I am a self-taught programmer and I do not have imposter syndrome. I have a degree in electrical engineering and when I thought that was going to be my career I did have imposter syndrome, so I'm not immune. I wonder if there's a correlation. It seems that many if not most professionals suffer from imposter syndrome; I wonder if that's related to the way they learned.

When I say self-taught, I don't mean I never took a class, I mean the majority of my programming skill was learned by doing/outside of classes. I took a Java class in high school that helped me graduate from procedural languages to OOP, and I took classes in college but with few exceptions the ones that were practical (vs theoretical) covered material I already knew.

  • elint@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    Naah. Impostor syndrome is a personal psychological phenomenon. I don't think it is really connected to how you acquired your knowledge/skills or how much you know.

  • esscew@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    I've found that imposter syndrome generally comes from misinformation. Once you start talking to peers and understand that they also go through the same steps you do, you start understanding that you belong.

    • Ethan@programming.dev
      hexagon
      ·
      8 months ago

      I assume you’re implying my confidence is due to having limited competence and thus overestimating my competence? The fact that I have imposter syndrome when I imaging trying to be a professional electrical engineer (despite having a degree) seems counter to your presumed argument.

      • lysdexic@programming.dev
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        8 months ago

        I imaging trying to be a professional electrical engineer (despite having a degree)

        That's the definition of specious reasoning, and fails to address the point I made.