Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently

Post by Tiksi » Sun, May 01, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

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…

Post by sokoloff » Sun, May 01, 2016, 1:31 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #95

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.

Post by eru » Sun, May 01, 2016, 2:04 AM UTC

jakub_g wrote: post #114

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…

Happened to me several times to find my own answer/question on SE, or one of my work colleague's. However, even more often I find answers that I upvoted in the past (sometimes I deliberately look for them, sometimes by accident). When I see an upvote from myself, I can be sure I can immediately use the answer because I already verified it in the past. SO is like a big, googleable, writable public wiki for me, with an…

Post by eru » Sun, May 01, 2016, 2:13 AM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #118

kajecounterhack wrote: post #87

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…

Post by abustamam » Sun, May 01, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

koolba wrote: post #28

kyberias wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried to pat yourself on the back by trying to upvote your own answer in Stack Overflow? I tried once. They didn't let me do it.

Even better ... I tried to downvote myself to the same result.