The proficiency of a software developer is determined not only by which technologies he used or for how long, but more importantly by how exactly he understood and interpreted the principles behind them. Because the basic principles of software engineering are so numerous and often not specified formally, the view of the actual developer means everything.
In the course of work, a developer adapts his understanding to the problems he is working at, this is somewhat similar to how shapes of key and lock match. For this reason two people may be using the same technology for the same amount of years but be totally unable to understand each other to a point of engaging religious wars over the simplest points.
Now I understand why whenever I have a chance to interview a job applicant, I ask rather unspecific questions even of philosophical kind - to see not what he knows, but how he actually understands it and whether his understanding matches mine. Because if it doesn't we'd probably have hard times working together.
The difficult part here is trying to keep your knowledge deep and broad at the same time, because both the details and the perspective are required to understand.
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I cannot be more agree with you, and this is probably _the_ explanation of the joke in the previous post. To be a "good programmer" you have to know so much that the quantity is turned into quality. And noone can teach you how to become a good programmer in sense that there are no simple rules to follow. You learn it yourself.
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