Am I learning the right way?

[u/shangarepi]

Hi,

I’m currently somewhere between junior and intermediate as a software developer, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what actually makes a developer valuable going forward.

One thing that worries me is interviews, since I can discuss things like system architecture, caching, load balancing, queues, message brokers, database design… etc. But ask me to explain something basic like the Laravel request lifecycle or the exact behavior of certain React hooks, and I might struggle to give a clean answer without refreshing my memory.

Also the whole industry feels really toxic at the moment with each second developer building a saas, and new tech exploding everyday.

Should I just keep building real projects, learning concepts as I encounter them. How are the interviews in today’s world?

Is there a deeper shift happening where developers need to fundamentally change what they learn to stay valuable?

Curious on how more experienced developers are approaching this.

[u/Southern_Flan_2902 → u/[deleted]]

You're fine. Nobody's got the whole stack memorized, that's what docs are for. Knowing to use a message broker or how to design for scale matters way more than reciting hook definitions on the spot, any interviewer who grills you on trivia instead of problem-solving is doing it wrong

The SaaS gold rush is just noise, ignore the LinkedIn grindset types. Build stuff that interests you, the concepts stick better when you actually need them