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Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

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Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#121
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 is like anti circlejerk

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#122
1. Google if someone had the same problem and fixed it.

2. Hope you're using OSS software and simply browse the source to find answers.

The second approach is a bit slower at first, but after you dismantled a bunch of repos it becomes natural, you get faster and the answers you find are more reliable.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had a guy, on stackoverflow, commenting condescendingly on my question (or was it an answer, can't remember) that I was wrong and I should edit my post with his answer instead. All would be well if it wasn't on a 6 year old post at the time, and he was wrong. Ah, stackoverflow - what happened to you? It was fine and dandy when it was all loose. Now you ask a question and it's immediately flagged for various reasons…

The one time I posted a question on SO, it got flagged as duplicate and there were links to multiple other questions that were not even remotely the same to mine. Even more so, the tagged questions were not even mutually the same!

It took two hours to carefully craft my question just to have it immediately shot down. It is needless to say I have not posted again since.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#124
post #36

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.

Extra bonus, if closed as "not a real question", heavily upvoted, at the top of the Google's 1st page of search results, and actually containing a (heavily upvoted as well) solution. P.S. Recursive bonus: closed with a comment ("you should just google it") and now actually the top result in search output (happens quite frequently) :)

Your PS is particularly annoying when the result is from an 8 year old forum thread, and the thread was closed with "this thread is too old; use Google."

To comment on the headline, I am an experienced developer who also uses Google and DuckDuckGo several times per day. It's often faster to look up a method in the Java or Ruby stdlib that way, rather than navigating through the official docs hierarchy.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much you remember is also correlated to how much you actually use certain things; it can be a good signal for whether you have practical experience with X. For some companies, it's what they need in a hire. For others it's OK to just ensure people have a sound problem solving strategy and above-average general cognition. I think you'll find varying levels of what you might consider nitpicking depending on the sor…

>> it can be a good signal for whether you have practical experience with X. This should be vetted out well in advance of an interview, especially for a developer. If you don't have at least a half dozen repos somewhere with code examples of sites or apps you've built, then there's a very high chance you're not going to get an interview. I've only been coding for 7-8 years and I have an extensive GitHub page, can poi…

I mean, that's great if you build things that screenshot well, or can open source. But say you've worked on closed source network code for the last 8 years. Stuff poking around with embedded systems or fpga's aren't really clone and run, you need some hardware.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#126
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…

When I am struggling and things are too generic, I even use the Stack Overflow Query interface[0], if you are a SQL Server nerd you can even get the execution plan and do whatever you can dream up.

For example: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/edit/4811... sum and average of posts score who have a comment starting with the word hacker or news.

[0]https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/new

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#127
I would go so far as to say anyone who brags about not using Google to look for answers (or looks down on someone who does so readily) is worse off for it. Nobody can know all the answers to every problem they will run into (this goes for any profession, not just programming) -- the first step if you don't have a quick answer yourself should be to search the internet for answers others have come up with, or at least more information.

That doesn't mean you just copy and paste whatever you find. But it means you are now more informed than you were before and can come to a better, faster solution.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#128
The only issue is the need to solve captchas because Google thinks you are scraping them.

I don't know if I am experienced or not (beyond the numbers of years programming) but I am sure "search engine oriented programming" give you a lot of advantages and connect dots that take years if you follow other routes.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#129
post #20
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.

Don't undercount that you also have the skill to determine whether an answer on stackoverflow (etc.) is actually correct and worthwhile. (I taught intro to CS for the first time last year, and watched people get very hung up by subtly broken things they found on the innertubes. To the point where we simply told them not to - we'd much rather have them asking the course staff, until they've developed the experience to…

I tried to learn openGL ES from the official android tutorial, which is subtly broken all over the place. It works but shouldn't. The funny thing is that when I googled it, there were lots of complaints about it being broken, and the author responded and fixed them... but years before...

I eventually got things working, though I feel far from confident about openGL ES. Actually, embedded shader code, packed arrays, limited debugging and my rusty matrix algebra doesn't make it easy.

Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

#130

Let's say tomorrow there was some major catastrophy in which every disk drive or tape drive was wiped, and every computer had reset. How would we fare in rebuilding society? I guess it would be similar if in 1950, all of books lost their ink or all of scientists/engineers had amnesia. I'm not trying to make a point other than it is interesting to think about it.

Humanity would have to come together to reconstruct Angular and Bootstrap from the ground up.

hilarious! Saving humanity with one ng-repeat and btn-primary at a time.
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