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The best programmers are the quickest to Google

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Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#21

Post by hnwh »

gte910h wrote: post #13
codex wrote: post #8

"The best doctors are the quickest to Google." "The best scientists are the quickest to Google." "The best engineers are the quickest to Google." Are the above statements true? Quite possibly. I would argue that the best in their fields are those writing the answers that are indexed by Google to be found by others. However, usually the best in their fields are also good at using Google. Unfortunately, the worst in th…

My doctor said "I don't know, I have to go look that up". He's probably going to stay my doctor for a very long time for that one sentence.

I suffer from a cross disciplinary illness, in which very few doctors have experience (because it doesn't fit into one of the major well defined specialties). You can't imagine how happy it makes me when a doctor tells me "I have to go look that up", as opposed to.. no.. there's nothing to worry about, you're just imagining that, or whatever

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#23

Post by codex »

hnwh wrote: post #21
gte910h wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My doctor said "I don't know, I have to go look that up". He's probably going to stay my doctor for a very long time for that one sentence.

I suffer from a cross disciplinary illness, in which very few doctors have experience (because it doesn't fit into one of the major well defined specialties). You can't imagine how happy it makes me when a doctor tells me "I have to go look that up", as opposed to.. no.. there's nothing to worry about, you're just imagining that, or whatever

Absolutely. Doctors are particularly egoistic and don't deal well with long-tail problems. But that doesn't make yours the best doctor; the best doctor wrote the original material. Willingness to research the answer just makes your doctor an effective doctor, because they ultimately deliver the correct answer.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#24

Post by nnoitra »

To be honest I completely agree with the quote. The most important thing should be the ability to reason about Computer Science and programming. On the other hand, I've written and implemented tons of Algorithms and DTs for the sole purpose of learning. I have a lot of accumulated toy code. "So unless you’ve already memorized that sorting algorithm by heart, why in the world would you want to spend 2 hours trying to figure it out yourself? " For the sake of learning. I may not memorize the entire code of merge sort but I will sure as hell know how the merge procedure is implemented. Additionally you develop a feel and intuition for it. However, when it comes to showing off your coding skills I would recommend building useful apps, I doubt any employer is going to be impressed about toy code that implements DFS.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#25

Post by ry0ohki »

I've always believed this, of course then I worked at a company that wrote it's own programming language for it's product, and there was nothing to Google for (I still don't understand why they did this but stay with me).

In that environment, you learn quickly what skills separate a good programmer from a bad one. The traits I found the most useful:

-Learning speed (ability to quickly grasp a completely foreign concept)

-Creativity (without a template of how others do it, you are the trail blazer)

-Patience, because the really bad programmers wouldn't even try, they would curse it as stupid and leave or get someone else to do the work.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#26

Post by prawks »

jfarmer wrote: post #14

Yes and no. I'm a co-founder of http://devbootcamp.com so I see this every day in the context of people learning to be programmers. "The best programmers I know understand how to architect and build large projects piece by piece. They can focus on the macro because don’t get hung up in the pieces. They know how to use Google to find solutions fast. DRY." I agree with the first and second bit and strictly speaking the…

Correct. If I'm understanding you, I'd summarize the distinction as follows:

Google should be used as a reference. It should not be used in place of educated judgement.

This goes along with the ideology that you should not trouble yourself with monkey-memorization. When learning to program (for instance), concepts are far more important and useful, as you are constantly faced with making educated decisions. Decisions should not be made based on reference material alone.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#27

Post by 0x0 »

I think the key takeaway here is not just being the quickest to Google, but the quickest to google well.

It's so frustrating to see people trying to google a problem, but fumbling with a poorly written query and/or focus on the wrong search result hit snippets.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#28

Post by gte910h »

cdl wrote: post #7

From my experience of not doing this early on, the quicker you take this advice, the quicker you will build really cool things.

IMO, school worries about plagiarism cause young engineers to be overly adverse to looking and seeing if the problem is already solved before attempting their own solution

Too much NIH syndrome, and NIH among those least qualified to invent it usually

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#29

Post by JanezStupar »

dlo wrote: post #19

It depends on what you're working on. If you're working at the cutting edge, you will find that Google often doesn't have the answers you need... simply because they aren't out there.

Not everything we do is cutting edge. You may be working on the cutting edge and there may be no answers for you. However very likely there are some notes that this or that is so cutting edge that there are no (known, good) answers.

Most often, however, you are just querying the database wrong. You either don't know the specific jargon or you are searching for an overloaded term.

Its kinda like when I get pitched by non technical people who are keen on starting up and they come with this "revolutionary, never seen before webapp" idea. Usually within two Google queries I will have some established players already working on the specific market, or at least digital corpses of some previous players. When I get no results, even after an hour or two of searching - that usually means that there is no market, where the would be founders are seeing it.

"Cutting edge" is often a synonym for "not having a clue" :D.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#30

Post by ericb »

No, the best programmers have done it before, and documented it. Every good programmer should have an Evernote or failing that, a Tiddlywiki for all non-trivial information.

Googling is hit or miss--that great source for how to set up ssh certificates in Apache might rank poorly tomorrow, and pages which don't do show how to make a pem might be top ranked tomorrow.

Evernote has saved me tons of time... I look at it as a digital extension of my brain.

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