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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

#11

Post by Nextgrid »

Something that has dramatically reduced my reliance on outside resources is an editor that can lookup symbol definitions.

I’m using Django and I used to use Sublime Text without any plugins which meant (at the time) it couldn’t automatically show me the definition of a function or object from a library, forcing me to search around for its documentation.

Switching to PyCharm/IntelliJ meant I could now just Command-Click (Ctrl-Click for Linux & Windows I believe) and see the actual definition and logic of the underlying function without having to rely on the online documentation. This of course works recursively, so I can repeat this process again and again up until I eventually reach the core standard library which is in C and isn’t introspective (at this point I can rely on my knowledge or some trial and error to figure out its behavior).

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

#12

Post by warkdarrior »

sosodev wrote: post #5

Does it actually matter if I can? Is using reference material a bad thing? Edit: I know the article touches on that idea briefly but my argument would be "of course it doesn't matter". Sure, I could develop slightly faster with a more encyclopedic memory but I really doubt it would make an observable difference in the long-term. Most of my time isn't spent referencing libraries or syntax but instead I spend most of m…

It matters because SWE interviews rely on coding without googling. Maybe we need to change how interviews are done to test people on their Googling skills. For a given coding task, what do they search for? Do they Google for the right terms? Do they converge quickly on the right website to copy from?

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

#16

Post by phkahler »

sosodev wrote: post #5

Does it actually matter if I can? Is using reference material a bad thing? Edit: I know the article touches on that idea briefly but my argument would be "of course it doesn't matter". Sure, I could develop slightly faster with a more encyclopedic memory but I really doubt it would make an observable difference in the long-term. Most of my time isn't spent referencing libraries or syntax but instead I spend most of m…

Let's say Elon starts that colony on Mars and you think "Ima move there and write code for a living." You might have the internet, but its 15 minutes each direction. Nothing interactive works, and while they brought copies of Wikipedia, stack overflow didnt package so easily.

Or more simply, can you write a web app without internet access?

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

#17

Post by deeeeplearning »

warkdarrior wrote: post #12
sosodev wrote: post #5

Does it actually matter if I can? Is using reference material a bad thing? Edit: I know the article touches on that idea briefly but my argument would be "of course it doesn't matter". Sure, I could develop slightly faster with a more encyclopedic memory but I really doubt it would make an observable difference in the long-term. Most of my time isn't spent referencing libraries or syntax but instead I spend most of m…

It matters because SWE interviews rely on coding without googling. Maybe we need to change how interviews are done to test people on their Googling skills. For a given coding task, what do they search for? Do they Google for the right terms? Do they converge quickly on the right website to copy from?

Or just give them free reign to use whatever tools they would use in an actual work environment and see what the end results are. Sure makes more sense than seeing how many leetcode problems you memorized.

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

#20

Post by resonantjacket5 »

azhenley wrote: post #3
core-questions wrote: post #2

> To be fair, I'm not a web developer Kind of a non-article. Could I make an outdoor irrigation system, fix my head gasket, or anything else complicated without doing some research?

Author here. I'm a professor that teaches software engineering and occasionally web development, sooo I think your comparison is inapt...

I am wondering are you using some external framework angular/react or just "only" js?

"Or even deeper, does an over-reliance on documentation indicate a lack of critical expertise that will ultimately result in considerably lower job performance?"

I don't think so, and I don't know why relying on documentation would be bad.

In a more general sense even for making a todo list app I'd imagine the fundamentals aren't changed even across frameworks e.g. of when adding a todo it needs to be added to some sort of a list.

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