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Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

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Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#131

Post by heavenlyblue »

soulofmischief wrote: post #88
limograf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ul = countable items in arbitrary order ol = countable items in a pertinent sequence dl = key value pairs table = a matrix of three or more keys and values

More mnemonically, ul = Unordered List ol = Ordered List dl = Definition List Definition List is the only description not immediately obvious, but understanding a definition as a key/value pair clears things up and isn't hard to remember.

I believe if the parent bothered to look up any HTML documentation, the name of the elements would be obvious to them.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#132

Post by freeone3000 »

abalone wrote: post #109
colechristensen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but theoretical computer science also deals with provability and goes into various areas of topology, reasoning, and proofs. These are not useful to engineers, or are only slightly useful, while a course on systems programming isn't useful to a theoretician, because a universal turing machine doesn't have hardware interrupts. Different specializations for different roles.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#134

Post by Bang2Bay »

setr wrote: post #124
_bxg1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.” I've met lots of younger devs who have varying degrees of impostor syndrome, so anecdotes like this probably help people like that feel less bad about not knowing everything.

I'm of the opinion that not googling stuff means you're not a proper engineer. And from what I've seen, those who don't google consistently also fail to understand the answers they find when they do google things. It is, in fact, an essential skill.

Why not Yahoo?

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#135

Post by unoti »

aloknnikhil wrote: post #7

On 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.

> how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first

Remember it like this: It's the same syntax as "cp". To copy a file you use "cp source dest". It's the same for ln: "ln -s source dest"

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#137

Post by lunchables »

abalone wrote: post #75

This 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.”

I see it at least a couple times a week on sub-reddits related to software development. Junior devs who are convinced more senior developers are super-geniuses who know everything from memory.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#138

Post by sharadov »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #115
abalone wrote: post #75

This 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…

Isn't that what a whiteboard interview is? Proving you can do things without google or else you aren't a proper engineer? (For the record I disdain whiteboard interviews as the accepted metric for testing one's ability)

Every engineer on HN (several threads that I've browsed) seems to have a serious disdain for coder-pad interviews/whiteboard sessions. And I think HN has a good representation of software engineers. So, who are these companies hiring?

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#139

Post by mopsi »

I often look up things I already know how to use just to see if there's a better way of doing it or any unintuitive side effects.

A lot of my work involves using Windows API and it has been around for so long that whatever issue I am facing, someone probably has had it before, and there might be an obscure function that already does what I'm trying to implement or work around.

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