I think that the "real developer" discussion is a sort of "strawman fallacy" that moves the discussion from "good and bad software". I knew engineers that build very bad software, and self-taught guys with strong knowledge of software development. There's no a rule, but certainly there are good and bad pieces of software.
That said, it is a real issue that some environments are more mature than others. While there are well-known tools and conventions for Java environments, there are a lot of open discussions about conventions and principles within the web environment. Same occurs with communities, while some communities born as enterprise solutions to enterprise problems which led to standardization in a hierarchical business structure, other communities like the JavaScript ecosystem born in a very different context.
But despite the specific concerns about software environments and communities, computer science created a lot of patterns and tools to measure the quality of software. And they are usually based on practice and years of experience, like the SOLID principles1. I think the challenge is to take the existing principles and try to implement them in any software development environment. Of course, there's always a little of "faith" involved in these decisions. You have to "believe" that certain principles lead to good software, and you need to trust someone with more experience than you in order to learn that.
So I think it is very important you never believe the statement "you're not a real developer", but it is equally important to accept that sometimes your opinion is not based on experience while other people positions are, and learn until you are able challenge other people positions based on facts.
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I think that the "real developer" discussion is a sort of "strawman fallacy" that moves the discussion from "good and bad software". I knew engineers that build very bad software, and self-taught guys with strong knowledge of software development. There's no a rule, but certainly there are good and bad pieces of software.
That said, it is a real issue that some environments are more mature than others. While there are well-known tools and conventions for Java environments, there are a lot of open discussions about conventions and principles within the web environment. Same occurs with communities, while some communities born as enterprise solutions to enterprise problems which led to standardization in a hierarchical business structure, other communities like the JavaScript ecosystem born in a very different context.
But despite the specific concerns about software environments and communities, computer science created a lot of patterns and tools to measure the quality of software. And they are usually based on practice and years of experience, like the SOLID principles1. I think the challenge is to take the existing principles and try to implement them in any software development environment. Of course, there's always a little of "faith" involved in these decisions. You have to "believe" that certain principles lead to good software, and you need to trust someone with more experience than you in order to learn that.
So I think it is very important you never believe the statement "you're not a real developer", but it is equally important to accept that sometimes your opinion is not based on experience while other people positions are, and learn until you are able challenge other people positions based on facts.