better young developers I've hired that's not what I said. Are You ~3x as productive Now than when You started? It's not a question of typing speed or syntax, it's a question of what you can get done in a 1 month. And how much damage you will do in that same month.
One of the better examples of this is helping to debug someones program. Now I frequently hear, I was trying to do X, it almost works, but it's also doing Y, and I will say ok you made a mistake in this area. It's not just understanding code, but also understanding the typical mistakes we make. Tracing down an off by 1 error is something everyone learns, but they don't teach it in school.
One of the better examples of this is helping to debug someones program. Now I frequently hear, I was trying to do X, it almost works, but it's also doing Y, and I will say ok you made a mistake in this area. It's not just understanding code, but also understanding the typical mistakes we make. Tracing down an off by 1 error is something everyone learns, but they don't teach it in school.