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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

#81

Post by kortilla »

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…

This comment propagates the nonsense that skills with algos are somehow harder or more exclusive than software engineering skills. They are orthogonal and interviews that conflate them are part of the problem.

Consider this, many of the most novel algorithms were published without ever being run in actual software or in part of a larger system.

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

#82

Post by soulofmischief »

username90 wrote: post #78
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…

I agree, cs needs a split in roles kinda like nurse and doctor.

I would say there are many kinds of computer scientists, and not all programmers are computer scientists and vice versa.

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

#83

Post by abalone »

username90 wrote: post #78
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…

I agree, cs needs a split in roles kinda like nurse and doctor.

“Code Practitioner” :-)

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

#84

Post by throwaway744678 »

reginaldo wrote: post #12
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.

Here's how I finally memorized it: ln has a 1-file-argument invocation, so ln -s ../../a_fine_file will create a symbolic link to that file under the current directory and under the "a_fine_file" file name. The single argument case has to have the file you want to link to as input. That generalizes nicely as the 2-file-argument invocation maintaining the logic.

Ha! My trick is to

  ln -s a b
then look at the link with ls -l, then remove my garbage! Your way is much better.

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

#85

Post by parliament32 »

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.

Honestly I gave up memorizing when I realized you can just omit the second parameter.

    ln -s /the/real/thing
will create a symlink in your current directory with the same name.

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

#86

Post by harrisonjackson »

This is probably a 10-50x fewer searches than I do in a week. I am assuming there are many searches left out. I'd be interested in seeing how the OP tweaks their searches as the results don't return exactly what they want.

Here is an actual single search progression for me (In reverse order because copy/pasta :shrug:

react context optimize rerender "props.children"

react context optimize rerender

react usereducer dispatch async

react usereducer dispatch api

usecontext usememo

optimize usecontext react

usereducer rerender usecontext

usereducer rerender

when to use usereducer

react hooks usecontext and usereducer

This is a fairly simple search, too - no use of negative search terms and minimal use of phrase matching. I didn't see any of those enhancements used in the OP which seems odd.

edit - formatting

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

#87

Post by rolltiide »

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…

> I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.”

Yes the whole interview process is based on the idea of doing stuff for the company that you wouldn't actually do.

Indeed I interview my candidate's ability to find resources, to know what considerations are needed, how to deal with IDEs, collaborative tools, the git protocol. I will fire someone on the spot for implementing an academic algorithm if there was a library and potentially peer reviewed library they should have used instead.

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

#88

Post by soulofmischief »

limograf wrote: post #9
social_quotient wrote: post #4

I love that I’m not the only person that thinks about this still “dl vs ul”

ul = countable items in arbitrary order ol = countable items in a pertinent sequence dl = key value pairs table = a matrix of three or more keys and values

More mnemonically,

ul = Unordered List

ol = Ordered List

dl = Definition List

Definition List is the only description not immediately obvious, but understanding a definition as a key/value pair clears things up and isn't hard to remember.

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

#89

Post by EliRivers »

dmoy wrote: post #40
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.

Given the number of things that use different source vs destination with the same type, I just have trained myself to always look it up, even if I am 99% sure I remembered it correctly, because holy shit when you get it wrong sometimes it's bad. softlink dest file cp src -> dest std::memcpy dest java arraycopy src -> dest golang io.Copy dest etc etc I'm only 80% confident I didn't make an error in the above 5 example…

Intel assembly: mov dest, src

AT&T assembly: mov src, dest

Whenever I'm debugging at the assembly level I have to just write down the appropriate one on a piece of paper in front of me.

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

#90

Post by yomly »

username90 wrote: post #78
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…

I agree, cs needs a split in roles kinda like nurse and doctor.

I liken it to research scientists vs technicians.

A technician at CERN maintaining the accelerators is probably pretty damn smart, they probably also understand some particle physics. They may not be the ones driving/designing the experiments and they probably aren't getting their names on those physics papers but that doesn't mean they didn't contribute any value...

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