I forget syntaxes of various languages or language features, so it's really handy that emacs can show them to me from stackoverflow with completion: https://i.imgur.com/dDvHfOn.gif
i need a vim version of this.
Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
71–80 of 399 posts
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you learn Maven AND Gradle? Pick one.
Ahaha, if it were that simple...
Concrete example:
I know gradle, and pretty well at that. I had to learn the basics of maven to develop a Jenkins plugin (at work). Developing jenkins plugins for a long time required using maven. Now there's the option for using gradle, but my recollection was that it was a sub-par experience.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#73On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.
I'm the same way with scp, I never remember the order and then it changes if you're uploading or downloading. Also, an obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1168/
I don't understand where the confusion is with scp. It's just like cp, except you have a syntax for making some of the arguments remote. It doesn't change the order, it always does semantically the same thing of moving something(s) somewhere.
This is not to criticize - we all have places our mental models break down unexpectedly. I'm just interested in how that's happening.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#74On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.
My memory aid is "link file as linkname".
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#75This is great but the premise seems kind of straw man. I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.”
Perhaps this is a reference to the interviewing process. Tests are a different thing, though. I’ve been on practical technical screens where you can google, because the test was about building a larger system, and they don’t care if you don’t remember this or that API syntax. But at the same time I get if you’re trying to assess someone’s aptitude for devising novel algorithms, sometimes a closed book test makes sense.
I think there are many devs (myself included earlier in my career) that push back in the algorithm tests because, well, it’s really hard. How often do you have to derive novel algos? A lot of our work is kind of UI frontends to DBs or gluing things and most of the sort of hard scalable algorithm problems someone else has implemented in a library. So why go through 6 months of really hard study, just to get that kind of job?
Well, I think here should be “maker” roles where you can bypass the hard CS stuff and just crank code, if you have an impressive portfolio of work. But having a deep understanding of data structures (not just arrays and maps) and algorithms really gives you a mastery of your craft, especially around performance and scalability.
Nobody should be screened out because they didn’t remember a particular bit of syntax though. (But it should be noted most algo tests don’t require anything but the language basics.)
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#76On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.
There are some clever tips here how to remember. Ages ago I struggled too so for half a day I just kept repeating the words "ln target linkname" in my head. Anyone else?
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#77On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.
This is how I remembered it: Look, it's just like ''cp'', except you're making a symlink, not a copy.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#78This is great but the premise seems kind of straw man. I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.” Perhaps this is a reference to the interviewing process. Tests are a different thing, though. I’ve been on practical technical screens where you can google, because the test was about building a larger system, and they don’t care if you don’t remember this or that API…
I agree, cs needs a split in roles kinda like nurse and doctor.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#79On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.
It bothered me as well, my mnemonic became "link to using "
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#80On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.
I totally get that you don't remember what goes first, it happens to me with tons of commands... but googling it? Why don't you just execute the command and see if it worked?