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It could also just be an expression of generalized anxiety, or a disavowal of expertise to keep one's self from getting cocky. I'm a guy, I often make clear statements of my confusions to keep myself straight on what I do and don't understand.

And she may have felt, accurately, that she didn't understand the material as well as the OP thought. You can produce a lot of code in a tutorial without knowing enough to produce that architecture yourself.

Personally I think the people who have the clearest view of what they don't know are the ones prepared to learn the fastest. There's a huge difference between "programming is hard!" nonsense that stops people from starting in the first place and "I'm not getting this" consolidations that help a _started_ person figure out what they need to learn.




I've heard it said that the smartest people are the ones who don't think they know what they are doing, because then they try to figure it out.

Anecdotally, a lot of PhDs have impostor syndrome.




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