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A determination to debug beyond just googling is ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT for a software engineer. You are right in that it was probably better when an engineer wou

by pm90 9y ago

A determination to debug beyond just googling is ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT for a software engineer. You are right in that it was probably better when an engineer would have to learn these skills the hard way; but let me offer myself as a counterpoint: I loved that Google/SO allowed me to get started and debug common problems right off the bat; it reduced the barrier to learning programming. Once I gained sufficient proficiency, I felt more confident to delve deeper into code and lower level specifics to debug problems. I guess what I'm saying is that the determined problem-solving mentality that were required before Google/SO are still important, but its possible to learn them even with Google/SO.

taneq 9y ago
That's the untested (by me) contrapositive to my story. Now you don't have to spend untold hours trying to figure out why that goddamn COM call is crashing, but also, you don't have to waste hours on trivial technical crap when you could have spent those untold hours learning more about how to build complex systems. It ties into one of the best things about programming / software engineering / software architecture, which is that it's a self-scaling system. Everyone eventually finds the level at which it becomes 'too hard', so it's always a challenge.
- cbcoutinho 9y ago
  Is this the Peter Principle[0] of software engineering? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
bitwize 9y ago
> A determination to debug beyond just googling is ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT for a software engineer. We're going to need you to time-box that fix. If you don't have a solution within a day, assign the Jira to Bob so he can take a look at it.
- tonyarkles 9y ago
  But... Bob doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground! It'll never get fixed! In my current gig, I guess I'm Bob. Whenever someone can't figure out the solution to a problem, it just gets punted over to me to figure out wtf someone did a couple of years ago that makes no sense but coincidentally worked for exactly the problem they had. /rant from last night.

by pm90 9y ago

taneq 9y ago

That's the untested (by me) contrapositive to my story. Now you don't have to spend untold hours trying to figure out why that goddamn COM call is crashing, but also, you don't have to waste hours on trivial technical crap when you could have spent those untold hours learning more about how to build complex systems. It ties into one of the best things about programming / software engineering / software architecture, which is that it's a self-scaling system. Everyone eventually finds the level at which it becomes 'too hard', so it's always a challenge.

cbcoutinho 9y ago
Is this the Peter Principle[0] of software engineering? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

bitwize 9y ago

> A determination to debug beyond just googling is ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT for a software engineer. We're going to need you to time-box that fix. If you don't have a solution within a day, assign the Jira to Bob so he can take a look at it.

tonyarkles 9y ago
But... Bob doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground! It'll never get fixed! In my current gig, I guess I'm Bob. Whenever someone can't figure out the solution to a problem, it just gets punted over to me to figure out wtf someone did a couple of years ago that makes no sense but coincidentally worked for exactly the problem they had. /rant from last night.