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I enjoyed the pre-internet times when it came to programming far more than I do today. This is because of flow states. I have a hard time getting into a flow

I enjoyed the pre-internet times when it came to programming far more than I do today. This is because of flow states. I have a hard time getting into a flow state when I'm looking something up, but when I know the language inside and out it's easy for me to get into a flow state. So much so, when I learn a language I try to know it well enough to never have to google for help. Of course, I still google around at times, but I find the less I have to the happier my day is. SO is a blessing, but it's also a curse. Younger devs have no idea what they're missing out on.

falcor84 7y ago
That's a lofty goal, which I don't think is achievable anymore, at least not in modern web development. The amount of languages, libraries and APIs we have to regularly deal with makes offline development entirely infeasible. I too try to avoid googling for language features, but for the rest of my questions, SO is invaluable.
- ssalazar 7y ago
  > The amount of languages, libraries and APIs we have to regularly deal with Is this because this Web programming innately needs lots of tools, etc. to work, or because the modern programming ecosystem (including stack overflow) has allowed it to grow to be this way?
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    I would say a little bit of both. Since modern networked programming is much more complex than before (having to care about security, distributed storage, systems, worldwide connectivity over vast range of devices etc.) it has more moving parts and thus more combinations of various systems possible. Naturally complexity grows exponentially.
    - falcor84 7y ago
      >...complexity grows exponentially Just to nitpick a bit, I would say that complexity grows quadratically - proportionally to the number of potential interactions between subcomponents.
      - bonoboTP 7y ago
        There can be interactions among more than 2 components as well that cannot be explained just by the pairwise interactions. The number of all subsets grows exponentially.
- proverbialbunny 7y ago
  It is a lofty goal. I've been told by coworkers, "No one can remember the entire language." and then went and did it anyways. Yes, I still have to look up libraries for, eg pip, and I haven't gotten to the level of knowing every compiler error yet. But it is very much a doable goal. Especially given that knowledge transfers between languages and libraries. Once you learn the thought process of the dev who wrote it, you can guess how they did or are going to do everything after that, creating a short cut where you can guess and usually always guess the right answer. It's much quicker than using SO.

falcor84 7y ago

That's a lofty goal, which I don't think is achievable anymore, at least not in modern web development. The amount of languages, libraries and APIs we have to regularly deal with makes offline development entirely infeasible. I too try to avoid googling for language features, but for the rest of my questions, SO is invaluable.

ssalazar 7y ago
> The amount of languages, libraries and APIs we have to regularly deal with Is this because this Web programming innately needs lots of tools, etc. to work, or because the modern programming ecosystem (including stack overflow) has allowed it to grow to be this way?
- yoz-y 7y ago
  I would say a little bit of both. Since modern networked programming is much more complex than before (having to care about security, distributed storage, systems, worldwide connectivity over vast range of devices etc.) it has more moving parts and thus more combinations of various systems possible. Naturally complexity grows exponentially.
  - falcor84 7y ago
    >...complexity grows exponentially Just to nitpick a bit, I would say that complexity grows quadratically - proportionally to the number of potential interactions between subcomponents.
    - bonoboTP 7y ago
      There can be interactions among more than 2 components as well that cannot be explained just by the pairwise interactions. The number of all subsets grows exponentially.
proverbialbunny 7y ago
It is a lofty goal. I've been told by coworkers, "No one can remember the entire language." and then went and did it anyways. Yes, I still have to look up libraries for, eg pip, and I haven't gotten to the level of knowing every compiler error yet. But it is very much a doable goal. Especially given that knowledge transfers between languages and libraries. Once you learn the thought process of the dev who wrote it, you can guess how they did or are going to do everything after that, creating a short cut where you can guess and usually always guess the right answer. It's much quicker than using SO.