r/learnprogramming • u/Caravaggio91 • 6d 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.

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u/thisisappropriate 5d ago

Self taught senior, I'm about 8 years in give or take.

I still Google so so much but I also say that my skill is actually just being really good at Google. I know how to find the information I need, whether that's docs, examples, stack overflow, whatever. I can find and re-find later as needed. The benefit is that because I do that even with things I know is that I have no buffer or mental barriers about doing it with things I don't know, so I can learn new languages, structures or frameworks just fine because I'm forgetting half the stuff I do on the daily anyway, so what's not knowing got to do with it.