The best programmers are the quickest to Google • Hacker News Board

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#41

Post by jasonlotito » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:33 PM UTC

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…

> Are the above statements true?

Yes. Google not strictly being Google itself, but searching other resources. Doctors do research. Scientist read papers. Everyone references something else.

So don't think of it as merely Googling because you don't know. It's Googling because you know someone else has solved this, or something similar, and you want apply someone else's knowledge to what you are doing.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#42

Post by nnoitra » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:34 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #34

nnoitra wrote: post #24

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…

I think the article has an implied context of "for work." Implementing data structures and algorithms is a great way to learn about them and to get better at programming. But in the context of work, where I need to get stuff done, I'm not going to implement a low level algorithm if I don't need to - I'm looking for a pre-built solution in the standard library, or heading to a search engine to find a third party libra…

Yes, because the ones in the standard library are very cleverly optimized and they are usually a hybrid of related algorithms.(For example qsort in C isn't exactly quicksort) But if you have a novel problem of algorithmic nature, having already built an intuition should help.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#43

Post by abraininavat » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:34 PM UTC

ry0ohki wrote: post #25

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 conce…

Surely the programming languages, libraries, and platforms you were using had documentation. It's not the point whether you are using www.google.com, mycompanyintranet.com/wiki, or yelling across the room to ask a question.

By the way, the three attributes you just stated are what makes anyone good at almost anything.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#44

Post by ry0ohki » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

benaiah wrote: post #31

ry0ohki wrote: post #25

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 conce…

Just out of curiosity, were you working at Fog Creek? What you said reminded me of an article[1] by Jeff Atwood. 1: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/09/has-joel-spolsky-ju...

Nope not FogCreek, it's possible the origins of our made-up language was done for similar reasons

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#45

Post by jonnytran » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #15

I couldn't help but read this and think about technical interviews that involve the candidate being asked to write code on a whiteboard - no Google, no code linting/hinting/completion etc. I'm very much in favor of candidates being asked to write some code under more realistic conditions, including finding solutions to parts of the exercise online. Of course, they should then be able to explain to the interviewer(s)…

Agreed. Nowadays in technical interviews, I make it a point to say that I would google the problem. Not googling just because it's an interview is exactly the kind of thinking that gets people stuck on real problems -- i.e. inside the box, instead of outside the box thinking. If you were given a real problem, would you limit your problem solving approaches to those implied by the context? That's exactly the kind of person I don't want to hire.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#46

Post by chacham15 » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

There are a few problems with that in my experience: you cant use all open source projects in a proprietary context and open source projects all have different dependencies. The former flat out stops you from using the code (and you shouldnt even read it to avoid any accidental lawsuits). The latter is a big problem because you dont want to use eight different frameworks in one projects.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#47

Post by gall » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:36 PM UTC

ericb wrote: post #30

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 a…

I feel the same way about my bash history.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#48

Post by jasonlotito » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:36 PM UTC

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.

Even if you are working on the cutting edge, you are still building on top of previously learned knowledge. Google is more than just quick fixes or simple solutions. If your expecting a problem to be solved by a recipe, it's not cutting edge.

However, reading papers and studies that relate to what you are working on will provide you with a better foundation to solve the problem.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#49

Post by nollidge » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:37 PM UTC

This is something that bugs me about whiteboard-style interviews - they test almost none of the typical day-to-day aspects of programming. Without Google, without docs, without a REPL, without the code-run-debug cycle, how is it that you think you're assessing how effective I am in real life?

EDIT: not to mention that you're also not testing me for one of the most important abilities of a coder in a software shop: how well I learn new things.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#50

Post by ry0ohki » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:37 PM UTC

abraininavat wrote: post #43

ry0ohki wrote: post #25

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 conce…

Surely the programming languages, libraries, and platforms you were using had documentation. It's not the point whether you are using www.google.com, mycompanyintranet.com/wiki, or yelling across the room to ask a question. By the way, the three attributes you just stated are what makes anyone good at almost anything.

You've worked at a startup? Documentation is usually the last thing people do unfortunately, at least in any kind of useful way. Sometimes there was documentation, but when only 10 people in the world are using a language there ends up being undocumented behavior or things that you can only discover when it happens to you or you ask the guy around the corner who created it...

edit Also wanted to say there is a huge difference between being able to Google and "Copy-Paste" a solution vs Googling the source documentation and figuring out the problem. We definitely could not have copy-paste programmers.