Am I a Real Expert?

by | Apr 7, 2020 | Aggregated, expertise, Opinions, software engineering

The other day I had a conversation with a scientist friend who said something alone the lines of “yes, I work in that general field, but I’m not an expert in your question in particular”. IT is not science, of course, but I asked myself whether I am a real expert in the things that I do. And while it’s nearly impossible to hit exactly the fine line between impostor syndrome and boasting, this post is neither and has a point, so bear with me. I’ve been doing a lot of things in the general IT field – from general purpose software engineering, IT architecture, information security, applications of cryptography, blockchain, e-government, algorithmic music composition, data analysis. And I’ve seen myself as having relatively expert knowledge. I even occasionally give TV and radio interviews, where I’m labelled as “Expert in X”. But… Am I a real expert in software engineering and software architecture? I’ve been doing that for 15+ years, and I follow and somethings define or clarify best practices, I’m familiar with different methodologies and have been part of teams that implemented some of them correctly and efficiently. I have taken part in the decision making process of building large systems with their architectural implications. But I’ve never been formally assigned as an “architect” (not that I insist), my UML skills are rather basic and I’ve never had to integrate dozens of legacy systems. I’ve never used formal methods for assessing software, I’ve made mistakes in selecting technologies, I’ve never done proper TDD and I have only a basic understanding of networking. Maybe just the sheer amount of...