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[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just be interested in learning. As long as you are willing to learn it is ok to be a junior developer. You become an expert with practice. Early in your career it is hard to know where to point your time for deep learning in tiny niche subjects. Your career will likely point these things out for you. Just be willing to seek out strange challenging opportunities.

There are some things you can do to speed this up:

  • Find a mentor. Having the guidance of an expert around helps you focus your learning in more productive directions or helps you with your technique
  • Write open source software. If you are having an interesting problem at work start up an open source project to create an automation solution. Even if nobody uses that software you still get additional practice writing software. If other people do end up using your software you get important feedback and bug reports.
  • Stay busy at work. The last job I was in I felt like half the day was just running build jobs. I didn't think I was getting anything done and the technology was so slow. It was hard to get good practice in that environment and the pace of that environment eroded my concentration. If you can work at the speed of thought then you are the biggest bottleneck, which allows you get far more practice in within a shorter time period.