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How do I bridge that gap between where I am now, and being able to spend time browsing through modern php, ios, (whatever language I know) articles and not feel under water and under the average knowledge bar?
If you aren't familiar with something that you see, look it up. If it looks useful to you, build something with it.
A group of people will always look smarter, more knowledgeable and more accomplished because you will see the acomplishments collectively, and compare them to your own, individual work.
tl;dr - Don't let it get to you, carve out your own niche.
I still run across stuff I don't understand, all the time.
And I'm not one of those people who have "1 year of experience 15 times" instead of "15 years of experience". I'm pretty aggressive about learning new stuff and expanding my horizons. And yet the pace of change is so fast, there's always new stuff coming out, or areas of tech I'm discovering for the first time.
The moral of this little diatribe? Don't sweat it. Be curious, explore, learn, hack, and don't worry too much about comparing yourself to others. And don't assume everybody on HN is some uber-genius, super-brilliant "10x" programmer. I mean, sure, there probably are people like that here, but I'm pretty sure they are a small minority.
For another take, you might find esr's "How to become a hacker" essay useful:
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
Other than that, my only advice would be to start a project (open-source or not, whatever you think) that gives you a venue to challenge yourself. That is, start a project that you don't believe you're really competent to complete, and then go do it.
Also, "read a lot".
FWIW, I'm 40 and have been programming professionally for 15 years, and programming as a hobby for probably 8 years before that. I still run across stuff I don't understand, all the time. And I'm not one of those people who have "1 year of experience 15 times" instead of "15 years of experience". I'm pretty aggressive about learning new stuff and expanding my horizons. And yet the pace of change is so fast, there's a…
Pick something and get good at it. If you aren't familiar with something that you see, look it up. If it looks useful to you, build something with it. A group of people will always look smarter, more knowledgeable and more accomplished because you will see the acomplishments collectively, and compare them to your own, individual work. tl;dr - Don't let it get to you, carve out your own niche.
This is essentially what I do. Thanks for the tldr.
If you answered yes to all of the above, then you're probably already a "good" programmer, and you'll only get better. If not, then let's maybe discuss why not. E.g. is there something about your job that's getting in the way of you improving as a coder?
You're 'Good' now. When you stop getting that feeling, you're no longer good.
"Yet, every day I run across articles here and comments that make me feel incredibly useless and inexperienced." You're 'Good' now. When you stop getting that feeling, you're no longer good.
You may already be "good". The thing is that there is something or someone better out there than you and this applies a lot more when it comes to HN. I feel like a loser when I browse HN because well, a lot of ppl are faaaar better than me at the things that I want to be good at. It is all relative. Stop sweating it and focus on what you want to achieve. If you get what you want, who cares whether you are good or xyz.