Ask HN: How long can you code before got stuck and start googling? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How long can you code before got stuck and start googling?

10 pointsjozi918 comments

Is this a good trend? I mean, there's too much knowledge to pick up, technologies are changing too fast, and you can find good enough solutions for problems in google, so why bother solving it on your own?

I'm wondering to get into something algorithmic stuff just for kicks to ease my greed for REAL programming :)

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I used to open books to find answers to my questions. Programming books were a permanent fixture in my desk. Its difficult to remember everything. I now use bookmarks for online documentation. How often do I use it? As often as required.

There is a point with solutions posted online. You still have to document and write tests. In the end, you might have not come up with the actual solution, but you still have had to learn how it works in order to test and document it. It will usually make you refactor it a little bit. Thus ending with your own solution. Programming is funny.

You are likely not paid by your company to write lines of code, but rather to solve problems, and thus create value. Using a standard library rather that rewriting you own solution is just sound business.

You need to Google a topic before starting anything you are not familiar with. If you have already started, it is too late!

PS : if you are coding as a hobby this is another matter, do what you want.

I do plenty of googling, but this reminds me of the time I spent one summer working at a defense laboratory. Many of the coworkers in my group spent most of their time in zones for doing classified work without access to the internet, and thus couldn't really google (without leaving to go somewhere else.) One of them burned a book titled something like "The Python Cookbook" onto a CD to take into their office in the classified zone and the security asked them why they were bringing in a cookbook.

Perhaps a better question: How long do you have to Google before you're not stuck and can start coding? :)

Perhaps a better better question: How long do you spend procrastinating on HN before you can start coding? :)

I have HN in one monitor and work in the other so I can do both.

XKCD for that: http://xkcd.com/303/ ;-)

Now how to make this excuse work when i'm working with PHP and JS....

I have my prestart ritual of reading the first 300 news :)

If the project is just for shits and giggles and I basically know what I'm doing I tend to try holding off googling for a while, leads to more source code reading and allows for accidentally discovering unrelated but helpful stuff. If it's for an actual project that I'm expected to move on I tend to google after I try only a few ways (max 10-15 minutes total) around the problem. Definitely makes side-projects take forever but I feel like it's productive in the long run.

Often enough, when I get stuck I realize that plenty of other programmers have gotten stuck at that point too. And now I wonder if this has a detrimental effect on the developer community.

By that I mean if a common problem has such a common workaround, then the workaround becomes accepted as a valid solution, and the original problem doesn't get resolved. Ever.

Even on problems I already have a solution for, I usually google it to see how other people are solving that same sort of problem. Often I find that my solutions may work, but are not that efficient. I have a lot of little code snippets I've saved for various tasks, etc...

Yep, I'm always googling. No shame in that.

Copy/Paste/Edit is the most widely adopted API :) If someone could improve copy/paste workflow, it would have a wide impact. E.g. improve search for code snippets that are similar, or finding other devs who are using similar code snippets.

Microsoft already did something like this: http://codesnippet.research.microsoft.com/

Stack Overflow and MSDN search embedded in Visual Studio.

That is so cool. I use Visual Studio every day, and I can't believe I haven't seen this before!

Yes, we're moving more and more into what Verner Vinge coined as "software archeology". Instead of writing you you're finding code that does what you need.

I consider googling part of my programming and not a last resort solution but actually a workflow.

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