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Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

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Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#111

Post by Arainach »

In my opinion, there's a difference between having to go to the docs once and having to go to the docs (or example code) every time.

I am not a (frontend) web developer by career. I did LAMP webdev work as a college job 12+ years ago and, like the author of this article, do small personal web projects perhaps once or twice a year. I did one of them earlier this week.

Yes, I went to Google for basic things like "Javascript map lambda" or even "Javascript foreach syntax", but I refreshed myself on those exactly once and was then able to keep it in my short term memory through the completion of the project a few days later. I switch around so many similar-but-not-identical languages (Java, Go, Python, C++, etc.) in a year that it's often not worth it for me to memorize the minutae of each one. I know how to conceptually do something in whatever language, and use search engines and stack overflow to remind myself where to put the semicolons and the brackets.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#112

Post by eikenberry »

Title is misleading as they wanted to do it without any online resources, including online documentation. Using docs is a lot different from googling. I'm not surprised at all that they couldn't do it without documentation. I would have been a bit surprised if they couldn't do it just without google/SO, though I would have blamed that more on poor documentation.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#113

Post by gabereiser »

stakkur wrote: post #69

'Before Google', it seemed to go something like this: * Ask coworkers * Look at documentation * Try things out Things don't seem way different today; we've just replaced the first two items with a search engine. There is one difference I've noticed, though: an instant-access search engine makes it easier to 'fake' your way through something with less skill and knowledge. In the long run, this seems detrimental to pro…

Before google it was exactly like that. When I was younger and junior and eager to build whatever my boss wanted, coworkers would rely on each other for figuring things out. No fear of being labeled “incompetent”, “unskilled”, or “underperforming”. It was more team oriented.

Trying to reverse-engineer some crazy DHTML javascript algorithm used by one site so we can reproduce it in ours (for their members portal).

Coworker came to me asking if I could help her deconstruct the hair ball javascript code into something meaningful. It used variable names like “a, z, t1” etc.

While you can quickly google something and get back a barrage of answers, usually on the same solution, this is software we are talking about - there isn’t a One True Way and there never will be. The more we try to make a “right way to do things” we invent a new way.

Do I google when coding, sometimes. Do I need to? No. Does it make me faster to put my thinking cap on the wall and just go with #1 SO answer? Unfortunately yes.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#114

Post by cosmodisk »

phkahler wrote: post #16
sosodev wrote: post #5

Does it actually matter if I can? Is using reference material a bad thing? Edit: I know the article touches on that idea briefly but my argument would be "of course it doesn't matter". Sure, I could develop slightly faster with a more encyclopedic memory but I really doubt it would make an observable difference in the long-term. Most of my time isn't spent referencing libraries or syntax but instead I spend most of m…

Let's say Elon starts that colony on Mars and you think "Ima move there and write code for a living." You might have the internet, but its 15 minutes each direction. Nothing interactive works, and while they brought copies of Wikipedia, stack overflow didnt package so easily. Or more simply, can you write a web app without internet access?

Elon would take care of it : Tesla Code X© - whether you are underwater,on the moon or Mars, we got you covered with Reddit, HN, Stack Overflow dumps in an easy searchable database. Add-ons for PornHub are available separately.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#116

Post by t8e56vd4ih »

paxys wrote: post #14

I used to program with 6 thick reference books around me. Has memorizing SDKs, APIs, libraries ever been a thing? Or is this just the daily "everything is bad nowadays" post?

you name it ... looking something up in a book takes much more effort than just googling. that's why there was a stronger incentive to memorize.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#117

Post by makach »

Don't worry about it. Googling has come to stay. There is a lot of skills related to identifying what piece of code is relevant for your purpose.

No skills are basically required. No one is expected to do a basic web app from scratch - heck - most IDEs has boilerplate for creating a web app.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#118

Post by danaliv »

I don't think I've ever been able to write software without an API reference, and I've been at it since the (late) 1980s. I guess it depends on what you're Googling. Sometimes I can work out a way to do something, but what I really want is the idiomatic way to do it. No way to get there but to look it up. Or I need to know some specific fiddly bit about how a function behaves. That's a reference lookup. If I'm Googling "how to reverse a linked list" ;-(, well, that's maybe not so great.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#119

Post by stereolambda »

It's something that I'm mildly interested in because 1) finding the same thing on the Internet again is not always easy (the answer can be buried somewhere in the search results, the site rankings change)[1], 2) going to the web browser can be distracting, 3) there are the odd situations when you don't have Internet connection.

So here's my attempts. I store some annotated snippets in Joplin (could probably use org-mode or similar). I also collect programming ebooks and PDF'ed docs: sometimes you can still find them, sometimes you can 'print to PDF'. No idea how one would do it with javadoc for example.

The problem is interface for searching this stuff locally and reading. I use recoll for full text search and qpdfview for PDF viewing (the main reason is that it has tabs). Admittedly, this is not completely satisfying. Simple text search doesn't have the sophistication, PDF's feel less pleasant than web pages. Maybe something I could get used to if I went fully that route, but for now I don't feel compelled to do that (besides some experimentation).

My guess is that if you use a small language/libraries, or have a self-contained codebase, or do fairly rote things, it's possible to go without searching documentation. Otherwise... no?

[1] Or you could use bookmarks, but then, why not archive.

Re: Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t

#120

Post by johnsonjo »

I could do it, but I would likely have to have access to Dash [1] which is actually quite useful when you're on the go. I am a proud purchaser of Dash (though not at all affiliated with them), because it comes in handy when I'm somewhere with little to no internet.

[1]: https://kapeli.com/dash

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