I would argue that OP isn't mediocre if they accept their faults. I also search on SO a lot ("how to check for string prefix in PHP" or my favorite "php variabl

I would argue that OP isn't mediocre if they accept their faults. I also search on SO a lot ("how to check for string prefix in PHP" or my favorite "php variable reference"). A good programmer is someone who can see the architecture of a program when given a high-level description of the problem. Someone who I can realistically tell "write me a program to backup my files" and will end up writing a reasonable backup system. Someone who I can task with coming up with an application protocol with certain constraints. In short, someone who can be an artist, engineer or scientist depending on what is needed. Good practices are largely irrelevant to being a good developer, you can be a good dev writing spaghetti code and a bad dev using TDD and OOP.