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Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

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Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#151

Post by abalone »

freeone3000 wrote: post #132
abalone wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think the engineers take algorithm and data structure courses so that’s not quite the distinction we’re talking about here.

Right, but theoretical computer science also deals with provability and goes into various areas of topology, reasoning, and proofs. These are not useful to engineers, or are only slightly useful, while a course on systems programming isn't useful to a theoretician, because a universal turing machine doesn't have hardware interrupts. Different specializations for different roles.

I agree. However I think it is not the distinction we’re talking about here, which is about not having a firm grasp of fundamental algorithms and data structures and big O scalability.

In school terms it would be more like a technician or vocational training around coding for particular types of projects.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#152

Post by _the_inflator »

We were talking about JavaScript fatigue, but this shows really how complex things got.

But I do not see this pessimistic. We developers work in large domains and it is good to have a companion on your side that enables you to build better applications: Google.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#156

Post by meow1032 »

OJFord wrote: post #117
aloknnikhil wrote: post #7

On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.

This is used to really confuse me too, but now I can't remember why, because everything's the same: touch $EDITOR mv cp scp mount The place you're putting something is last in each case; we can even include everything that doesn't modify its location. All I can think of that breaks the rule is `rm`, `unlink`, and `umount`. But they're hardly gotchas, and they're not reversing arguments they just don't have a 'destina…

I think "zip" breaks this rule.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#157

Post by abalone »

amelius wrote: post #120
azhenley wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS in CS versus PhD in CS?

Or "IT guy" versus "computer scientist".

IT person. And that’s different. We’re talking about a code heavy role, just without a strong command of C.S. fundamentals.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#158

Post by zikani_03 »

aloknnikhil wrote: post #7

On the list of things I always Google, is how to create a symbolic link under Linux. I just can't figure out a way to remember what comes first; the source or the destination. The man pages add to the confusion by calling the "source" the target. So, the rule of thumb I now follow is cp or mv semantics.

Haha, glad to see I'm not the only one who struggled with remembering this. I always refered to a task in a fabfile to remember. +1 for "follow cp or mv semantics"

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#159

Post by [deleted] »

abalone wrote: post #75

This is great but the premise seems kind of straw man. I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.” Perhaps this is a reference to the interviewing process. Tests are a different thing, though. I’ve been on practical technical screens where you can google, because the test was about building a larger system, and they don’t care if you don’t remember this or that API…

[deleted]

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#160

Post by bdcravens »

krelian wrote: post #60
iamleppert wrote: post #47

That list of things reads like a bad cliche of the narrow view mindset in some of SV that doing web development somehow amounts to software engineering. Web development, unless you’re doing something novel, is not software engineering. Getting some hodge-poge of react drivel to work is not engineering no more than configuring a router is software engineering. Choose your words with more precision.

I notice that developers do you really like to mention quite often that they are "engineers".

There's two ways to evaluate the comment.

Truth is almost none of us are "engineers". (meaning a very strict discipline, often with licensing, and with very real consequences for failure after you sign off on something) I'm fine with that, but I'm also fine with the colloquialism of "software engineer" (same way I'm ok with "crypto" meaning "cryptocurrency" if we all have an understood context)

However, I usually interpret comments like this to suggest things like the backend is "real software engineering", which while being literally incorrect, it's also a very narrow view of our craft. I think the pushback is similar to the traditional ops folks pushing back against "devops" or the way people make the same, predictably pedantic comments about any "serverless" article: it represents an encroaching on their expertise.

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