Technical Prowess isn’t only about potential
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As much as I would’ve wanted it to be this way, it isn’t.
However much theoretical knowledge you possess, and however much practice you have, it is no match for real-world experience, which, unfortunately, and thankfully, can only be gained with time.
That’s not to say that there are some senior software engineers out there whose only backing statement behind their title is the number of years they have been working with the title of “Software Developer”.
On the first side of the spectrum, I could also find myself; I hoped I could become a Sr. Software Engineer through sheer will, practice, and learning lots of theory as I went through.
Long story short, I quickly came to realize it wasn’t really as straightforward as that.
There simply were, and still are, a lot of things I simply couldn’t understand why were the way they were, despite learning about them and doing some sandboxed practice with them.
Most notably, there are design & architectural patterns, which you simply can’t fill the knowledge about in a few, small, sandboxed projects and expect to understand the trade-offs between them.
You have to go through quite a lot of them to properly understand first-hand why they were created, and why in some projects a certain architecture is chosen over a handful of other ones.
Thankfully, my mentor has helped me understand this, and has helped me a lot by guiding me through this process, and more importantly, made me understand what the process is, how it continues, and what I should be aware of at every step in order to learn the right things.
What’s the takeaway here?
Technical prowess consists not only of real-world experience, but also of potential (Or better said theoretical knowledge) & individual practice (Or better said curiosity/interest), and the other way around.
Not a single great developer has not gone through all of these 3 trials.
What would be a Technical Architect without theoretical knowledge?
He would most likely know how to implement the certain architecture, regardless of system or application, due to…
