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Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

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Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#91

Post by Ensorceled »

One of the more frustrating parts of my job is dealing with junior and intermediate programmers who spin their wheels try to figure it out themselves rather than google it.

Things like spending several hours on a problem where copy/pasting the error into google yields a github issue complete with a work around or writing a boat load of code when there already exists a package or plugin that does exactly that.

The worst is when a google search would have revealed that our chosen framework already built in the desired feature they just spent the afternoon writing.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#93

Post by Ensorceled »

verytrivial wrote: post #80

Experienced programmers probably also have a good feel for whether the problem they're having is truly unique (and not worth searching for), whether others will be able to articulate the problem, and how long it might take to solve the issue from first principles, hence how much effort is worth investing in the Google excavation.

Most experienced programmers also have a good feel for how much harder it is to write a solid, tested, scalable module yourself than integrate a open source solution, even if it's not perfect.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#94

Post by gadflea »

psyklic wrote: post #64
DanielDent wrote: post #52

I've been finding Google less useful in the last little while. It taunts me and tells me that I'm sorry Daniel, I've decided to exclude the most important keyword from your query. Domain-specific search tools - e.g. for programming, Dash.app - have become an increased part of my workflow partially because Google simply isn't giving me the results I am looking for.

Put keywords in quotes and Google will not exclude them.

Essential, but inexplicably strips non alphanumerics.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#95

Post by tootie »

curtis wrote: post #6

I often joke that my ability to formulate good Google queries is the single most important part of my software engineering skillset. Except, you know, I'm not really joking.

I consider Stack Overflow to be the co-architect of every project at my company.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#96

Post by bobwaycott »

koolba wrote: post #9

I not only use Google frequently, I use it to search for things I myself have written in the past. I can't count the number of times I've Googled for a programming question where the answer is found on a Stack Overflow page I've written. If it's a particularly old answer that I've completely forgotten, I've even thought to myself, " Wow this genius sounds just like me! "[1]. [1]: ... as well as " This idiot has no cl…

This makes me think of how fun it would be to have some sort of service that would show you your own past code and see if you'd rate it good/bad. Then you could correct what you think is bad, and it'd be fed right back into the corpus. Leveraging some kind of spaced repetition approach, it could be an interesting experiment to measure the way you grow, change, improve, and regress as a developer.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#97

Post by wallacoloo »

nraynaud wrote: post #63
ahyperloop4u wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. Sometimes it's much quicker to just plug the error into Google than to search. Saves a lot of time and work.

I live in France, and I hate localized linux distributions, you can't google error messages when it's localized. I sometimes try to re-translate the message in English and google it. Error messages are not messages for the users to diagnose anymore, they are keywords for google, give them a number. I google and if it fails, I'll try to use my brain.

Sounds like a good reason to use error codes (non-localized) alongside error messages (localized). E.g. "404: page not found".

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#98

Post by bobwaycott »

nraynaud wrote: post #63
ahyperloop4u wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. Sometimes it's much quicker to just plug the error into Google than to search. Saves a lot of time and work.

I live in France, and I hate localized linux distributions, you can't google error messages when it's localized. I sometimes try to re-translate the message in English and google it. Error messages are not messages for the users to diagnose anymore, they are keywords for google, give them a number. I google and if it fails, I'll try to use my brain.

Perhaps we need error messages that include a Google link for searching that error.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#99

Post by developer2 »

striking wrote: post #84
DanielDent wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, that's a helpful tip! I used to use many modifiers for my Google queries, but Google dropped support for many of them, and doesn't seem to document comprehensively what they actually support from day to day. I wish excluded keywords were the only frustration. Their index seems to have gotten considerably worse at dealing with any somewhat "long-tail" query. I'm not sure why. I suspect they've won the spam…

My favorite modifier removal: Currently, you can use - to exclude keywords. Once upon a time, you could use + to require a keyword... until Google+ came out, and + became how you would search for people's profiles. sigh

This. I can't believe someone approved removing the use of "+" as a search operator. It was at the very core of searching Google. It took months before I found out you needed to double-quote "every" "single" "damn" "individual" "word" to force searching by inclusion.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#100

Post by franciscop »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #72
Keyframe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and finding a question you've search for, only to find out that question was also posted by you years ago. Bonus for ones with no answers still.

Or a question you had years ago. Couldn't find an answer. So you did a workaround and/or forgot about it. Now you hit the same problem search -- and find you original question. But wait! Now there are half-a-dozen other people with the same problem! So you click on all of those links. But none of them could find an answer either. Bonus points if there's a guy who comes in condescendingly and quotes a manual or some o…

"So you did a workaround"

I always answer my own questions if no answer was given and I found a workaround/hack to solve it. Not for myself, but chances are that in few years, if I search for the same question I'll find my own.

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