By you I mean I. I’m ready to admit, I don’t know everything.

It’s an admission that doesn’t cause me to blush but makes me feel stronger. By acknowledging how little I know, I’m motivated to find out more about a topic.

With a few months of work as a software engineer under my belt now, I have a good sense of my standing among other software engineers in the field. Form a technical standpoint, I’m far from good. I mean on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being practically useless, I think I’m at 5 - not completely useless but still having a lot to learn.

Now that’s an admission you won’t see very often, especially if that person is looking to climb the professional ladder…

But I think it’s important and necessary to be truthful to yourself once in a while.

On most days you can “hustle” and pretend that you got your shit together and can do these amazing things. That brings with it numerous benefits, like better team morale, higher likelihood of having the person on the opposite end of a business transaction partially fooled, and an overall sense of self satisfaction. It’s good and it’s necessary, since we’re all imposters in some ways until we are not.

But I deeply believe that in the occasional moments when we are truthful to ourselves, we make the most progress, personally and professionally.

So allow me to admit that I’m not that good a software engineer yet. To be specific, based on my recent experiences at work, I know I need to work these specific areas:

• Embracing a different language and framework from what I’m used to (Python and Django)
• Being able to tell in at least half of all decision-making occasions whether Approach A or B is going to be a better decision down the road
• Bridging the gap between my typing and thinking speeds so I can create features and fix bugs quicker (I think much slower than I can type at 105 WPM)

Now I have a list. Great, another list!

I’m being half sarcastic there. Only half.

I believe in lists and know a few good people who do too. Lists make concrete the floaty “I think”s, which in turn makes it possible for me to break through them.

With this list what I’m going to do is to break it down further into sub-lists. For example, I’ll make a list of things that answers this question: what’s stopping me from embracing Python and Django?

• The syntax looks different from JavaScript
• Resentment towards the fact that if we used NodeJS instead of Django on the project, I’d be able to code entirely in JavaScript (this is funny because I once lamented how difficult it is to set up a NodeJS server)
• Not knowing enough to write code without having to cross- and double-check everything in the documentation and existing code

And then from there I’m going to come up with questions, this time as specific as possible, that would help me overcome this sub-list:

• Why do you need to import so many basic features in Python? (I have a hunch for this answer, but knowing the philosophy of Python’s creators might offer insights into how I should be thinking about the language)
• Why are Django controllers called views? That really confuses the shit out of me and I know I’m definitely not alone
• What mental hacks can I use to convert my mind to thinking in Django’s terms?
• Why do I need to deal with Serializers in Django when I don’t have to in a similar framework like Ruby on Rails?
• What does class Meta: do in a Django model?
• How exactly do you set up a REST API in Django REST Framework?
• What’s the easiest way to pretty-print things in Terminal when working in Python and Django?
• …

Man, the list is long!

But that’s how you know you know nothing. Jon Snow.

Perhaps it might be helpful to other software engineers looking for answers to these questions, so I intend to share my findings in another post. Enter your email in the box in the right panel to get notified to come read it when it’s out.