[mmatants]

I wonder if the real litmus test is "ship a project and talk to the satisfied customer after fixing a few production bugs". Arbitrarily I'd say that the project would be at least a couple weeks personal time investment at least, and then also maybe a month of follow-up for bugs. And by "talk" I mean even just indirectly be part of a team to sign off on a project as done.

An experience like that really affects one's coding habits and makes them structure things in a more future-proof way: things like having loggable errors, even basic usability sense cannot realistically come from anywhere but hearing real user reports, going through the most basic deployment process, finding an issue on a live system.

In addition, certain naive over-engineering impulses get tempered by real shipping experience - because YAGNI is honed as well.

It's been described that anyone creative/constructive plays both a "writer/implementer" role and an "editor" role (using a book analogy here). Writing code is what we learn in school - but editing and directing and culling that output is something that takes real exposure to user problems to get better at.