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That is interesting. The experience has been almost the opposite for me. When I first started programming, it did not take me long to start "getting it", and I was very confident that there was no programming problem I could not solve. As the years went by, I've noticed that my confidence has decreased to the point where I am almost certain that there is no problem I can solve (besides the most trivial ones). Maybe I'm just getting dumber.

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Absolutely not. As you gain domain knowledge you should feel exactly this way. I'd suggest that you be concerned if you didn't feel this way. When I finished highschool I thought I was pretty damn smart and had a lot of things figured out (clearly not the case). From an academic point of view as I worked towards my Ph.D. I was constantly reminded of how very little I did know. While I did learn new things day by day, my appreciation for how much I didn't know grew exponentially. In fact I think what I'm left with after the whole exercise is not a confidence in my knowledge but rather a confidence in my ability to learn, problem solve and ask questions.

"Universities are repositories of learning because students enter knowing everything, and leave knowing nothing."

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