Watch programmers who don't Google how they code, it usually ends up complicated, slow and worst of all insecure. If the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. Using string.join instead of paremetherized SQL queries is a typically example of this! Any tutorial on top of Google will show you the correct solution to this but if you are too smart for this and reinvent your own way of creat…
Totally agree. If I didn't google, I'd still be storing passwords as plain text, or thinking I'm smart, inventing my own encryption algorithm.
Watch programmers who don't Google how they code, it usually ends up complicated, slow and worst of all insecure. If the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. Using string.join instead of paremetherized SQL queries is a typically example of this! Any tutorial on top of Google will show you the correct solution to this but if you are too smart for this and reinvent your own way of creat…
Kind of. A lot of the time the answer is on Stack Overflow, and good ones get voted up. Sometimes I find myself on Ubuntu forums and the more mainstream nature of the users often provides quite poor hacks to get things working.
Some solutions aren't worth committing to memory. Do I really need to remember all the flags on scp just to write a quick bash script when someone has already posted the correct incantation on StackOverflow?
Do you have to google it every time? The fact that repeated googling is required is a sign that something is off--either you're not growing from your experience or the API has too much friction. I've often felt this way when it comes to linux command switches. Just accepting that having to google everything is OK is the wrong answer here.
I always tell people that if it's worth memorizing because you use it a lot, you'll probably memorize it because you use it a lot anyway. If you have to make a point to memorize something, it's a hint to consider if it's worth the time.
Yes, it is. Using a library is a transition of abstraction layers. It's expected that some understanding might get lost at that point. It's also expected that you understand what the library promises to do when you make that call - i.e. that you read the docs. Copy/paste lives at the same abstraction layer as code that you actually write yourself - the same level of understanding should apply. (Of course, if you don'…
In that case, it sounds like it just depends on whether you paste the code directly into an existing file. If you paste the code into its own file, then import it into your project, the distinction seems to vanish.
A library isn't just code that happens to be in a separate file. Someone chose an abstraction layer at which to create a library, wrote the library code, tested it and wrote documentation.
If you went and copy-pasted some code on stack overflow into a file, put it on github and released it as a "library", I might not agree that it was one.
Do you have to google it every time? The fact that repeated googling is required is a sign that something is off--either you're not growing from your experience or the API has too much friction. I've often felt this way when it comes to linux command switches. Just accepting that having to google everything is OK is the wrong answer here.
I always tell people that if it's worth memorizing because you use it a lot, you'll probably memorize it because you use it a lot anyway. If you have to make a point to memorize something, it's a hint to consider if it's worth the time.
I don't think people should put in effort to memorize things like command line switches. The issue I'm arguing against is accepting that we must now google everything to get work done. I agree that if its worth memorizing, you should eventually commit it to memory through repetition. The problem is that sometimes this doesn't happen. This is a sign of a problem, likely with the interface you're interacting with. If we accept the expectation is to just google everything, no one will ever stop to ask whether the interface itself is broken. If we accept that one should develop a mastery of their environment over time, then incentives form to improve ease-of-use, elegance, and "memorizability".