151–160 of 181 posts
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.
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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 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 often find that by the time I've written a clear enough explanation of the problem I'm trying to solve (in a stack overflow text edit box, usually), I figure out the answer on my own.
Then I have to exhaustively Google to make sure that it's not an obvious Google search away. Then I start listing the steps that I've tried before, and I realize a possibility that I hadn't considered before.
The possibility works, and I close the window. Oh.
These days, I usually just walk the dog. By the time that I get back, I've usually figured out the answer or figured out how I'm going to look for the answer. The dog doesn't mind that his owner is babbling about code for the entire walk because he's a dog.
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I use DDG on my non-work machines. Google is better at finding stuff for programming, particularly the random error messages.
I've tried to use DDG for programming but I've found that Google's efficiency is just too good to make DDG worthwhile. I guess I've decided to take the privacy hit in regards to developing activities.
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I use DDG on my non-work machines. Google is better at finding stuff for programming, particularly the random error messages.
I've tried to use DDG for programming but I've found that Google's efficiency is just too good to make DDG worthwhile. I guess I've decided to take the privacy hit in regards to developing activities.
and you might find DDG is much better for devs. they have built in language guides and various other conveniences.
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.
If the candidate knows the problem he/she is facing and can formulate good query to look for a solution; that's a ++
Google and StackOverflow fill a much wider niche however.
After doing a lot of interviewing, particularly when asking the same question over and over again, I've noticed the quality of what an interviewee decides to Google varies greatly and can give a lot of insight that just solving the problem alone can't. I've been amazed by some of the incomprehensible things people Google, even among those with the supposed same credentials, skillsets, and backgrounds. Aside from whet…
Would love to know more about what you noticed from seeing the choice of what to search for. Care to share some examples?
I saw another candidate Google "socket get command line arguments" and then stare at a stack overflow answer for a few minutes that had absolutely nothing to do with the problem. What they were attempting to do was just read data from a socket. Some people just seem to throw things at the wall to see what sticks.
Ironically, the one time that I did not use Google frequently (as a programmer) was when I was working on Google Search. It's hard to Google the answers for how the search engine works, particularly when they're locked up in the heads of only one or two people. Use it all the time otherwise, for personal projects and startups (really, all of my startup ideas would be complete non-starters if Google didn't exist). Jus…
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Like when you are looking at live debugging information that is scrolling fast but you are still able to pick out problems?
I think they mean looking for the value/path that doesn't make sense.
I find it to be very irritating if it happens for people that should know better...