I had been waiting from pre-teen, through teenage years, and past my young adult years. Wonder, waiting, hoping I would someday feel like I had "grown up" and was an "adult" now.

That's the trick: it never happens. There's little difference between a "kid" and an "adult" besides obvious physical maturation. You just get new things to juggle and new worries. Bills and job instead of homework. Kids and coworkers and friends (if you're lucky) instead of HS drama. I still don't feel that much different at the core than I did at ~18 and that was 19 years ago.

I don't know if that is better or worse

Because theyre either lying about, or blissfully unaware of their own shortcoming.

Or they work in sales.

Nah, I'm not even good enough for an imposter syndrome

Or just the reality that no one knows what they are doing, but only some people will admit it.

You may already know this, but if you don't:

You perfectly described Marxist alienation and commodity fetishism.

Alienation:

Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the experience of human life as meaningless or the human self as worthless in modern capitalist society. It is Marx’s earliest recognizable attempt at a systematic explanatory theory of capitalism.

The theoretical basis of alienation is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation?wprov=sfla1

Commodity fetishism:

The theory of commodity fetishism (German: Warenfetischismus) originated from Karl Marx's references to fetishes and fetishism in his analyses of religious superstition, and in the criticism of the beliefs of political economists. Marx borrowed the concept of "fetishism" from The Cult of Fetish Gods (1760) by Charles de Brosses, which proposed a materialist theory of the origin of religion. Moreover, in the 1840s, the philosophic discussion of fetishism by Auguste Comte, and Ludwig Feuerbach's psychological interpretation of religion also influenced Marx's development of commodity fetishism.

Marx's first mention of fetishism appeared in 1842, in his response to a newspaper article by Karl Heinrich Hermes, which defended Germany on religious grounds. Hermes agreed with the German philosopher Hegel in regarding fetishism as the crudest form of religion. Marx dismissed that argument and Hermes's definition of religion as that which elevates man "above sensuous appetites". Instead, Marx said that fetishism is "the religion of sensuous appetites", and that the fantasy of the appetites tricks the fetish worshipper into believing that an inanimate object will yield its natural character to gratify the desires of the worshipper. Therefore, the crude appetite of the fetish worshipper smashes the fetish when it ceases to be of service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism?wprov=sfla1

Look at you bragging about your lack of life long debt.

Oof, that's rough. Nobody knows how to program without doing it though. Even senior people forget systems they haven't worked with in a while. You could always do some side projects, or freelancing, and then return to coding when you're up to speed. Finding another job should be trivial with a CS degree and a portfolio of projects.

You're alive because your parents fucked.

I really hate that saying. For me it implies that lying will get you anywhere. I guess that's why a lot of people end up somewhere they don't 'belong' doing things they're not really able to do. What's the point of that?