I'm impressed he only had one day full of googling for Date stuff in js. I easily could fill a week with such queries.
Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
101–110 of 399 posts
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#102This 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…
This comment propagates the nonsense that skills with algos are somehow harder or more exclusive than software engineering skills. They are orthogonal and interviews that conflate them are part of the problem. Consider this, many of the most novel algorithms were published without ever being run in actual software or in part of a larger system.
Most people would say algorithms are the building blocks of software engineering, not orthogonal.
Most screens also include a systems design test. Maybe you could argue all we ever should do is system design tests. But they don’t always involve coding.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's how I finally memorized it: ln has a 1-file-argument invocation, so ln -s ../../a_fine_file will create a symbolic link to that file under the current directory and under the "a_fine_file" file name. The single argument case has to have the file you want to link to as input. That generalizes nicely as the 2-file-argument invocation maintaining the logic.
Ha! My trick is to ln -s a b then look at the link with ls -l, then remove my garbage! Your way is much better.
I just do it the one way, get the error that the destination already exists, then swap them.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#104This 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 don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.” Yes the whole interview process is based on the idea of doing stuff for the company that you wouldn't actually do. Indeed I interview my candidate's ability to find resources, to know what considerations are needed, how to deal with IDEs, collaborative tools, the git protocol. I will fire someone on the spot for impleme…
Are you hiring?
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#105This 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.
Fred Brooks said this back in 1975. He called it a surgical team.
Of course, no manager reads The Mythical Man Month, and those that do don’t follow it.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#106On 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.
The infuriating thing is that Windows' mklink does it the other way around... link, then target. It took me years to stop RTFM every single time I'd user mklink/ln
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#107This 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.
Iowa State has separate degrees for Software Engineering and Computer Science
Which isn't the difference between doctor and nurse, more like an MD and PhD in medicine, one focused on practice, the other research.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#108This 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 don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.” Yes the whole interview process is based on the idea of doing stuff for the company that you wouldn't actually do. Indeed I interview my candidate's ability to find resources, to know what considerations are needed, how to deal with IDEs, collaborative tools, the git protocol. I will fire someone on the spot for impleme…
And I think those “maker” types of roles don’t need a hard C.S. screen. But algorithms aren’t just about reimplementing the classics. There are points even in ordinary “DB front end” type of work where understanding algos will affect how you scale. You may find you’ve just been getting away with brute force approaches because that data sets were small. You can go very far like that but there may come a day when it matters and then it will really matter.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, cs needs a split in roles kinda like nurse and doctor.
Iowa State has separate degrees for Software Engineering and Computer Science Which isn't the difference between doctor and nurse, more like an MD and PhD in medicine, one focused on practice, the other research.
I would think the engineers take algorithm and data structure courses so that’s not quite the distinction we’re talking about here.
Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
#110This is a really interesting peek into the developers mind. Right away I notice I google things differently than the author. I try and hit up phrases that match a question (which is why I probably over index on stack overflow). The author seems to hit up ideas that remind me of something that might be the title of a blog post or something. Also, my search is definitely more full of stack trace keywords. Probably 80%…
I almost never search for stack traces: I pick out class names or error codes and search for that instead. How's your success rate with finding useful information?
I've had a fair bit of luck searching on quickly chosen fragments of stack traces.