Some guy in his early 20ies thinks he has it all figured out. News at 11.
To be fair, he's been programming for over 2 whole years now!
I No Longer Need StackOverflow
91–94 of 94 posts
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#92I no longer need the Internet. My hamster chewed through a CAT cable last week; it took me three days to notice, so complete was my Zen immersion in creating a period-accurate replica of the first Galilean telescope, using only Haskell lenses. When it finally dawned on me I had attained a sophistication that transcended the internet, I felt the inessentials fall away from my craft in an instant, and I was left in an…
Honestly, I don't get this.
I remember working in a computer lab in the 90s and talking to one of the graduate students I really respected. She had interrupted a discussion some of us were having about compiler errors & warnings, specifically the various flags to pass to enable them.
She was opposed to them -- strongly. I don't remember everything, but I remember he discussing how the days of punch card were ideal. The compile/execution phase was so divorced from act of writing your program, that you had to be really sure about what you were going. You would go over it several times before you find out if it ever compiled.
For a long time, I took her words to heart. I still enabled the warnings & errors, but that was because I didn't trust myself. My goal was to get to the point were I wouldn't need to.
After several years, I realized something: She was wrong.
I would waste a lot of time identifying things like silly typos, etc. Things the compiler would have caught in an instance. I switched my habit to compiling frequently, just to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I didn't expect the compiler to be magical, but I also stopped under-utilizing my tools too.
And that's the same way I view Stack Overflow.
I learned to program in a small town, when most computers didn't even have a modem. If I had a problem & got stuck, that was it. I would either figure it or have to give up. Sure, sometimes I would figure things out on my own. But that would take days. And, I hate to say it, but in a lot of cases, I just gave up.
On the other hand, I picked up Objective C a few years. The difference was night & day. If I couldn't figure things out after an hour (my general bar), I'd resort to Googling & asking on Stack Overflow.
I have no doubt that I learned more and learned faster with the second system.
The goal shouldn't be to reduce your toolset. It should be to learn to use them effectively.
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#93It's not always a question of "needing" something, it's a question of whether you spend 5 minutes searching for the answer or 50 minutes, or 5 hours. It's a tool. Use it.
I definitely see the merit that StackOverflow provides. It's a great place to find a quick answer or get help on something you've never touched before.
I'm just glad it's not my only tool anymore. And sometimes using the harder tools have unexpected benefits.
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#94That's one of the thing that surprises me: how does StackOverflow keep quality answers since people who are knowledgeable enough don't need to be there on the first place.
People will do anything for imaginary internet points.