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Dash is fantastic for this. You can download all of stackoverflow and docs for most languages and keep them on your system if you want to go offline. https://kapeli.com/dash
Too bad that website doesn't specify how much space that all takes. Would be interesting to know.
On-line information? That's another question entirely. This would be a more interesting test: can you make a basic webapp (or other type of app representative of your experience) without Internet access?
If you're dealing with an older stack and toolkit, you probably have many books' worth of manuals already installed. Unless you're unlucky and didn't notice the documentation isn't installing along with your tools. Or you're on Windows[0]. You can use them to work out most of the problems you're facing.
Newer tools though? There's this annoying trend of under-documenting things, and relying on people on StackOverflow to fill in the gaps. Or even worse, setting up a Slack/Discord for the project, and getting people to help each other there.
Maybe I'm just old, but when I'm working with computer tools, I prefer to solve the issues myself, instead of chasing around the Internet and talking to people. I also like to be able to continue to work when my Internet dies, or I'm out of range, or the site hosting the docs dies (happens more often than one would expect).
And to answer my own question: yes, I can write basic apps of the type I work on (and bunch of others, including games) without Internet access, as long as you let me use my computer - where I have access to heaps of off-line documentation and lots of prior source code to supplement it.
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[0] - Someone at MS had the bright idea to ship PowerShell without help for its commands by default, so that the first thing Get-Help tells you is to download the man pages...
This ability would be a big time saver during development. I enjoy to develop without Googling; really enjoy! I tried some other amazing things: - developing without using touchpad or mouse. - debugging without running code until the end. - developing with turn offed WiFi. In general, I'm always trying to reduce my needs. I think this practices would help me to be more accurate, more independent, and become able to l…
Totally agree. It's a practice of resilience, even if you don't do it most of the time (because googling is indeed usually a massive time saver).
So not googling is a time saver here.
Even if I could, I would not call that an achievement. In programming, we are expected to understand concepts, not memorize documentation of a library. Of course, if you are too specialized working with few libraries/frameworks, you will naturally end up knowing its methods by heart. But that doesn't mean searching things up online is a bad practice. In fact, I believe it is more useful to keep updating yourself from…
While true, it would be reasonable to expect to have one single documentation that is sufficient, and not to have to resort to searching aka googling.
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in the php world you usually have decent man pages for webservers handling php requests and generally speaking php frameworks and packages have good inline documentation. also there is a package for anything you may need and and ide will usually give hints based on that documentation. most frameworks come either with examples or commands to get your started. symfony even had their docs available for local reading as…
> if its (sic!) 2021 and you still write code using vim and niche languages then you are doing it wrong That's literally what I keep hearing since 30 years lol (for vi proper not vim, that is).
This comment is only precipitated by your use of (sic).
If you are going to point out others' mistakes like that, it would be better not to make any yourself.
There are many ways to rewrite your grammatically incorrect sentence. Here's one:
That's literally what I have been hearing since 30 years ago lol
Or another: That's literally what I kept hearing for 30 years lol
For clarity, I have no problem with these grammatical errors and beg understanding for my own.
Please lay off pointing out others' mistakes unless they impede understanding.
I made a conscious decision to fix this.
I have switched from Java to Go, effectively lowering the level of abstraction. Then from IDE to Vim, getting rid of autocomplete. I turned off syntax highlighting, allowing my brain to parse and interpret code more effectively. Last but not least was starting to use embedded documentation `go doc {{ package }}` via terminal and reading language sources to learn how internals work.
It was hard at the beginning, and my productivity dropped for some time. Later, when new neural connections were created in my brain, things started to improve.
Some of the benefits that I enjoy now are a better understanding of the code, improved knowledge of language libraries and interfaces.
I have tested this approach by coding in planes and trains without access to the Internet, and it works well.
Did it fix my problem with whiteboards? I do not know, but I am happy with the new skills.
Even if I could, I would not call that an achievement. In programming, we are expected to understand concepts, not memorize documentation of a library. Of course, if you are too specialized working with few libraries/frameworks, you will naturally end up knowing its methods by heart. But that doesn't mean searching things up online is a bad practice. In fact, I believe it is more useful to keep updating yourself from…
I learned to write java code (structure, basic io (terminal, file, datastructures) blind like in word or notepad and it would run without errors for a google interview; It is not that much you need to know actually but when you learn it once, it lingers around for quite a long time and it gives you a different feeling of confidence that you actually know java (i was writing java code for 6? years before that already so i do know java).
Its very similiar to my personal experience with doing push ups: If you never have done them you don't have any muscles at certain areas; Now after going from 0 to 15 push ups over a few month, i gained a general better physiology on upper body strenge and it still lingers around.
Non of both are critical in a day to day scenario but both experiences were fun/interesting and this base is now here where it was not before.
It brings me, mentally speaking, closer to really get something like java.
Appologies for the shitpost but found the blog post a bit low effort as well.
I make myself do it occasionally just to make sure I’m not getting too lazy about paying attention to details. I can build a basic web site in both golang and nodejs, from scratch, using a plain editor with no autocomplete. It’s actually a very good feeling. I can even do a react app from scratch if we aren’t counting webpack config.
My last proof of concept project at work, the server side was running behind so I spit out an extremely basic but totally functional node server and frontend in an afternoon without using any fancy frameworks and the Java dude was still trying to build the same thing three days after the demo was done. It’s pretty useful to just be able to write it straight from your keyboard without having to go googling a bunch of stuff.
Why is everyone acting like it’s impossible or unreasonable?