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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

#301

Post by necovek »

II2II wrote: post #299
necovek wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 usef…

I used to keep all the reference documentation downloaded and available offline, but at some point I got lazy because Google did give me the API reference as a first hit.

I guess it's time to start bookmarking those /usr/share/docs/... paths again :)

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

#302

Post by mtVessel »

tutfbhuf wrote: post #92
lostlogin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zoom meetings might be a problem though. If it prompted the meeting organiser to put their one point into an email, thereby saving 6 people a 45 minute meeting, would it be a problem or a feature?

Would be an interesting case study to find out if remote developers from Mars are actually more productive due to lack of synchronous communication.

Anyone who has worked with a team in a time zone 8+ hours away from their own can already answer this question. It depends entirely on the technical and communication skills of all involved parties.

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

#303

Post by avereveard »

Well not using node.js, but with Java and a modern ide with autocompletion I can definitely do it; as a matter of fact that was the normal way we worked for a long while, and it's still probably the reason why today I steer clear of framework with too many undocumented corner cases or with too wide a surface to understand it all.

Without documentation and autocompletion tho it would be a messy process of trial and error, I wouldn't even call it programming, albeit I've done it in the past, with the PHP toolchain of old. Hated every minute of it tho.

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

#304

Post by huffmsa »

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…

https://tldr.sh/

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

#305

Post by colecut »

jeena wrote: post #262
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.

I think I would die from boredom if I had your job doing the same thing which I know how to do over and over again. Wouldn't you just automate something like that with a Factory in Java? Somehow my brain works the exact opposite if I already know how to do something without googling it then it's not interesting anymore and I move on to the next thing outside of my comfort zone.

I have a fiancee, I have a 10 year old child, She has 9 and 7 year olds.

We live together, I work from home, they school from home.

I manage to not get bored.

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

#307

Post by syferfyre »

tuankiet65 wrote: post #300
easton wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

When I try to download zeal for mac, it redirects me to the dash website.

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

#308

Post by marcus_holmes »

astura wrote: post #283
marcus_holmes wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem is remembering the syntax of the language I'm in rather than other languages I've learned. To use your analogy; it gets tricky doing push-ups because my body remembers doing crunches and my knees get in the way. Better analogy: I'm learning German at the moment, but my brain keeps "helpfully" supplying the French word whenever I'm mentally grepping for German vocab. Remembering that JS switches need a brea…

Your IDE should take care of that for you. Disclaimer: I used to write code without internet access every day for years (was in a secured area where internet and phones are not allowed).

Yeah, it kinda does, in that when I save the file it tells me I made the mistake. But I still made the mistake.

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

#310

Post by kortilla »

908B64B197 wrote: post #133
kortilla wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWE interviews (at FAANGs at least) don’t care about library specifics though. As long as you know the syntax and how to write algos/data structures, you can make it through. There is a strong argument that being good at that isn’t required for most SWEs (including at FAANG), but it is something that having library/framework references doesn’t really help with.

> There is a strong argument that being good at that isn't required for most SWEs (including at FAANG) Algos/data structures are used as a proxy for problem solving and how fast someone can learn. Plus every decent CS program will have a few courses on it. Also, internal codebases are, well, internal. You won't get a nicely formatted Stack Overflow response on how X works if X is deep in the Google Source tree.

> Algos/data structures are used as a proxy for problem solving and how fast someone can learn.

A piss poor one if you ask me. The truth is that it’s a skill where you need to internalize what various low level data structures buy you to know when to reach for them.

Most of the code I saw at Google was boring ass proto transforms based on business logic. Knowing when to use a map vs an array was about as complex as it got for 95% of the positions.

Additionally, knowing the algorithms/ds (as all Googlers are supposed to) did not help for that normal work. A bunch of folks I worked with in the open source world produced better structured, better tested, and more performant code than many of the internal folks but they couldn’t join Google because of the algo/ds bar.

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