You’re a Real Software Developer Only If…

Source: Dev.to

Recap of the Talk

I just wrapped up my talk at jsDay 2026. It went well—people showed up, asked questions, and the vibe was exactly what I love: a room full of nerds who get programming jokes without any explanation. I’ll post a full recap next week, but here’s a quick story from yesterday.

Airport Adventure

I was stuck at Munich Airport. A one‑hour layover turned into a six‑hour delay after my first flight was postponed and I missed my connection. As we say in Poland, every cloud has a silver lining.

• I used the downtime to add fallbacks for everything in my presentation, even installing a service worker at the last minute (saved me later! 🔥).
• I managed to hit my daily cardio goal navigating the massive terminal.
• When boredom set in, I started writing this post.

Tribute to @hadil

This is a small tribute to @hadil and her brilliant post “You’re the Real JavaScript Developer Only If…”. I’ve wanted to write something in this style for months, and now I finally have the excuse.

“Kto produkcji nie wy*ebie, ten nie zazna szczęścia w niebie”

Loosely translated:

“If you never slay production, you won’t gain dev heaven.” 😄

Developer Truths

• Something sits in a TODO list for months (or years) and suddenly just works.
• Changing an unrelated line magically fixes another issue—no idea why, no idea how.
• “This makes absolutely no sense.” → more logs → even more logs → console.log("WHAT IS GOING ON");

console.log("WHAT IS GOING ON");

• Deep down you know the system is held together by vibes and legacy decisions.

• Touch one part and something completely unrelated breaks:

  • exploded in production
  • missing environment variable
  • timezone issues
  • race conditions
  • or just… vibes again

• “It works on my machine.” And you truly mean it, with full confidence—whether you’re on the frontend or backend, preferably both, within the same debugging session.

• First reaction: “I’m an idiot.”

• Then: “Wait… I’m a genius.”

• Sometimes this cycle repeats multiple times.

Your Turn

If you answered yes to most of the statements above, you’re not alone.

• If you answered about half, you’re probably on the right track.
• If you answered less than two, you might be missing some classic developer moments.

What would you add to this list? I’m sure we all have at least one story that fits perfectly here. 😄