Programming experience Memes

The eternal Google search for "regex for email validation" is the tech equivalent of forgetting how to spell "necessary" - no matter how many times you learn it, your brain refuses to store that information. After a decade of coding, you'd think your brain would finally commit regex patterns to memory. Nope. That neural pathway is permanently replaced with useless trivia and coffee brewing techniques. The regex heroes on Stack Overflow who can write these patterns from memory deserve hazard pay. The rest of us will forever be copying and pasting cryptic incantations like ^[\w-\.]+@([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]{2,4}$ while silently praying it actually works.

Four years of programming and suddenly you're an "expert." The cat's face says it all – that mix of panic and impostor syndrome when someone mistakes your Stack Overflow copy-paste skills for actual knowledge. Truth is, after four years you've just figured out how much you don't know. The real experts are too busy fixing production outages caused by junior devs who thought they knew everything after their bootcamp.

When someone assumes your 4 years of programming means you're an expert, but in reality you've just been googling Stack Overflow answers and praying your code works. *nervous cat noises* That awkward silence when you realize most of your "knowledge" is just knowing which error messages mean "you're totally screwed" versus "just restart your IDE." Four years in and still feeling like an imposter who accidentally fooled everyone into thinking you know what you're doing!