I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by mockingbirdy » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

LandR wrote: post #159

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For js and js-adjacent technologies or libraries, there sometimes aren't any references to speak of, unfortunately. You're supposed to divine the information you need from task-oriented texts and code snippets.

I'm a developer. When I work with most stuff that isn't web dev, life is good. I can figure most stuff out painlessly. It's mostly feels like working on a space that has been designed and documented by someone sane. When I'm forced to do Web dev type stuff... I want to jump off the roof. It always makes me question my life choices that led to me being exposed to js. I hate it, it's a logically incoherent disaster tha…

> and sorely lacking a good CS degree

Someone is speaking the truth here. But we (as a web dev I'll try to speak for us) are learning: React and Vue (and all the other great libraries) use optimized vdoms, React teaches functional programming paradigms with immutable data structures (redux) and we've already learnt from Ember what components we'll need in a project.

Most people will simply follow blindly. After the base stops moving (breaking changes in the APIs - Vue is currently doing the last big ones), we will write the best practices. Every half-decently educated developer already understands that those ideas are not new. They are the same ones they've already had in the 60s. They will try to do it better - maybe they really are more clever, right? - but after the third or fourth try they'll understand that their own half-baked solution doesn't stand a chance. And then they will realize that life is too short to lose some data because your file-based DB implementation isn't ACID.

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

#172

Post by onion2k » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

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…

You can access MDN as man pages - https://github.com/rafaelrinaldi/mdn

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

#173

Post by amanzi » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

This is not just for webdev roles. We used to joke about this in my sysadmin days - when hiring new staff, the only test should be how effectively they could Google for a particular solution. And in all seriousness, understanding how Google works and how to use the search operators effectively, is a crucial skill in an IT career.

Edit: relevant XKCD - https://xkcd.com/979/ (and the only thing worse than that comic, is finding someone who had the same problem as you and they followed up with a simple "I solved this" with no additional details!)

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

#174

Post by huehehue » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

jstarfish wrote: post #121

zrobotics wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is googling something not the lazy option though? Personally, I think it's far more work to ask someone and wait for the answer over immediately getting the answer from searching and finding a 4 year old forum post with the same question.

Asking someone skips the tedious work of filtering applicable solutions from 20+ years of forum posts, memes and SEO shitfarms in exchange for an actual-but-delayed answer. As I get older I have less time or patience for it myself. The effort required increases with the amount of content available on the internet. Some people just aren't good at research in the first place.

Important to note that most of us have had years of practice searching for stuff online, and we're very good at identifying this garbage. You can't reasonably expect someone to just hop on to Google and know what to type, which links/sites to avoid, how to spot trolling, and so on.

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

#175

Post by jimmaswell » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

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…

Man page: find the man page, search for terms you hope might be related to what you want, read through a lot of dense paragraphs to maybe find something relevant.

Google: just type in a quick description of your issue and get a stackoverflow post with an answer as the first result.

I don't get how anyone could prefer the man page.

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

#176

Post by School-Cotton » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #175

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…

Man page: find the man page, search for terms you hope might be related to what you want, read through a lot of dense paragraphs to maybe find something relevant. Google: just type in a quick description of your issue and get a stackoverflow post with an answer as the first result. I don't get how anyone could prefer the man page.

For me the issue is not really whether I access the docs through `man` or through the browser. It’s comprehensive, accurate docs provided in one place by the vendor of the tool I’m using, versus wading through a crowdsourced resource like SO which might be incomplete, out of date, or inaccurate.

If a library vendor provides good docs on their website, that’s just as good as man pages, but in my experience they usually don’t.

There is a staggering amount of misinformation or non-existent information on Stack Overflow. For one simple example: try to figure out how to use the GPS on iPhone. It’s simply impossible. 99% of people on SO think “GPS” is synonymous with “Location APIs” in general. Of the 1% of people who understand the several different data sources used by CoreLocation, nobody can tell you which accuracy settings will cause it to use GPS specifically. If you bother asking, you’ll get a bunch of “middle-brow dismissals” asking why you want to know such a thing, telling you to just use whatever accuracy setting you semantically need, smugly claiming you’re guilty of posing an A-B question, and so on. This is the type of dead simple basic information I would have expected to be present in Apple’s documentation, instead of having to crowdsource it from internet trolls.

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

#177

Post by stevewillows » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

I think this is true for most technical jobs. What makes us good is that we understand how to search, which leads us to the corners of the internet where other technically minded people seek help and answer questions.

I've seen friends and family search for errors or 'how do I...', and their searches mostly yield youtube videos and scraper sites. For me its mostly SE, reddit, and product specific forums.

Knowing how to ask the right questions and understanding jargon is often the greatest asset.

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

#178

Post by anthk » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #77

lazerwalker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you personally have recs for how to parse manpages? In my experience, I've found them far more difficult to grok than e.g. the MDN JavaScript docs. Particularly if I'm trying to look up a tool that I don't already have familiarity with, as opposed to e.g. just trying to look up the correct syntax for a flag.

Yeah, manpages feel like the equivalent of being served a book on a subject where I just want to know a quick incantation. Like reading the entire wikipedia entry on cats just to settle a dispute on how many toes they have (18 btw). I think manpages are a popular thing to worship here for nerd points but people don't use them nearly as much as they say they do because nobody actually wants to read a manual when they…

Bro pages are a joke compared to the conciseness of man pages under OpenBSD.

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

#179

Post by thatoneuser » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #157

A big part of it is that imho technology has gotten more powerful, but still no easy to use. Like, I'm imagining in 20 years the API for Amazon's drone fleet will be here and we'll still be like "wait, the address parameter is for an IP address? And the library isn't thread-safe but also doesn't connection pool so I have to maintain one dronecloud client per thread? And what's this cryptic "rotor invert" error? It fe…

A great example of this is AWS. I'm not a power user but I dabble. You have to go back and forth through user docs that all have some % of the correct steps, but no single doc has all of the correct steps. Some reference deprecated api, some just never seemed to work in the first place and you wonder how it even got there.

I get that these ecosystems evolve over time but I'm not convinced that that evolution requires inability to use the underlying features effectively.

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

#180

Post by Theodores » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #176

jimmaswell wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man page: find the man page, search for terms you hope might be related to what you want, read through a lot of dense paragraphs to maybe find something relevant. Google: just type in a quick description of your issue and get a stackoverflow post with an answer as the first result. I don't get how anyone could prefer the man page.

For me the issue is not really whether I access the docs through `man` or through the browser. It’s comprehensive, accurate docs provided in one place by the vendor of the tool I’m using, versus wading through a crowdsourced resource like SO which might be incomplete, out of date, or inaccurate. If a library vendor provides good docs on their website, that’s just as good as man pages, but in my experience they usuall…

Stack Overflow has a problem of outdated answers written ten years ago by people wanting to collect experience points.

Technology moves on and those early answers are simply no good. Recently I decided to learn a few things from first principles - reading the specs. If I then try to put a half decent answer on SO then it will be answer 97, 3563 upvotes behind the 'right answer'.

New person who comes along isn't going to get to my detailed answer on page 5, the one that points out how technology has moved on and why the winning answers are not what you needed. They just need to deliver the deliverables and the first answer will suffice. They will take it and add another plus to the upvotes.

You can't win, the odds are stacked in favour of the mediocre. This wasn't always the way with Stack Overflow, in fact it replaced forums where the same problem existed but only to stall the nonsense for a few years, we are back to peak nonsense again.

I think time is ripe for Stack Overflow to be usurped, nothing against the site which I have so loved over the years, but even mySpace had to be replaced by Facebook.