Comment by booleandilemma
5 years ago
A common meme I've seen recently is "no one knows what they're doing".
I think people like to believe this because it helps them cope with impostor syndrome, or maybe they think it puts them on even ground with people who do in fact know what they're doing.
My model for people who "know what they're doing" is that they tend to have a well-organized hierarchy of rules. At the base are principles; at the top are opinions.
The foundation tends to be pretty simple, deeply held, and unchanging, while the higher levels are increasingly fluid and specialized. The higher you get on this stack, the more "making it up as you go along" it becomes, but every improvised part is perched on something more stable.
They key to "knowing what you're doing" is organizing this hierarchy well, having the right supports in place to successfully guide improvisation and course-correction while steadily fortifying the foundation.
It's clearly not true in all circumstances. You can bet that an airline pilot has a very clear idea of what they are doing, and so will your dentist. Closer to home there are plenty of sub-fields in software where I'd be completely lost but when (say) we have to add a new endpoint to the webservice I work with, I absolutely don't have to make it up as I go along.
Your assessment of why people like to believe this seems spot on.
Even worst is the meme that “programming is just copy+pasting from stack overflow”
Because good senior programmers are rare (as can be observed if you post a job listing).
Most of this stuff comes from students / junior developers, where yes, they probably visit stack overflow every 20 minutes
They should try programming on an airplane or without internet connection. For some the productivity drops to zero without stack overflow.
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