> In other words, immature engineers are too inflexible about their taste

This principle (sorry ;)) is applicable to all domains. I'd wish I would remember this more often. Thank you for the gentle reminder!

This is why I like experimenting with lots of different programming languages, and why I try to make the next language to understand as different as the ones I know, as I'm having these "epiphanies" all the time, challenging my existing views, which I can apply across languages when suitable. You just need to accept that things feel "wrong" and "weird" initially, before you've grokked the whys and hows.

What a great comment. Your way of thinking is how I like to handle my direct hires. And people on a project that may not be my direct hires. Recognize that there are different ways to get things done. Not everything needs to please my specifics, process, etc. if the end result or goal is met

"Good taste" I have found comes from experiencing "good" API's and other "good" code. You know good code (and API) when you see it — and in time you should be able to write it as well. In short though, it's hard to have good coding taste when you are new to the field. (But, as you point out, it's not true that experience guarantees you will acquire taste — you have to both be looking out for it, recognize it, and be able to to mirror it.)

>> I have come across this although I think quite experienced engineers can suffer from this kind of immaturity. Experience does not always result in maturity. It is actually pretty common for engineers to become more set in their ways as they gain experience, especially if they've seen some success, because that success has convinced them that the way they do things is the right way.

I had exactly the same experience with giving CS assignment help. Although at the time, I didn't quite have the wisdom to work within their existing approach and tended towards more radical rewrites. Not that I thought they were idiots, I just didn't like their approaches - and didn't take the time to try to understand them.

I don't ever tall a junior that they are doing something in a less-than-optimal way. I always ask them why they're doing it that way. At the end of each conversation, one of us has learned something. Sometimes I learn an alternate approach, and sometimes they learn why their alternate approach won't work in the long run. Either way, it's never a confrontational conversation.

Maturity is not exactly correlated to time in experience, just as emotional and social maturity doesn’t exactly correlate with biological age. I was 12 years into my career before the ideas in this article started filtering into my mind.