Earlier quoted context omitted.
exactly. Thinking that you're a decent programmer after 6 months is nothing but hubris, and shows you're still in the stage of not realising there is much, much, much more to learn. Or his definition of 'decent' does not match mine.
The latter. I know a lot of great coders, and most of them set the bar for "decent" very high. By decent I mean that you could actually write code to solve most problems you come across. Is the code going to be less than optimal? Of course. Most of the time it's even going to be pretty ugly code (you should see my backend code for a case in point). I'm not being presumptuous, I just have lower standards than most of…
I would rate that level of coder as a 'good' coder. I would rate 'decent' as 'the level at which I don't wince when I hear who has been assigned to the project'.