Developer Rites of Passage

Recently, I've been meeting a lot of newer engineers who don't really feel like they're "real" developers yet.

This got me thinking a bit about what constitutes a real developer and why impostor syndrome is so endemic in tech.

While I'm generally of the opinion that anyone who codes is a "real" developer, I also think it's worth celebrating the rites of passage that junior devs tend to go through.

Here are a few that stood out to me on my journey:

1. Writing my first recursive function

2. Debugging somebody else's poorly documented code

3. Setting up my first cheap web host

4. Releasing my first app

5. Migrating from a cheap hosting to AWS

6. Releasing my first public repo

7. Being generally useful on Stack Overflow

8. Mentoring other developers

Obviously, none of these alone make you a "real" developer, but they're fun milestones nonetheless.

How about you? When did you finally start feeling like a real engineer?