How to self-evaluate one's own progress in terms of learning in programming?

Question

After a few years of commercial or non-commercial programming, how can we evaluate ourselves to know where we stand? Is our learning over the years / progress satisfactory or do we need to strive for more (Ofcourse, I agree there is no end to learning, it continues on forever)?

Please note that my question is not related to success in one's career, but is oriented purely towards learning alone.

EDIT: One comment says that the person realized he/she was far behind till they joined SO and saw the discussions here. So, can we consider joining forums and judging our ability to answer queries on a particular subject as a metric to gauge our learning? If yes, what other activities like this can be considered?

Answer 1

Look at your 5 year old programs, if you think they are horribly written then you have made progress.

Usually you should check if you stayed up-to-date and learned current technologies (i.e. AJAX for web programmers) or still cling to the old ways - which would be bad.

Answer 2

If you always feel you know only 5% of what's out there, you're probably learning.

If you're making progress toward 100% mastery, you're fooling yourself.

See Dunning-Kruger Effect.