> dear god, how is there so much code that does nothing, and how did it all get witten since I last had a chance to look
This, 100 times over! It is simply incredible how much code and how complex systems a junior dev (junior by knowledge, not by years of coding) can produce in a short time while you were looking the other way... :-D
When I look at code written by junior devs I often think 'dear god, how is there so much code that does nothing, and how did it all get witten since I last had a chance to look'.
Makes me wonder if there are parallels in writing. My understanding is that the most prolific authors can only write 8 publishable pages a day. I'd bet that amateur writers can produce more pages than that, but no page could be published without at least as much time spent by an editor.