> Nowadays I happily patch nginx source code and compile it manually, but it took a lot of work to learn a minuscule chunk of what all those guys knew by heart.

I'm about half a decade into my career and I've recently tried to take note when I hit milestones or achievements, even little ones.

I was helping an intern with a tool and it didn't have support for what we needed it for. Since the tool was open source, I just cloned it and patched it to add support for what we needed. When I told the intern this, he couldn't comprehend that I was so blase about modifying this tool that seems like witchcraft to him.

But what I quoted, I feel deeply. I've worked with so many people with so much knowledge they can't possibly communicate it, and I'm only starting to really understand the tech around me. I didn't think anything of patching the tool at the time, but its important I look back so that the younger version of me can see the progress I've made.