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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

#291

Post by selfhoster11 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #126
munk-a wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really depends on how much management there is for hand holding. I expect a good developer to get a ticket to fix the size of a button and be able to follow up with stakeholders about the size of the button next to it. It'd be really weird if we sunk so much effort into ticket writing that everything really was just reduced to a task - at that point the ticket author should just go ahead and fix the thing.

A dedicated ticket to go fix a button. That's a symptom of a pretty dysfunctional org. If my requirements are that precise I'll farm that to offshored contractors.

It's a symptom of a well organised org. The ticket doesn't need to have a lot of detail (unless your ticketing system is dysfunctional and forces you to input a lot of information, which is sadly more common than it needs to be), only enough to capture what needs to be done and where so it's not forgotten.

It's no different to filing a ticket with the building management to replace a broken lightbulb - it's in your interest to know whether they replaced it already without having to stand up from your desk to check, and it's in their interest to know which individual problems are located where so that they can plan their weekly maintenance run through the building accordingly.

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

#293

Post by withinboredom »

stonekyx wrote: post #289
GuB-42 wrote: post #285

An interesting approach would be try to code something with only the official documentation and source code of the libraries your are using. No internet except for the git clone. I like doing that as an exercise. It trains you well for a very common situation for professional developers. You have to work on a project, poorly documented, the original developers left long ago and no one really knows how it works, excep…

> It is a valuable skill, literally, companies are ready to pay good money to people who can do that. I totally agree that it's a very valuable skill, but just wondering, how would you demonstrate that skill in an interview? I personally find it pretty hard to demonstrate these "soft" skills, and even when I act as an interviewer in those rare cases, I find it hard to tell if a person is equipped with such skills.

I once had a side-gig where I advertised auditing out-sourced coding. Basically hundred-k loc reviews. It was fun, but word got around that I was good at it (uncovered security issues, reduced costs by finding things that could be optimized, etc). It’s on my resume, and that’s how interviewers know I can do the job. I can tell “war stories” about the code I reviewed, how I handled engineers that tried to obfuscate the code, etc.

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

#294

Post by moron4hire »

anon9001 wrote: post #264
pharmakom wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take a completely opposite view. If I get stuck on something, I go straight to StackOverflow etc to ask for a solution or at least get more information. Then, I can keep tinkering myself or switch to a completely different task. I am far more productive when I leverage The Hive Mind. Plus, these questions give me a great reference for next year when I am doing something similar but have forgotten the details. This…

> This approach probably works well because I know how things work at a high level; I think it would be disastrous to do this without any real understanding. I actually interview for this skill specifically. I stress to candidates that they can and should search the web in whatever way they would when tasked with code in real life. The speed at which someone can process search results and stackoverflow responses to f…

How long are you interviews? How long are you watching the developer before you prod them to Google search?

I like to think about a problem at least a little bit before giving up and asking for help. I have to at least be able to understand the problem before I can effectively find a solution.

And hell, these days it's only a 50/50 shot whether searching will actually help with my problems or I'll just end up in a rabbit hole of SEO spam.

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

#295

Post by JustSomeNobody »

It's okay to look up documentation because you forgot something. But if you have to copy swaths of code, that's not okay[0].

[0] In the "company X is paying me 6 figures / year to code" sense. If you're a hobby coder, do whatever makes you happy.

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

#296

Post by axismundi »

beefield wrote: post #219
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I make no attempt to write code without googling. In my position as a robotics engineer my work covers such a breadth that I guess I just outsource my memory to Google. I don’t remember the syntax for many common Linux commands. I don’t remember how bash scripts work. I constantly look recommended ways of solving certain problems. Google is just integrated in to my process.

This applies to me as well. There are lots and lots of small things I do so rarely that I just can't keep the details in my memory. And I really would love to be able to type "man scp" and on the first lines of the man page to just get a couple of basic examples that I could basically copy-paste and change the server addresses to suit. But instead I get a ciphertext of all possible flags I can use, so in the end it i…

http://cht.sh it does exactly that, also from command line.

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

#297

Post by JustSomeNobody »

pharmakom wrote: post #257
TeMPOraL wrote: post #232

Using documentation is fine. You aren't going to solder stuff only by eyeballing the component packaging either. 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 alre…

I take a completely opposite view. If I get stuck on something, I go straight to StackOverflow etc to ask for a solution or at least get more information. Then, I can keep tinkering myself or switch to a completely different task. I am far more productive when I leverage The Hive Mind. Plus, these questions give me a great reference for next year when I am doing something similar but have forgotten the details. This…

If it's not documentation, I go to my team first. We almost never need outside help for how to solve something. And it gives us another chance to talk about design.

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

#298

Post by namelosw »

aerovistae wrote: post #242
gebt wrote: post #209

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…

I thought this was a joke until I realized you were serious; I was expecting that as I read further into the list it would get to "-develop without using my hands" and "-develop with my eyes closed" (which are legitimate situations for disabled developers, btw) but which would be absurd for anyone to practice under conventional conditions.

I accidentally find close my eyes while doing things helps.

When I'm running I periodically close my eyes and it helps me breathe a lot.

When I'm programming I often close my eyes if I know what's the current state and what operations I'm going to do for several following steps, until I lose track of them. It helps me to concentrate and recover my sanity.

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

#299

Post by II2II »

necovek wrote: post #284
II2II wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using documentation is fine. You aren't going to solder stuff only by eyeballing the component packaging either. > 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? I would suggest that the type of information is important, rather than the medium. It is not that s…

I've stopped relying on Google to give me reference documentation on searching the function/library name. I generally go directly to the API reference and do the search there because Google results might not even have it on the first few pages. I actually get annoyed at being pointed at the StackOverflow question that shares a few keywords with my search, but is completely unrelated otherwise.

That is similar to my approach, though I will download the documentation if it is available that way. It is always available, you know which version of the documentation you're using, and I never understood why an intermediary should be involved when something is referenced frequently. (Yes, I realize the latter is a personal quirk.)

As for StackOverflow results, at least there is a chance that they will be more useful than most third-party information. I have found too many sites that attempt to rehash the documentation, perhaps in clearer terms but virtually always covering common knowledge and completely omitting everything else.

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

#300

Post by tuankiet65 »

easton wrote: post #195
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.

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

Zeal is similar and cross-platform. I think Zeal takes its docs from Dash though.

https://zealdocs.org/

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