That’s good. But you shouldn’t mistake a “cursory” understanding where you can talk the talk to be equivalent to actual in-depth knowledge of the problem/solution.

There are depths of understanding that can only be gained by executing and mutating the code and understanding its behavior deeply. Not that it even matters in the end. But feeling like we understand something and actually understanding it fully are 2 different things that we should just remain aware of.

But it's true that you learn a lot by explaining working code to others. That's also why I write on my homepage. Most of the code isn't entirely written by me. I bring it in from open source and other places, and as I review and curate it, I find that the next time I use that code, I understand it much better and it's more helpful.

Great, now I don't even believe your story, you big fat liar.

JK .. we all do it from time to time

> I'm ashamed of lying about what I've done

You should be, and being a liar makes you a worse developer, not better, regardless of the technical output.