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Comment by rajarsheem | Hacker News Reader

Even if I could, I would not call that an achievement. In programming, we are expected to understand concepts, not memorize documentation of a library. Of course, if you are too specialized working with few libraries/frameworks, you will naturally end up knowing its methods by heart. But that doesn't mean searching things up online is a bad practice. In fact, I believe it is more useful to keep updating yourself from the web on better ways to write some piece of code than what you have memorized from a year back old doc.

Also, eventually, what matters is how you connect the bits and pieces you take from online and integrate them into your software. How you design and shape your software so that's its scalable, optimized and reliable is in your hand and that's what matters the most!

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Warning: weird analogy is coming up.

I learned to write java code (structure, basic io (terminal, file, datastructures) blind like in word or notepad and it would run without errors for a google interview; It is not that much you need to know actually but when you learn it once, it lingers around for quite a long time and it gives you a different feeling of confidence that you actually know java (i was writing java code for 6? years before that already so i do know java).

Its very similiar to my personal experience with doing push ups: If you never have done them you don't have any muscles at certain areas; Now after going from 0 to 15 push ups over a few month, i gained a general better physiology on upper body strenge and it still lingers around.

Non of both are critical in a day to day scenario but both experiences were fun/interesting and this base is now here where it was not before.

It brings me, mentally speaking, closer to really get something like java.

I'm not sure the workout analogy really helps. Our body is really good at optimizing movements you do often enough. Do enough push ups, at some point you will become very good at pushing things, do not expect to be good at pulling though. Run 1 km everyday and you will become a great short distance runner, try to run a marathon and you will miserably fail to finish it. Sure, you will get cardio benefits and get healthier overall for the first months, but once the newbie gains stop, training specific skills won't generalize to general ones.

Does education work in a similar fashion? does being very good at solving very specific timed algorithm problems at a whiteboard translate to being a good software engineer overall? If that's all you trained for, you will be just very good at that.

That’s not really true as long as you keep pushing yourself and aren’t aiming for extreme performance. Wind sprints for example are still useful if you want to compete a marathon in say 6-8 hours.

As to pushups and pulling things, back strength from supporting your body weight on your shoulders would help you pull things. Clearly practicing the motion you want to improve is optimal, but controlled motion generally involves a lot more skeletal muscles than just what’s being targeted.

It was just not the point i was making.

I have a clear difference in my body structure after i ever did and made it to 15 push ups.

And now after 8 month of not doing it at all, it still lingers around.

This adds to my confidence.

Same with my java skills.

My problem is remembering the syntax of the language I'm in rather than other languages I've learned.

To use your analogy; it gets tricky doing push-ups because my body remembers doing crunches and my knees get in the way.

Better analogy: I'm learning German at the moment, but my brain keeps "helpfully" supplying the French word whenever I'm mentally grepping for German vocab.

Remembering that JS switches need a break statement but Go switches don't - or that JS If statements need the brackets but not the braces, and Go If statements don't need the brackets but do need the braces. This shit trips me up even after years of coding in just JS and Go.

Your IDE should take care of that for you.

Disclaimer: I used to write code without internet access every day for years (was in a secured area where internet and phones are not allowed).

Yeah, it kinda does, in that when I save the file it tells me I made the mistake. But I still made the mistake.

While true, it would be reasonable to expect to have one single documentation that is sufficient, and not to have to resort to searching aka googling.

For me it's simply a matter of convenience of searching; even pages with great and comprehensive docs can be hard to search. And the average is so poor that I often don't even bother to check if a particular project actually has a good search feature. If my search takes me to the actual doc page, (and it's good) then all the better!

For me it is often a question of what I am looking for.

If I quickly need to know how to get the last item of a list in yet-another-language, Stack Overflow will provide me an answer in about 2 seconds.

The documentation will certainly provide the answer too, but I'll need to look at several places etc., since the format is just not optimized to answer exactly this question fast.

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