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I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

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Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#111

Post by markbnj »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #28

One of the things I don't like about webdev (among many) is that I even have to Google in the first place. Manpages are so much more immediate and accessible. I also think that anything js-adjacent has a real culture problem. Trying to dredge an answer out of a Medium tutorial written in a cloying tone and interspersed with pointless gifs can be such a groan enducing experience. I'm hoping that the community will mat…

> One of the things I don't like about webdev (among many) is that I even have to Google in the first place. Manpages are so much more immediate and accessible.

I don't really get this response. First there's the notion that "webdev" is the discipline where information is so fractured that you need to go googling around to figure out how to do everything. All the other disciplines have a magic thing called a man page that just gives you the answers. This is obviously not true, right?

The second thing is the idea that a man page for any one component, or even a set of components, could possibly contain enough information to allow you to build a complex system without consulting the experience of peers, colleagues and past practitioners, which is at least what we intend to do when we search google.

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#112

Post by baron816 »

This has not been my experience. I never take notes, almost never go to StackOverflow, and can find anything I don't know from MDN and W3 docs. Maybe it's because the things I work on are really simple, but I like to think it's because I've developed a deep enough understanding of JS/React/Redux and design my code in such a way that I'm easily able to reason through any task and resolve any bug.

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#113

Post by vikramkr »

antisemiotic wrote: post #81
braythwayt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who writes blog posts littered with irrelevant pictures (but never on Medium!), I acknowledge your experience trying to solve a problem based on a blog post. Manpages and documentation are written to be references. Blog posts are written to be tutorials. They have different affordances, and as a result it is very hard to learn how to use something purely from a reference, and very different to sol…

This doesn't change the fact that irrelevant pictures (like memes and cheap popcultural references) belong neither in references nor blogposts, they're just a waste of time and bandwidth. Tone is a different matter, tutorials sure can be more lighthearted. But I'd still take a dry tutorial instead of forced, stillborn humor any day. (I'm not sure if the latter kind is all that common in the wild, could be an illusion…

Why don't they belong in blog posts? They belong anywhere the author had made the creative decision to include them, and if you don't like it, that's fine, but if the author wants to use their time and bandwidth in the article to post irrelevant memes then that's their call. To you it might be a waste of time, but in general people can and should do whatever they want.

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#114

Post by usrusr »

braythwayt wrote: post #43
jim-jim-jim wrote: post #28

One of the things I don't like about webdev (among many) is that I even have to Google in the first place. Manpages are so much more immediate and accessible. I also think that anything js-adjacent has a real culture problem. Trying to dredge an answer out of a Medium tutorial written in a cloying tone and interspersed with pointless gifs can be such a groan enducing experience. I'm hoping that the community will mat…

Speaking as someone who writes blog posts littered with irrelevant pictures (but never on Medium!), I acknowledge your experience trying to solve a problem based on a blog post. Manpages and documentation are written to be references. Blog posts are written to be tutorials. They have different affordances, and as a result it is very hard to learn how to use something purely from a reference, and very different to sol…

> If there is an opportunity here, it is for search to understand the difference and know how to present the two kinds of results differently.

Tag documents into categories (using ML diceroll, up to one category per document), with a strong bias towards "none" when in doubt. When a search term's results include some categories more frequently than the global average, offer them as filters.

Would its utility survive the resulting wave of SEO innovations?

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#115

Post by hybridtupel »

pi-victor wrote: post #67
hybridtupel wrote: post #55

I want to question this. Sure there are many things where a google search brings up a better solution than the own spontaneous one (for example path finding algorithms for games). But every problem beyond a trivial ‘getting started’ needs more thought than an algorithm one can copy and paste from google. Even if it’s only the glue code to bring all parts together or transferring the knowledge to the problem trying to…

^ this. so very much this. for getting started guides, it's great, although even there i'd exercise a lot of caution. there's a lot of info from people who are not experience that people just replicate in their code/setup which isn't really a good idea. for complex issues you never drown in information. and usually when you find something it probably doesn't apply to your setup. that doesn't mean you can't, at least,…

Yes, exactly!

There are tons of getting started guides for everything but beyond that, one will find a wasteland of information most of the time or it is scattered around in different locations. So in this case the engineer is working hard to figure out which pieces of the puzzle belong in which place. Not to mention that nobody knows how the finished puzzle has to look like.

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#116

Post by evo_9 »

Knowing how to find the answer is an often underestimated trait of successful developers.

When I interview someone I often ask them what they will do if I'm out-of-the-office, no other senior devs are around, and they need to find the answer to continue to be product - what do you do? You would be surprised how many times I hear 'wait for you to return', versus 'I'd fire up duck-duck-go or search stack overflow'.

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#117

Post by scarlac »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #88

Has anyone faced an interview question like: "Ok, we have to invert this binary tree. Now what would you google to solve this?"

I have indeed asked this question to several candidates, yes. They were faced with a debugging challenge and some of them weren't sure what .repeat() (JavaScript) did/what the argument meant.

I literally said "What would google for?" and then proceeded to invite them to show me in a browser. It gave us a good impression of how good they are at finding answers to coding problems.

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#119

Post by rzzzt »

CondensedBrain wrote: post #107
jim-jim-jim wrote: post #28

One of the things I don't like about webdev (among many) is that I even have to Google in the first place. Manpages are so much more immediate and accessible. I also think that anything js-adjacent has a real culture problem. Trying to dredge an answer out of a Medium tutorial written in a cloying tone and interspersed with pointless gifs can be such a groan enducing experience. I'm hoping that the community will mat…

https://devdocs.io/ isn't exactly equivalent to manpages, but works well enough. You can even download documentation for offline use.

Thank you for posting this! Parent's comment reminded me of this page, but couldn't remember the URL...

Re: I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things

#120

Post by MaxBarraclough »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #28

One of the things I don't like about webdev (among many) is that I even have to Google in the first place. Manpages are so much more immediate and accessible. I also think that anything js-adjacent has a real culture problem. Trying to dredge an answer out of a Medium tutorial written in a cloying tone and interspersed with pointless gifs can be such a groan enducing experience. I'm hoping that the community will mat…

> I'm hoping that the community will mature alongside its technology.

Which technology? Web development frameworks seem to have a half-life of about 12 months. 'Mature' and 'obsolete' are near synonymous.

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