I don't think there is mastery in this work. I've been doing this for decades, and I still think my code from 6 months ago is crap, no matter how much I learn and improve.
Mastery would imply that you can do it all, and do it right, on any project, and there is just too much change and evolution for that to ever be true.
I also have this battle. It feels like each time I take another step up the mountain, the mountain itself grows.
Doesn't matter how much time/effort I expend, there is just no way to keep up to date with every moving piece in our industry (from hardware, to firmware, to software, to laws, to programming languages, to cryptography/security, to web standards, to multimedia standards/codecs, to physics etc). It seems like every single action that we take comes with trade-offs and that we can never make an ultimate good choice - that choice is only valid for a short time before it's trade-off gets triggered.
A carpenter has a set of tools. He has a set of materials. He has a set of blueprints/techniques. He can consistently build table with x qualities. When he is done with the table, it is done. He doesn't have to spend all of his time relearning how to build tables over and over, and for old tables to quickly self-destruct if he stops baby-sitting them. Or for some 12 year old carpenter in Russia to cause his table's wood to rot.
Every year that passes by, humans accumulate more and more knowledge. It would be impossible for a few individuals to know everything as their time in this life is limited. Thus we get forced to specialize, else we can get pulled into the general knowledge stream which can be overwhelming.
Mastery is when the code you wrote 6 months ago, or a year ago, or five years ago is still running, and not causing problems. Mastery is when the code you write brings long term benefits, and not future problems.
I've both seen and written code like that, so it does exist. Like anyone one else I've also written code that causes future problems. I believe I'm at a point in my career (25 years in) where I now write more of the former than the latter.
Length of time doing something doesn't imply mastery. It can contribute to mastery, but only if you're always pushing your skill to the next level I think.
For example: I know people who have been skateboarding for decades and are just barely OK at it. How you practice matters.
I think there is mastery, but only in knowing that there is no mastery.
"I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either."
[Apology of Socrates, Henry Cary literal translation]
That's the right mindset for an individual but not particularly helpful for an answer. Constant improvement is part of mastery but not a great yard stick.
I also have trouble believing you've been coding for so long and can't take pride in any of the code you've previously written.
codingdave, I think you really hit on exactly the right point, and in doing so have also spoken to my mind exactly where we've gone off the rails as an industry in our hiring practice.
When we interview people, we do so in such a way that we believe someone is capable of showing mastery of the field, where those who have been in the field a long time and agree with your philosophy here know that about all we can can hope to achieve is humility.
It also feels like this fundamental to why this field has not been able to mature to a point of being a profession in the same form as other fields - because while we can teach a lawyer the law and we can teach a doctor a particular way to perform a technique, software is all just a bit wet and sticky.
Is that code from 6 months ago crap or just different than your current preference? I see a fair number of people churning between solutions that are more different than actually better.
I think most "master" software engineers are a bit more idealistic than that... Not saying I am a master but I occasionally write something and consider it genuinely beautiful.
Crap how? Is there mountains of commented out code, dead code, and misdirection? Has the code been adequately tested? Do you use appropriate code analysis tools (lint ect.), to enforce the above. Still having nitpicks in the code, questionable design, lines that could be eliminated, ect. is different from sloppiness and having no clue how to address these issues.
Mastery would imply that you can do it all, and do it right, on any project, and there is just too much change and evolution for that to ever be true.
My goal is simply that I continue to improve.