While I liked the general message, the post felt insincere to me. Like, "I've got 30 domains and I've only done something awesome with 3 of them." or "I used to speak Spanish really well and I still study Zulu with my wife but I spoke to a native Spanish speaker today and realize I'm lucky if I can order a burrito. I've all but forgotten my years of Amharic. My Arabic, Hindi and Chinese have atrophied into catch phrases at this point. What a phony."
Seriously, does he think that others know this stuff better? Being a phony isn't Ted Williams saying, "I only hit over .400 one time, I'm a phony". Feeling like a phony is when there's something you really feel like you should know, but for some reason you don't. For example, there was a time I thought I was really proficient in C, and then someone showed me some C code and there was syntax that had me baffled. It was bitfields. Up until that point I had never seen bitfields. Must've skipped that section in K&R and went years w/o ever seeing it. And this was before Google search, so I just happened to go through K&R and find it, and read up on it, before the code review session. I was five minutes from showing up to a meeting and saying, "What's that?" and having everyone turn and say, "Who hired this guy!?" -- that's feeling like a phony.
It was written completely from a sincere place. I used to study linguistics and 10 years ago was pretty darn good at languages. I see dudes like Tim Ferriss saying they can learn a new language in three months (I question this) and I speak to Europeans and Africans who have 5-7 languages. I used to take liguistics classes and could converse in a numer of languages. Being good at languages was part of my identity. However, we can't be good at everything. If you don't use a muscle it atrophies and that's happening with my language skills. That's what I was trying (perhaps unsuccessfully?) to express. I'm sad that this part of my identity isn't working like it used to and it makes me feel like an imposter.
Thanks for the clarification. I didn't realize that aspect of your background. I'm a typical American (well, US native to be more precise) -- we're lucky if we know one language.
I think he means that he feels like any person that is "reasonably intelligent" person should be able to do it, and because he can't, he feels incompetent. He's not talking about the accomplishments in particular.
Seriously, does he think that others know this stuff better? Being a phony isn't Ted Williams saying, "I only hit over .400 one time, I'm a phony". Feeling like a phony is when there's something you really feel like you should know, but for some reason you don't. For example, there was a time I thought I was really proficient in C, and then someone showed me some C code and there was syntax that had me baffled. It was bitfields. Up until that point I had never seen bitfields. Must've skipped that section in K&R and went years w/o ever seeing it. And this was before Google search, so I just happened to go through K&R and find it, and read up on it, before the code review session. I was five minutes from showing up to a meeting and saying, "What's that?" and having everyone turn and say, "Who hired this guy!?" -- that's feeling like a phony.