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I worked in tech for 15+ years. I wrote code in many languages, touched many systems, solved many problems and gained oodles of experience. And yet I feel like I know nothing at all. Am I alone with that feeling? Is the tech world really such a bottomless pit of knowledge that no matter how much we dive into it there's always an infinite amount of stuff we don't know or can't quite grasp yet?
2 days ago · 👍 jassummisko, chirale, alienskeptical, m0xee
The facts you describe would depress me if I wasn't too busy trying to solve problems. The whole world is falling apart, but I persist in trying to get tab A into slot A. One of the reasons Gemini attracts me is its simplicity. For some of us, we can make that choice. For professionals, they're stuck walking the tightrope wire between skyscrapers. In the end, we're all dead. You don't know how to typeset books on a Gutenberg press. Everything you know will eventually turn into dust. Some of it already has. Still, tab A is waiting. · 1 day ago
@jassummisko thanks for your reply. I do indeed feel limited even when this doesn't stop me from reaching the set goal. Limited in understanding a better path. Limited in understanding other fields. And maybe most of all, limited in memory. So much "old" knowledge gets lost and burried. I'm sometimes even a bit scared of learning something new worrying I'll lose the know how to deal with older projects built another way.
This may all sound super silly but it's something that bothers me. Especially when looking at other devs who seemingly get into everything with such ease. I love to contribute code ot the world. But sometimes this sense of insufficience makes me sad. · 1 day ago
No, you're not alone. My job is different than 5 years ago, and it's a lot different than 10 years ago and so on. Skillset is different too so you've to learn day by day. · 1 day ago
It comes from how young computing is in the first place, I think. We barely know everything there is to know, plus we haven't incorporated all the knowledge gathered into our collective consciousness.
With older fields, a lot of what we know is part of people's daily knowledge. We know that smoking is bad for you, that our behavior depends on hormones, that microbes exist, etc. Your average person knows practically nothing about tech in comparison.
Also, the fact that you have so much experience is part of why you feel like that: you know how much there is to know.
Usually the I-know-nothing comes from feeling limited. Do you feel actively limited by your knowledge? · 1 day ago