The shittiest project I ever worked on

Indeed. There's no place for humour on HN.

I started out at a non-technical startup that was pushing a technical tool as its main product. Out of a team of three developers, I became the Lead Developer, despite having barely a year of experience, simply because I was the better programmer and was willing to call management out when they tried to make technical decisions. I was offered a choice of "Senior Developer" and "Lead Developer" and went with the lead role because I didn't feel very senior.

In reality, I was barely a junior dev, and being in charge of a site that's getting millions of views was absolutely terrifying. In some ways, it was one of the best training exercises I could have. It forced me to learn things, and to learn them well. It was also total bullshit. My pay wasn't that great, and although I was working in a startup that was slowly becoming technical, had absolute control over technical decisions, and was able to turn a company that struggled with FTPing to a server into one with automated builds, regular code reviews using a new source control system (Git), and much more, it still highlighted more than anything that I really didn't have the slightest clue what I was doing.

It really couldn't have gone better for me. The company was acquired, and I landed a job at a great agency, and was able to work on enough projects to actually know what I was doing, and to see what good code looks like. I'm a mid-level developer now, with much better pay, but instead of looking back over old code and laughing, I tend to look back over the time where I led the technical side of a startup and laugh.

oh !!!

I can highly recommend Flawless Consulting by Peter Block. He covers all these issues and many others. Self awareness is critical to success. If you are inexperienced you need to be able to recognize/acknowledge your inexperience. Then read everything available on the subject and interview every expert you can identify. Clint Eastwood said it best, "A man's got to know his limitations". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VrFV5r8cs0

I am a programmer, but my diploma says Electrical Engineer. I actually majored in EE because I thought it would help me be a better programmer (and I think it did, but that's a story for another time). I actually did EE work, too, and continue to do so sporadically, but I only tackle tasks where I can't screw up any actual EE's work. I know my fundamentals and have some design experience, but since I spent most of my career doing (admittedly, low-level) programming, I'm no match for someone who spent most of their career doing circuit design.

The whole frame of mind in which I do EE is incredibly different from the one in which I do programming, to the extent that, for much of my early career, there was simply no way I could do both of them efficiently during the same day. The time of context switching was, literally, a good night's sleep. There are marked differences; the ones that spring up immediately are:

1. I spend a lot of time doing actual computation, optimizing my design on paper and attempting to predict interactions that occur due to reality not being quite like its ideal model. Some of the younger engineers frown upon this (mostly because they suck at math and think theory is for bookworms), but it's very productive once you manage to do it right.

2. Even when specifications are complete and respected to the letter, there are still differences between what you specify and what gets built. There are technological variations you must account for.

3. Better yet, you always need to bear in mind the limitations of the manufacturing process for what you design. When I think about how I'll write something, my own ability to code is literally the only limit I have to deal with. There are, of course, hard limits due to the constraints of the platform you work on (e.g. there is some hard limit to how much code you can fit in 16K of flash), but these are of a very different nature compare to manufacturing constraints. Designs must account for the limits of your technological process (e.g. you may not be able to mount some types of components on a PCB), and they must also ensure manufacturing is feasible and scalable (something called DFM -- Design For Manufacturing -- which I have screwed up a couple of times, due to my inexperience).

Overall, there's a huge gap between how much intuition and craftmanship I put in each activity.

I'm not saying this disqualifies programming as an engineering discipline; such differences may also exist between other engineering disciplines I have no idea about.

I, for one, tend to frown upon it being called "software engineering" though, mostly in virtue of these differences. I don't consider the term "software development" demeaning -- in fact, I prefer it, and I always present myself as a programmer and my job title as "software developer", even though I'm legally allowed to call myself an engineer.