> Coding without searching basically boils down to coding without docs, and that seems pretty self-defeating. He does mention though, was that back in the day

> Coding without searching basically boils down to coding without docs, and that seems pretty self-defeating. He does mention though, was that back in the day he used programming books, which would have contained example snippets explaining most problems. I started coding pre-internet. All you had was your text mode IDE or editor, and if you were really lucky, it had a basic searchable help function that you just kept attacking with keywords until you stumbled on a function or principle that solved your problem. These days, everyone goes to the top result on StackOverflow and looks at the answer, then thinks 'ok, that'll do' without actually seeing if the answer is actually the most optimal. Pre-internet, without that level of group-think, there'd be multiple ways to solve problem X, and each programmer approached it differently. Some methods would be good, and some bad, but by working it out yourself made you a better coder in the long run. This is why I think that older programmers have better analytical brains due to their long history of not being able to 'just look it up' - you had no-one to help you; if you couldn't solve it yourself, it didn't get solved. I lost track of the many early ideas I abandoned because the routines needed were beyond my coding ability (for me, graphics coding was/is my Achilles heel). Is that a good thing or not? I don't know. But what I will say is that starting to learn to code with the internet at your fingertips, may make someone a lazy coder, but it's hard to ignore that infinite well of knowledge...