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  3. In this company, there are two kinds of developers

In this company, there are two kinds of developers

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved The Lounge
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  • V ventureaaron

    When i was in tech support i learned from a guy who was about to retire. I used to ask him how they did the job before google, but he'd always shut me down with an angry "Hey!" like he didn't want to talk about it.

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    Leng Vang
    wrote on last edited by
    #41

    Some may have long answer. Mine, books + a whole lot frustrations.

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    • B Bruce Greene

      I'll use WPF as an example of why 4" thick programming books can still be useful. I bought and read one when first learning WPF to get an understanding of all of the features. However, while coding it's quicker to find a snippet online than it is to look it up in the huge tome. If I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't know what to Google!

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      Michael Breeden
      wrote on last edited by
      #42

      LOL!!! :-D

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      • K kalberts

        My 10c worth: We expected to, and were expected to, know not only what to do, but why to do it exactly that way. Or stated differently: We knew the inner workings of the mechanisms we used. Always make sure that you are familiar with the layer immediately below the one you are working on! (You can't go all the way down to the transistors, but go at least one level down!) Of course that required resources and efforts (and use of books with thorough explanations), but it paid back: We made much more "good" and "correct" use of the mechanisms offered. Younger colleagues are usually very good at telling me that "the second parameter should be 4". So what does that 4 mean? Why not 3 or 5? No idea, but that's what is used in this code snippet I found when googling, and it works with 4, not with 3 or 5! ... I am never satisfied with that kind of "coding by trial and error", but I see a lot of it around me. If it works, don't ask how it works! When my younger, "helping" colleague has left, I start searching for explanation of that second parameter - if necessary, I buy a book. This is of course not a real example. Real examples would be like how OO languages have implemented abstract classes, multiple inheritance etc. How interrupts work. Locking mechanisms. Switch statements... When you know the inner workings, by heart, to a much larger degree you need not google up that code snippet to tell you "for some reason it works with 4". You would know why 4 is the right value. About 25 years ago, I participated in an EU project focusing on "Just In Time learning": If information can be fetched when you need it, you need not spend time learning it. We can save lots of resources spent on educating people that way. People may be deaf and dumb if we can give them what they need when they need it, more or less as list of detailed instructions. ... Obviously, the EU project didn't say that they wanted people to be deaf and dumb, but that is what I saw in their philosophy. (So why was I in that project??) That project never made a great success, but Google more or less provides information in the way that the EU project was talking about. Pick up some information about Bloom's model of learning (usually referred to as "the Bloom Taxonomy"), structured in levels from plain repetition up to critical assessment. Information you fetch through google doesn't go very high on the Bloom ladder: You see information reproduced and rephrased, but even the level of comprehending it is poorly supporte

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        Michael Breeden
        wrote on last edited by
        #43

        Nice... And they think they understand it. Yeah, I'm writing my fourth book about a complicated subject and wonder if anyone will read any of them. Genetics For A New Human Ecology

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        • M Michael Breeden

          The move is completed and we have learned.... In this company, there are two kinds of developers. Those that came to work here after we still needed to collect technical books (AG After Google) Those that worked here when we still needed to collect technical books. (BG Before Google) ..They are the ones with the 55 gallon disposal bins next to their cubes.

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          TheRaven
          wrote on last edited by
          #44

          They should consider ePub hunh? Possibly hit youTube up for the equivalent; don't always need to switch to Geico to save a lot of money.

          I was unaware of that...

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          • L Leng Vang

            Funny, I always start with Google search, but almost 99% end up in StackOverFlow. May be I should just go there directly. Perhaps because Chrome let user search by typing query directly at the URL bar.

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            Kirill Illenseer
            wrote on last edited by
            #45

            Yeah, the good old address bar search. I started using that time saver long before Chrome existed.

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