After my first quarter of procedural C++ in college, I thought I knew so much about programming. I was, obviously, under the influence of the Dunning-Kruger ef

After my first quarter of procedural C++ in college, I thought I knew so much about programming. I was, obviously, under the influence of the Dunning-Kruger effect at the time (in other words, I was a clueless n00b). Thirteen years later, I know vastly more than I did then. I've worked with a wide variety of languages, applications, and frameworks. I've spent untold hours reading blog posts, articles, code, and Reddit/HN discussions. Today, I still feel like I know a pretty good amount about programming, except now I also know (and accept) that there's effectively an infinite amount of possible programming-related knowledge out there, and I will only ever know a fraction of it. Like you, I routinely see articles posted that make me once again feel clueless and inexperienced (such as raganwald's recent post on JS multiple dispatch, or anything involving Haskell / Lisp / assembly / cryptography). I sometimes worry about dealing with technical interviews if I ever move on from my current job. Ultimately, though, I know that I can get stuff done, and that while there's lots I don't know, I have the ability to research and learn. The other posts give some pretty good advice. For me, it comes down to: 1) Learn by doing. No better incentive to learn how to do something than when you need that to make a project work right. 2) Keep reading technical discussions on sites like Reddit, HN, and tech blogs 3) Never be afraid to say "I don't know", and go research the subject.