Senior juniorism

Please have in mind these are field notes organized in a common structure that I use for myself or for my students, university classes and industrial activities. They may be messy, with errors and in some cases, without proper references. If you find your work (or part of it) here without proper acknowledgement, please let me know so I can fix it as soon as possible.

"Senior juniorism"^1 refers to the phenomenon where inexperienced programmers give advice and write extensively about their [limited] knowledge, unaware of their own blind spots. Aspiring programmers should be cautious when receiving advice, as not all advice is good and can lead to poor coding practices and habits.

When someone pretends to be an expert, they may inadvertently give advice that is outdated, incomplete or simply incorrect.

Self-taught developers skips over fundamental concepts due to the abundance of resources available to them.

Ways to avoid falling for bad advice:

• seek out reputable sources
• do your own research and fact-checking
• develop your critical thinking skills

Significant Revisions

Jun 8, 2023: Original publication on dariomac.com