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

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#51

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

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.

Yeah you're way off here. If my doctor said "I don't look things up" I'd run out the door. A doctor who looks things up is a doctor who cares to get things right.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#52

Post by abraininavat » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:39 PM UTC

codex wrote: post #23

hnwh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the best doctor wrote the original material

I agree with everything else in your comment, but that doesn't make sense. How do you arrive at that conclusion?

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#53

Post by windexh8er » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:40 PM UTC

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…

Fantastic insight, thank you!

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#54

Post by PakG1 » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:40 PM UTC

ry0ohki wrote: post #50

abraininavat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Heck, that attitude about documentation is everywhere, not just startups. It's just that good documentation is one of the things that separates the good shops from the bad shops.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#55

Post by MBlume » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

nollidge wrote: post #49

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: h…

A good whiteboard interviewer will be those things for you. And language details are less important -- "well, let's both agree a for loop has this syntax for now"

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#56

Post by bti » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

dmcg wrote: post #35

and when Google fails, a well posed question on Stack Overflow can get results in 10 minutes. I worked my way through a whole Scala project that way - Stack Overflow Driven Development.

I love that I am starting to see more and more SO answers at the top of my Google results.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#57

Post by nissimk » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:46 PM UTC

Yeah, we need to always be learning new stuff and the way you learn is by RTFM. The point is that now Google is TFM. Or at least it's the index into every manual published. So unless you are already an expert in every server program, every library and every language that you are using, the way you acquire the knowledge of how to accomplish whatever specific task you are working on is to refer to the manual. You still need to know the technical term for what you are trying to do so you know what to search for and you have to know how to evaluate and select different technologies and how to fit them together, but the details of how to work stuff and solve many specific issues is best found on the Internet.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#58

Post by amalag » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:46 PM UTC

mobweb wrote: post #38

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…

But they key to becoming a non-beginner are the first two bits, not the third. It's developing that filter experts have which separates relevant information from irrelevant information. Lots of beginners use Google in a backwards sort of way, having been trained to "look for the solution." It's not about memorization, then, it's about this compression algorithm we call "being an expert." I think this goes pretty much…

Yes it's funny when they are paying me to do tech support and the first thing i do is google their exact error message, but I know how to hone in on relevant information.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#59

Post by hnwh » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:47 PM UTC

codex wrote: post #23

hnwh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree... but the "best" doctor is also 5k miles away from me, and out of my immediately budget, since insurance doesn't cover it.. so.. I'll settle for "effective"

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#60

Post by windexh8er » Mon, Feb 25, 2013, 6:47 PM UTC

nollidge wrote: post #49

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: h…

Is anybody going down the path of giving the candidate X hours yo complete a project, shoe iterations via source control history, showcase documentation and the overall build - plan? I would think you'd find the high performers easier in this light.

Not being a programmer by day but proficient in bash and Python I was in an interview last year where the person asking the questions did just not get it. In one example he asked me to count the number of files that had a specific string in the name. I excluded the file descriptor based on his ask. So, he said I got it wrong. I explained the way it was presented I was making the problem harder, and more exact, but he wouldn't budge. The point being, I could easily do what he asked, but wasn't actually measured on that.