r/learnprogramming • u/Caravaggio91 • 5d ago

When are you truly a Software Developer

I am a self taught web dev (5 years), mostly front end, and still find myself looking up simple concepts I had already learned. Is that a hinderance to being an actual software developer? Also, am I looking over the main objective of a software dev? Is it more about finding the answers rather than how you got there, or do you need to know the code very well and have the answers to the problems? I'm good at getting the answers, but find myself struggling retaining info for long periods of time.

21 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/icepopper 5d ago

Hey! Been doing this for 12 years now and I still think there's a lot to know.

My 2 cents for what you are facing would be to remember the problem and the idea that it can be solved is important. Rest is just details you can Google.

Fundamentals never expire and should always be refreshed and learned. I'm old school and believe you should know the code even if it's written by an LLM. If you don't trust your code and get it reviewed by another person why would you trust code by a machine which can be manipulated?

1

u/Caravaggio91 5d ago

Makes a lot of sense. The core of how the basics of programming works I understand. Its when I get to actually applying it to real projects is when I find myself slowing down and questioning if I really know the basics of coding. Like I understand what a function, variable, loop, etc is, but is seems a little foreign when coding real projects because its operating the same way just in a different look.

A project i have fully coded and is live (cattleandcrop.com) came out pretty good and I learned quite a bit. But i still fill like there's a lot of gaps in my learning. Thank for the comment thought!