I sort of understand how you feel and sort of not. I used to think I was a great programmer, now I'm not sure, because I've seen evidence for and against. But

I sort of understand how you feel and sort of not. I used to think I was a great programmer, now I'm not sure, because I've seen evidence for and against. But in the end how do you ever know ? For example I was once asked to develop a JPEG2000 encoder. I think it took me about 3 months. Is that good or bad ? I don't really know because I don't know anyone who's done anything comparable and neither did my managers. One thing that's different between you and me is that you seem to attribute a lot of importance to what people like managers think of you. But if you're so much smarter than them how could they effectively evaluate you, so why should you care about their opinions ?