Mastery is not a binary state. Either you have the skills to solve the problem at hand in a satisfactory way or you don't - but where exactly that line is is d

Mastery is not a binary state. Either you have the skills to solve the problem at hand in a satisfactory way or you don't - but where exactly that line is is different for every problem. One can display mastery over one set of problems and simultaneously have no mastery over another - maybe you know everything that can possibly be done using a tree data structure, but have never even heard of a bitmap. Don't worry about "mastering programming" but rather worry about having sufficient knowledge of the right tools to solve the problem you need to solve.