The new app passed apple review on the first go... wait... what?!?!

The more depressed you get over the current state of software is how you know you made it.When you start making your own opinions and say"wow these people are full of shit"

Primary example, the web development overblown bullshit. Fuck me dude, you really don't need that full featured react, vue, angular framework to make sense of shit. You are going over the top for fucking ajax functionality and state management that you could do by yourself without needing to learn a full framework, by the time you finish learning react you probably would have been better served with standard vanilla af JS and server side rendering.

Our world is full of fads and many talented people that perpetrate them. Its fine, it is a the nature of the beast. But a lot...A LOT of software is very POORLY written. And adding levels of abstraction over a very broken paradigm (web in this case) does and will not make it better.

Basically I am fucking hating being a web developer and want to go back to a time in which we cared about how much memory consumption our applications made as well as not worrying about the fucking frontend having the ability to implement machine learning.

I want to run sublime.exe and being sure that it is a native application to my system and not using a fucking contained web browser to implement my fucking text editor. With 20mb of ram at most instead of 500mb WTF.

I knew I made it when I could read comments on Hacker news and reddit and say "this idiot is full of shit", I knew I made it when I would sigh heavily at the idea of having another project rather than having a fan girl attitude towards it.

I knew I made it when people writing about software development meant shit to me rather than the wonder of what the fuck they were talking about.

I knew I made it when getting laid was more important to me than fucking around with code.

pussy > code
Fuck you.

When my software or hardware makes people smile.

When you've got a job you're happy with.

That's it in my book. Studied it and persuaded someone to hire you to do it? Enjoy that job, and it pays the way? Good work. Of course you'll likely go further than that in time, which is great - but there's no great magical point to "strive to" so to speak.

While I was in university, I used to be a good programmer (which I still am :D ), my friends used to copy my code for the assignments. One day, the teacher (one of my my mentors) called me in his office and said, "this is your code".
I'm like, in my mind, "How did he know this?"
The teacher said, "If you let others copy your code one more time, I will fail you".
I nodded my head in affirmation.
Later I understood that I've been a "Clean code" principle follower even before I knew this term. So, it was pretty easy to differentiate my codes from my friends. The teacher is really a genius ^_^

You know that you made it as dev when you realize that your creation has ability to effect your life also the life of others

It came to me much earlier in life ( college final semester)
F: Hey there is this girl that i am trying to talk but she never replies me on Facebook i waste to much time looking for her online status , i wish if i can say hi as soon as she comes online
HF: (first reaction) leave her alone man , ( dev reaction) hmm fb probably be using jabber protocol like xmpp I could make xmpp client and sync online status. If status changes drop a notification also the asmack lib provides a way to send msg to user in your chat room sooo we good !!

At the time i was handling 3 android app , implemented this and called it FacebookStalker , you can select who you wanna stalk and what msg you wanna send them as soon as they come online

Google obviously didn’t liked it
for a long time i judged myself that How can i can make this creepy app
Later I realized that it was not the app i was suspended because i used a DRM marked image as icon

Google never tells you the actual reason why your app is suspended so you cannot fix it.

I learned to be mindfull of what i code cause it started having real impact. Loosing dev account was like loosing everything at that point. i had nothing else

When NASA use my code. Lol

When I can see actual clients using my software, and can get real feedback from them.

I usually work on backstage projects and my job never really affected "real, normal users". When I have something pushed and can really see user feedback and smiles, that means I've made it.

Of course, if that's on a decent job, with a decent team and decent pay. Which is where I am at now.

Soon, the app will be released - if the external infrastructure guy stop sucking. So, I'm hoping to feel I've made it soon, real soon :)

When i get a lot of clients for freelancing projects to the point im paid more for freelancing than i am at my full time job.

When you're become the most overqualified person on ur team and created so much stuff that only you know how they work or even exists.

And no one else is technical enough to understand it all.

So you develop a feeling that you can't be fired because you can't be easily replaced.

Haven't "made it" yet, i'll tell you when I do.

[made it as a developer]

When im retired, sitting on the porch of my house, petting my cat.

Three things for me:

- when the mentor whom I admire said that I've kept growing non-stop and would have some discussions about how to execute things as an equal.

- when I more than doubled my salary in less than a year

- when I started to recognize code smell and bad code practices on the PRs

I hope I never make it.

It sounds to me like I'm finished or achieved some kind of perfection....

As if my job is done.

In the nightmare category, it's definitely in the top 3...

Not working for more than 7 days and I'll turn into a psychopath.

My longest hospitalisation was 3.5 weeks. After 5 days I talked with the nurses. I played / entertained elderly people, with permission of course...

I guess that saved me from going bananas....

Money.

I wish I had a more philosophical answer like building cool shit, but this is real life, so I've made it as a dev when I make at least ₹20 lakh per year.

I already made it

The ultimate goal of every developer:

You are so good that the bug of your app is seen as a feature by users 😎

When you are able to switch jobs easily and clear interviews in good companies without sweating much.

IMO it depends to what one means by "made it".

switch(made_id) {
case "is a developer" -> "when one develops a software product, regardless of whether for work or personal purposes";

case "got a dev job" -> "when one gets a dev job";

case "can be called a dev" -> "when job title has .*developer.* in it";

case "is a good dev" -> "when job title has .*senior developer.* in it";
}

For me personally it means getting a SW development job that pays my bills and keeps growing my savings account. Pretty much like @AlmondSauce said it.

I for one iterated through all the cases above and each time I achieved the goal I felt like I "made it".

Appetite comes with eating

You made it when you are happy of your work and compile. Anything else is more happiness

When that voice in the back of my head stops saying "you're not good enough yet"

Huh..

/**
* Refund Test Assert
* If this block makes it into production
* I made it as a developer
**/
for(var sub : subscriptions)
if(sub.hasEnded()) refundCustomer(sub.Id);

I made it as dev when the repository owner increases stale time for pull requests to wait just a bit longer for my change

I knew I made it as a dev when I started talking with authority.

I engrossed myself into my field with enough genuine interest that I learned through practical means.

This isn't to say I'm simply head-strong, but I don't second-guess myself unless evidence to the contrary is provided, analysed and proven.

I learbed that your salary only goes so far as a developer (peoole who are in "the one and only" positions notwithstanding), eventually if you want to push further, you teach, you manage and you focus not on trends, but what youre good at.

That's actually why I love answering "What do I do during interviews?" questions.

When in the commit is reported my ID, that means that I "made it"

When averaging 3 or more comments per PR

"competed"

When I found a company that is focused on automated drone swarms with minimum human supervision and sell my “solutions”(I hate the word but I dont want to sell physical products necessarily). I find working for other companies is not the endgame.