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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

#71

Post by jfarmer »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #68
mobweb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they key to becoming a non-beginner are the first two bits, not the third. It's developing that filter experts have which separates relevant information from irrelevant information. Lots of beginners use Google in a backwards sort of way, having been trained to "look for the solution." It's not about memorization, then, it's about this compression algorithm we call "being an expert." I think this goes pretty much…

The interesting thing here to me is that this represents a failure of Google to present you with relevant information and only the relevant information. It's an opportunity. Not an easy one, by any means, but still an opportunity.

This is something only someone who was already on their way to being an expert would say. :)

A beginner with a broken, incomplete, or confused model of the world won't be able to accurately assess whether a new piece of information is consistent with that model. The information could directly address their issue and they won't even realize it. The expert, standing over their should, is dumbfounded: "Your answer is right there! You scrolled past it five times!"

This isn't something unique to programming. It's true of all human understanding. How long were humans relatively comfortable with magnetism and electricity before we understood the relationship between them?

The effects of electricity are all around us. It's why we can't put our hand through the table. But you have to have a deep understanding of electromagnetism to see how that "obvious" fact is related to the this magical voodoo thing we call electromagnetism.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#72

Post by jeffdavis »

"So unless you’ve already memorized that sorting algorithm by heart..."

That's a bad example. Nobody does that, unless they are really trying to solve a sorting problem.

This article comes down to: "don't reinvent the wheel", without really any supporting examples to guide you further than that.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#73

Post by wting »

jfarmer wrote: post #64
mobweb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they key to becoming a non-beginner are the first two bits, not the third. It's developing that filter experts have which separates relevant information from irrelevant information. Lots of beginners use Google in a backwards sort of way, having been trained to "look for the solution." It's not about memorization, then, it's about this compression algorithm we call "being an expert." I think this goes pretty much…

It's more broad than that. I'm pretty sure that's just what it means to be an expert at anything. You have a set of heuristics at work as an expert. To a beginner, everything has the same emphasis. They won't even be able to differentiate correct from incorrect in many cases. Watch a lawyer scan through a contract or a copyeditor edit your essay -- same thing. They catch in a second something you'd never catch in hou…

It's trained pattern matching gained through experience, i.e. machine learning.

What you said in the GP post stands true, it's important that beginners learn the correct patterns (look up documentation for idiomatic examples) and not false ones (blindly copy and pasting code).

You see this all the time in casinos; their goals is to reinforce poor pattern matching behavior. From roulette tables' results signs to bad poker players chasing terrible odds, the human mind has the ability to disproportionally increase the significance of selected memories.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#74

Post by jfarmer »

arcadeparade wrote: post #70
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…

Sorry for being off topic, but what resources would you recommend to someone who wants to learn everything that is taught in dev bootcamp but cant attend?

I have no idea, unfortunately. One of our fundamental theses is that much of what we teach is difficult-to-impossible to teach outside direct human-human interaction.

So, try to solve that first, c.f., http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-useful-programming-lan...

Second, if it had to be one overarching thing, I'd say learning about "fixed mindsets" vs "growth mindsets," as Carol Dweck calls them, and applying the scientific method to your own patterns of thought, emotions, and systems of understanding without judgement, shame, or super ego.

Everything we do, curricularly-speaking, follows from principles like that.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#75

Post by jfarmer »

jfarmer wrote: post #64
mobweb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they key to becoming a non-beginner are the first two bits, not the third. It's developing that filter experts have which separates relevant information from irrelevant information. Lots of beginners use Google in a backwards sort of way, having been trained to "look for the solution." It's not about memorization, then, it's about this compression algorithm we call "being an expert." I think this goes pretty much…

It's more broad than that. I'm pretty sure that's just what it means to be an expert at anything. You have a set of heuristics at work as an expert. To a beginner, everything has the same emphasis. They won't even be able to differentiate correct from incorrect in many cases. Watch a lawyer scan through a contract or a copyeditor edit your essay -- same thing. They catch in a second something you'd never catch in hou…

It's funny because that's perfectly backwards. :)

Machine learning is a model of this thing we observe in ourselves. Don't mistake a picture of a pipe for the pipe itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#76

Post by zv »

JohnBooty wrote: post #15

I couldn't help but read this and think about technical interviews that involve the candidate being asked to write code on a whiteboard - no Google, no code linting/hinting/completion etc. I'm very much in favor of candidates being asked to write some code under more realistic conditions, including finding solutions to parts of the exercise online. Of course, they should then be able to explain to the interviewer(s)…

While this may be good for code under 100 lines, anything more requires using Google. Either it be simple trivial things like email regexp (for those who don't have the luxury of having premade libraries for them) or harder things like algorithms.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#77

Post by wting »

abraininavat wrote: post #43
ry0ohki wrote: post #25

I've always believed this, of course then I worked at a company that wrote it's own programming language for it's product, and there was nothing to Google for (I still don't understand why they did this but stay with me). In that environment, you learn quickly what skills separate a good programmer from a bad one. The traits I found the most useful: -Learning speed (ability to quickly grasp a completely foreign conce…

Surely the programming languages, libraries, and platforms you were using had documentation. It's not the point whether you are using www.google.com, mycompanyintranet.com/wiki, or yelling across the room to ask a question. By the way, the three attributes you just stated are what makes anyone good at almost anything.

No.

I've been contributing to the Rust compiler in my spare time, and needless to say documentation is quite lacking. In fact, the Rust source code itself and git diffs are probably the best documentation available since everything is still changing.

In this context, you don't have the luxury of using Google for examples of common actions.

I'm also an undergraduate security researcher. In this position, you are at the forefront and Google doesn't help. Reading papers helps a little, but there's always the chance that someone else beats you to the punch and publishes first (happened to me 4 months ago).

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#78

Post by ako »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #68
mobweb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they key to becoming a non-beginner are the first two bits, not the third. It's developing that filter experts have which separates relevant information from irrelevant information. Lots of beginners use Google in a backwards sort of way, having been trained to "look for the solution." It's not about memorization, then, it's about this compression algorithm we call "being an expert." I think this goes pretty much…

The interesting thing here to me is that this represents a failure of Google to present you with relevant information and only the relevant information. It's an opportunity. Not an easy one, by any means, but still an opportunity.

To recognize an answer you almost have to know it. Somebody unfamiliar with the right solution will not recognize it even if it is staring them in the face.

Re: The best programmers are the quickest to Google

#79

Post by xoail »

This has side effects. In my case I was becoming more and more lazy and never bothered thinking about the problem properly and taking a chance at coming up with a solution. I became expert at search and finding solutions. Ex search: 'display uitableview in a grid view' came up with lots of libraries... I did end up using one of them. But I wish I took sometime to do it myself or at least try to understand how this library is working. As I continue to use more and more libraries I realized I was becoming more lazy and more prone to searching for solution as first thing rather than giving my brains a chance. I felt dumb...
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