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"Googling it" is okay! - Hear Me Out πŸ˜…

Elliot Brenya sarfo on October 23, 2022

Yes, I am aware that some individuals find it offensive that their years of meticulous memorization and/or magnificent piles of programming books a...
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Dennis Persson

Googling is what actually makes a good developer. If you don't need to google it means you are just repeatedly doing something you already know and you won't learn very much new stuff.

I actually just released a programmer quiz game. That game is meant to be hard. The "beginner level" entry isn't at all things beginners already know out of their head. The aim is instead that beginners should be able to find the answers by googling. Not sure if I did hit the right level of hardness, but I hope it is good enough! :)

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Elliot Brenya sarfo

I will make time to play πŸ˜€

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π’ŽWii πŸ³οΈβ€βš§οΈ

When I open your link, the tab just becomes unresponsive in an endless redirect loop.

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Dennis Persson

Thanks very much for your bug report Wii :) Could you please share some browser and device info? Would really appreciate that. Here or on LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
π’ŽWii πŸ³οΈβ€βš§οΈ

Didn't work on vivaldi with cookies blocked, but with cookies enabled it works now. (note that blocking cookies on vivaldi also includes local storage)

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Dennis Persson

Thanks for the investigationπŸ˜€ I'm using cookies to store progress. In Next.js cookies are often very handy, since they are available for server side rendering.

Anyhow, I should fix so the page is at least responsive with cookies blocked and some descriptive information about it :)

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π’ŽWii πŸ³οΈβ€βš§οΈ

It is, as so often, nuanced:

If you've been coding for half a year and need to google new concepts all the time, that's totally understandable.

If you've been coding for a decade and still have to copy the boilerplate of sending an HTTP request via some scripting language, that's also fairly normal.

But there's certainly things people should have memorised at a certain point or just be able to figure it out on their own. If after 5 years of javascript you still have to google how to reverse a string, chances are there's something off.

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Elliot Brenya sarfo

You have a point πŸ‘

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Raine

If you don't "Google it" you're likely a worse developer because of it.
Don't get me wrong you can be a very nice developer without Googling anything, but Googling is a tool that allows you to find previously made errors that have been solved with help. By Googling you're stimulating that it's okay to ask for help and you'll get your answer sooner.

But there is a catch, Googling is only good if you read the (likely) stack overflow post and understand your mistake and their code. Otherwise it's not good to Google as it impairs being able to optimize, fix or explain your code.

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Elliot Brenya sarfo

You’re right Mrs. Didier

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Maame Afia Fordjour

This made me laugh hahaha.

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Elliot Brenya sarfo

I’m glad πŸ˜€