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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

#181

Post by krapp »

hotshothenry wrote: post #178

I Googled "how to handle error messages in php" for your co-founder and came up with this http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_error.asp , since clicking on the "Get an invite" button (on https://framebase.io ) while leaving the email field blank throws an exception error: Error: exception 'Exception' with message 'MDB2 Error: null value violates not-null constraint, _doQuery: [Error message: Could not execute statement]…

You should have googled 'how to validate required fields before passing them to SQL because someone will click the button without having added an email...'

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#182

Post by bad_user »

kamaal wrote: post #177
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…

Any doctor who says he knows everything/a lot of things is plainly lying or just BS'ing his way through. The doctor's way of googling is if the patient falls under common pattern of diseases, like say common cold, cough, fever etc kind of diseases or some thing like commonly known infection that is spreading around to everyone. Treating such patients is a cake walk as there is a well defined treatment protocol to fol…

Good doctors are pattern matchers. In complex cases they do research by reading books or asking others, but they already have a good idea in what's going on.

A doctor that can only recognize diseases like the common cold is not a good one. Your example is exaggerated and also, the patient may already be dead by the time the investigation is over, which is worsened by the fact that aggressive treatments (like strong antibiotics) can do even more damage, so a good doctor has to have a pretty good grasp on what's going on already.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#183

Post by kamaal »

bad_user wrote: post #182
kamaal wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any doctor who says he knows everything/a lot of things is plainly lying or just BS'ing his way through. The doctor's way of googling is if the patient falls under common pattern of diseases, like say common cold, cough, fever etc kind of diseases or some thing like commonly known infection that is spreading around to everyone. Treating such patients is a cake walk as there is a well defined treatment protocol to fol…

Good doctors are pattern matchers. In complex cases they do research by reading books or asking others, but they already have a good idea in what's going on. A doctor that can only recognize diseases like the common cold is not a good one. Your example is exaggerated and also, the patient may already be dead by the time the investigation is over, which is worsened by the fact that aggressive treatments (like strong a…

>>Your example is exaggerated and also

No,

This is the normal trend here in India. And unfortunately lives are cheap here. Its not like in US that you can sue people, in other parts of the world things are a lot more different. There is practically no regulation in countries like India.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#184

Post by sherwin »

windexh8er wrote: post #60
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…

The problem with this is that it can take a significant amount of the candidate's time. Scheduling a project (here's a spec, you have 3 days) is a major inconvenience for a lot of candidates.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#185

Post by RileyJames »

When I was learning Ruby & Rails my co-founder told me about http://ruby-toolbox.com, and while it's still not perfect for beginners, it goes a long way to solving the "what to google / what to use" problem. If you have a very basic idea of what you're trying to do it can generally suggest a few options to use (gems). I've also used it to work out the category of the problem I'm trying to solve.

I'd love suggestions regarding more sites where you can search in a problem space as opposed to a specific bug or issue.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#186

Post by snogglethorpe »

pixl97 wrote: post #96
Apocryphon wrote: post #89

What was life like before Google? Sure there was documentation, and code comments, and senior devs you could ask. But surely that was less than Google? Or perhaps the scale of problems were less vast compared to now, so the amount of info you would get by Googling now was unnecessary back then.

Funny, in the future there will be adults that have never lived in a world without Google. Instead of the word 'Google', just say fast, well indexed internet searching. It depends where you were. In a university or large business you could go to where the other computer people were and ask, or go to the library, and if you were lucky maybe a BBS where a few experts were. If you had the right contacts you could pick u…

University libraries were like magic gardens back in the day, and they generally weren't overly picky who used them (sometimes it helped to have a university ID, but usually it could be any university, and expired was fine)...

In the early '90s I was unemployed, and so spent a few months basically just going to engineering library of the local university (University of Washington) every day and reading journal articles all day long. A very pleasant memory... :]

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#187

Post by mooism2 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #94
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…

Let me give a non-programming example. It took me the best part of the weekend to drill twelve holes for curtains - because it is not enough to Google for the answers. Now, if you knock on a wall and it sounds hollow - you just google for hollow wall fixings. Great. I'll go buy some of those. Drill into the wall. And hit brick behind the plaster. Err... Ok they have invented a new type - dry lined Walls. The gap is s…

To update the punchline of the old joke for a new era:

  Invoice
  For performing 1 (one) Google search: £0.01
  For knowing exactly what to Google: £999.99

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#188

Post by ozgung »

MBlume wrote: post #55
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"

Whiteboard interviews have another fundamental flaw. Introverted people (typical for programmers) tend to perform terribly when they're watched and being evaluated. Even when you're provided with Google, docs and REPL the most important tools may still be missing: your mind and your ability to focus. Whiteboarding sessions are useful for many things, but coding is not one of them.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#189

Post by hv23 »

windexh8er wrote: post #60
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…

That's how we operate technical interviews at Grubwithus. After a short phone screen and a ~2 hour test for basic competency, we invite candidates into the office to work with us on a 1 to 2-day project where both we and the candidate get to see how we like working with each other. We get the chance to evaluate the candidate's ability in a (sort of) normal working environment as they tackle actual problems they'll face in the day-to-day job, as opposed to a high-tension technical interview with irrelevant/meaningless questions.

https://www.grubwithus.com/escape-the-cold

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#190

Post by bhntr3 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #94
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…

Let me give a non-programming example. It took me the best part of the weekend to drill twelve holes for curtains - because it is not enough to Google for the answers. Now, if you knock on a wall and it sounds hollow - you just google for hollow wall fixings. Great. I'll go buy some of those. Drill into the wall. And hit brick behind the plaster. Err... Ok they have invented a new type - dry lined Walls. The gap is s…

This is a great point and a great example.

I find:

I google things I understand but don't remember.

I read books about things I know about but don't understand.

I read blogs and other streams to learn what I don't know about.

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