4 ms·

Seconded. I look up basic syntax all the time of languages I use daily for years. It's been that way since I started coding 25 years ago. At least these days it

by jghn 11y ago

Seconded. I look up basic syntax all the time of languages I use daily for years. It's been that way since I started coding 25 years ago. At least these days it's easier with Google and such instead of having to lead throughout reference books. I don't know why I have that mental block, but I do. There have been some particularly notable cases in the reference book days where I could remember what page number to look at but not the syntactic construct on that page.

s_m_t 11y ago
>There have been some particularly notable cases in the reference book days where I could remember what page number to look at but not the syntactic construct on that page. This is the "pass by reference" approach :^)
NoNotTheDuo 11y ago
That reminds me of my CS prof. He had been programming forever and said that one of the first languages he learned (Ada? Fortran? Can't Remember.) was a "two knee" language - meaning that you had to have a reference book open on each knee in order to write it!
- meuhnage 11y ago
  I guess you don't remember it because you consider it to be trivial and discard it as noise disturbing you from what you are focusing on (eg. algo).
- shoo 11y ago
  That's a good term. Of the two, Fortran is relatively simple, while Ada has quite an expressive type system and built-in concurrency constructs, so I'd bet on it being Ada.
- jghn 11y ago
  I'd like to blame it somewhat in being a heavy polyglot but I was always like this
unusximmortalis 11y ago
same here, I really have to jump between, c/c++, c++ CLI, c#, javascript, vb.net, vb, SQL (which is not exactly the same on MySQL, MS SQL, MS SQL Azure), python, jade, powershell. it is impossible for my little brain as I know it so far to remember every syntax; I stay focus on the algorithm (to be efficient, O(n), O(nlogn)), on the problem to solve, on code simplicity and maintainability and just go quickly to language syntax documentation as often as I need it. google makes things much easier, there were times when google was faster in finding msdn doc pages then msdn search itself :))))

by jghn 11y ago

s_m_t 11y ago

>There have been some particularly notable cases in the reference book days where I could remember what page number to look at but not the syntactic construct on that page. This is the "pass by reference" approach :^)

NoNotTheDuo 11y ago

That reminds me of my CS prof. He had been programming forever and said that one of the first languages he learned (Ada? Fortran? Can't Remember.) was a "two knee" language - meaning that you had to have a reference book open on each knee in order to write it!

meuhnage 11y ago
I guess you don't remember it because you consider it to be trivial and discard it as noise disturbing you from what you are focusing on (eg. algo).
shoo 11y ago
That's a good term. Of the two, Fortran is relatively simple, while Ada has quite an expressive type system and built-in concurrency constructs, so I'd bet on it being Ada.
jghn 11y ago
I'd like to blame it somewhat in being a heavy polyglot but I was always like this

unusximmortalis 11y ago

same here, I really have to jump between, c/c++, c++ CLI, c#, javascript, vb.net, vb, SQL (which is not exactly the same on MySQL, MS SQL, MS SQL Azure), python, jade, powershell. it is impossible for my little brain as I know it so far to remember every syntax; I stay focus on the algorithm (to be efficient, O(n), O(nlogn)), on the problem to solve, on code simplicity and maintainability and just go quickly to language syntax documentation as often as I need it. google makes things much easier, there were times when google was faster in finding msdn doc pages then msdn search itself :))))