I had a nearly identical experience a few months after starting my first job out of college. Huge software firm. I was looking through code with a senior colleague, and something looked really off to me. I literally said something like, "How could the person who wrote this be so stupid?" My colleague replied calmly,, "I wouldn't presume to know the mental capacity or state of the person who wrote this code at the moment they wrote it."
What he said humbled me and I basically never said anything like that ever again.
I also had the opposite experience. Two years in, wrote some code for a library that I thought was pretty clever. One day I got pulled into an online chat with a couple principal devs -- phenomenal engineers, respected the hell out of them -- and one was asking the other about this piece of code. He said something like, "Who wrote this shit? It's so complicated, I can't figure it out."
So from that moment I understood that you have to be careful not to be too clever when you write code. Changed my life.
To this day I'm so grateful to have had such amazing, patient mentors early in my career.
Any time you start having negative sentiment, anywhere in life, directed at the creations of other humans or the humans themselves I have two phrases I use. Four words. Be humble. Be curious. It’s saved me a lot of angst. I think as a developer this is a great mindset, it has helped me a lot, at least.
What he said humbled me and I basically never said anything like that ever again.
I also had the opposite experience. Two years in, wrote some code for a library that I thought was pretty clever. One day I got pulled into an online chat with a couple principal devs -- phenomenal engineers, respected the hell out of them -- and one was asking the other about this piece of code. He said something like, "Who wrote this shit? It's so complicated, I can't figure it out."
So from that moment I understood that you have to be careful not to be too clever when you write code. Changed my life.
To this day I'm so grateful to have had such amazing, patient mentors early in my career.