a really great lesson to teach them. I’m a self taught programmer and for years I was troubled, wondering how in the world I’d ever learn and remember all this stuff. I was terrified when I got my first programming job. I thought all of these young, highly educated, hotshot coders would know everything and make me look like an incompetent idiot. As it turned out, I knew 10x more than any of my colleagues, just because I had to learn to find answers very early in my coding life, and I thought I needed to memorize all of it, so I took tons of notes and made an effort to remember as much as I could. I even used to re-type code that I wanted to re-use, just as a memory exercise. Anyways, it’s really good that you’re teaching them that lesson. Hopefully it’ll help them avoid imposter syndrome, and feelings of inadequacy.