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I think about this a lot with regards to learning to program. I learned to program as a kid in early 90s, with no internet. I had a bunch of books I got from th

I think about this a lot with regards to learning to program. I learned to program as a kid in early 90s, with no internet. I had a bunch of books I got from the library, and figuring things out meant looking in the index of a bunch of books to find the topic. I ended up making up my own version of a lot of fundamental programming things because I didn’t happen to read the chapter that had that bit, so I needed to solve it myself. I used to be really nostalgic about this, and worried that “kids these days” never get that experience of having to figure something out entirely on your own. Now I have started to think kids can do so much more and learn so much more these days. I could have learned so much with the effort I had to put in to learn the basics. I could know so much more than I do now if I had the internet as a kid!

prerok 6y ago
I somewhat agree but there is a lot to be said about "reinventing the wheel", while you are learning. Not only do you get to a solution, you also consider other approaches and discover why they don't work, or work as well. Having "a" solution at your fingertips all the time also decreases your critical thinking of whether that solution is really the best in the problem space you are working at. I think that the best of both worlds, what I usually try doing, is that you think about a problem, try to analyze how you would solve it and only then look up the solution.
- mypalmike 6y ago
  I agree. Learning to program on my own in the 80s by writing things like text adventures, I had to figure out things like parsing and sorting myself, with no idea that these were common problems with known approaches. Nowadays I lazily reach for answers on Google most of the time when I encounter a problem that is novel to me. I'm pretty sure I'm dumber now because of it.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    Meh. I would argue you have an evolved critical thinking skill, and can easily determine why the Stack Overflow answer with the green checkmark is not always the correct solution... AND, you know what to actually search for in Google to get your answer.

prerok 6y ago

I somewhat agree but there is a lot to be said about "reinventing the wheel", while you are learning. Not only do you get to a solution, you also consider other approaches and discover why they don't work, or work as well. Having "a" solution at your fingertips all the time also decreases your critical thinking of whether that solution is really the best in the problem space you are working at. I think that the best of both worlds, what I usually try doing, is that you think about a problem, try to analyze how you would solve it and only then look up the solution.

mypalmike 6y ago
I agree. Learning to program on my own in the 80s by writing things like text adventures, I had to figure out things like parsing and sorting myself, with no idea that these were common problems with known approaches. Nowadays I lazily reach for answers on Google most of the time when I encounter a problem that is novel to me. I'm pretty sure I'm dumber now because of it.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  Meh. I would argue you have an evolved critical thinking skill, and can easily determine why the Stack Overflow answer with the green checkmark is not always the correct solution... AND, you know what to actually search for in Google to get your answer.