Can you make a basic web app without Googling? I can’t • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by scruple » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 5:51 AM UTC

ksec wrote: post #50

I would not be surprised if even Professional Web Developers cant do it. Especially if you include deployment. This isn't the old days of FTP, Perl or PHP anymore. There are too much information I cant memorise every single bit of it. And I dont think you should either. Especially in the age of Google. My memory capacity has its limit, and there are things I just decide it is not important enough to memorise when I c…

Can I use Rails and Capistrano? I can probably do it inside of an hour, without Google, if so...

Granted, this assumes that the deployment target is ready to receive the deployment payload...

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

#162

Post by tlarkworthy » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

I worked in field robotics and sometimes you would find yourself in a boat without internet fixing robotic software problems at sea.

I took 50GB of wiki resources mirrored in my pocket.

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

#163

Post by qwantim1 » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

animex wrote: post #160

colecut wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remain living happily in the old days of PHP, somehow making functioning applications and being paid well. Life is easy and good.

My last interview: the interviewers said I was the only candidate who didn't Google any syntax or articles after being given a small 60 min development task from scratch. I was applying for a senior dev role and if I couldn't deliver a tiny web app, I wouldn't hire me either. I could have just solved the task procedurally but I asked if they wanted to see a more OO solution to demo a bit more knowledge. I think back…

It’s impressive what you say, but I would hire someone that would need to google to develop something if they were to code it quickly enough and to code it well.

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

#164

Post by MattGaiser » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:35 AM UTC

tlarkworthy wrote: post #162

I worked in field robotics and sometimes you would find yourself in a boat without internet fixing robotic software problems at sea. I took 50GB of wiki resources mirrored in my pocket.

What did you include?

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

#165

Post by acwan93 » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:36 AM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #77

I remember one of my physics teachers told me that what it used to mean to be a good mathematician was you could do mathematics quickly in your head. But then cheap and ubiquitous calculators changed all that, and what it meant to be a good mathematician was solving complex chains of problems. But then cheap computers changed that, and what it means to be a good mathematician now was just setting up the right equatio…

It’s like how people equate rattling of facts as being smart. When you’re effectively carrying the equivalent of all human knowledge with you at all times, memorizing facts and historical dates seems obsolete.

Now it’s about filtering out the “noise” facts and figuring out which facts or dates are relevant.

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

#166

Post by MattGaiser » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:40 AM UTC

There are just so many things you rarely do and do only at the start of a project. I have done most of my development with Django on the backend. I start a project once every few months at most. There is plenty of config that I am copy and pasting from the internet. There are lots of little quirks like CORS that are handled once and never touched again.

So yeah, I might be able to get a basic page going, but I am sure I would need it for the postgres integration.

Only with Pycharm, so I can scroll through and search code easily as an alternative to Google.

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

#167

Post by jrickert » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:48 AM UTC

When I run a technical interview for a dev role, I make a point to ask the candidate to Google their way to a solution since I figure that's probably one of the top skills they'll need on the job.

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

#168

Post by dfee » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

All you really need to know is `python -m http.server`

The definition of what constitutes a web app isn’t clear but if it’s JS, `npx create-react-app` and `npm start` should be enough.

[edit] Whoever downvoted me, check my GitHub. @dfee. Also, I’ve literally written web services or apps in 5 languages in the last 12 months.

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

#169

Post by olliej » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

I couldn't and I worked on a JS engine for most of a decade. Hell I "designed" one of the modern features in the spec.

Write a web app? noooooope

Write JS the appends to innerText or writes to a canvas? sure.

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

#170

Post by 29athrowaway » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

An alternative: Install Dash or Zeal, download docsets for your language and libraries, and use a keystroke to pull up documentation under the cursor.