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What did you when you got stuck on some small thing that wasn't obvious from the docs? Say some interaction between two concepts? Nowadays I've always discover

What did you when you got stuck on some small thing that wasn't obvious from the docs? Say some interaction between two concepts? Nowadays I've always discovered that I'm not the first person to ask.

IncRnd 5y ago
You thought it through, investigated the issue, came to a conclusion, created a hypothesis, and tested a solution. Now, the cycle seems to be read a problem ticket, see what other people have done, copy code, close ticket.
- rkhassen9 5y ago
  And tbh, you beat your head against the wall until you managed to find the solution...somehow.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    And sometimes just find some other way to accomplish what you needed done.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Which might be after you've gone home and just stopped thinking about it. Mine usually comes the next moring in the shower. Sometimes pulling an all nighter and beating your head on the wall is less productive than just stopping to take a break and coming back at it with a fresh mind. FAANG PMs don't get this and probably think less of you because your Zen like approach is anathema to their fast paced do or die approach now. You can't be productive if your butt isn't in the chair.
- vizzier 5y ago
  I can't help but feel that this type of workflow just took a huge step forward in https://copilot.github.com/ https://copilot.github.com/ too. A solid recognition that thats how most people code distilled into a product that automates that lookup by cross referencing information on the worlds largest code platform.
  - cj 5y ago
    A step forward, but also potentially a step backwards compared to the “harder” workflow (the one without all answers on stack overflow). Just a small example, I imagine there are a lot of JS developers who know that they need to create a new function using “=>” or “.bind(this)” if they need access to “this” within the function… and if they don’t, things break, without really knowing why (even though they know the solution). TLDR: the best developers I’ve worked with go beyond “knowing the solution” to “knowing why the solution is the solution”. Understanding “why” something is the way it is becomes difficult when something like Copilot autocompletes the correct answer.
makeitdouble 5y ago
When phones still had IR blasters, I got stuck for 3 weeks straight on a IR library that needed to imitate the sequences coming from a TV remote. Code was “done” in 2 days, the rest was spent in front of a TV to have my sequences get recognized. Literally went to the library to read books on IR and make sure I understood what the doc was saying. Asked around to find people who worked on these kind of sequencing. Went to a small repair shop and bribed the tech to give me hints on how remotes work. It was fun in retrospect, maddening and incredibly taxing at the time.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  What would you do differently?
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    With prior knowledge of how quirky it is, I'd sacrifice way more time finding an expert from the start. I don't think we did anything fundamentally wrong, short of underestimating the problem space. It's also not as if I was left in my corner for weeks, I got pretty good advices (like go finding more help and returning to basics). Getting info before the internet, before makers got into habits of published maintenance manuals etc. life was just way harder.

What did you when you got stuck on some small thing that wasn't obvious from the docs? Say some interaction between two concepts? Nowadays I've always discovered that I'm not the first person to ask.

IncRnd 5y ago

You thought it through, investigated the issue, came to a conclusion, created a hypothesis, and tested a solution. Now, the cycle seems to be read a problem ticket, see what other people have done, copy code, close ticket.

rkhassen9 5y ago
And tbh, you beat your head against the wall until you managed to find the solution...somehow.
- ghaff 5y ago
  And sometimes just find some other way to accomplish what you needed done.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Which might be after you've gone home and just stopped thinking about it. Mine usually comes the next moring in the shower. Sometimes pulling an all nighter and beating your head on the wall is less productive than just stopping to take a break and coming back at it with a fresh mind. FAANG PMs don't get this and probably think less of you because your Zen like approach is anathema to their fast paced do or die approach now. You can't be productive if your butt isn't in the chair.
vizzier 5y ago
I can't help but feel that this type of workflow just took a huge step forward in https://copilot.github.com/ https://copilot.github.com/ too. A solid recognition that thats how most people code distilled into a product that automates that lookup by cross referencing information on the worlds largest code platform.
- cj 5y ago
  A step forward, but also potentially a step backwards compared to the “harder” workflow (the one without all answers on stack overflow). Just a small example, I imagine there are a lot of JS developers who know that they need to create a new function using “=>” or “.bind(this)” if they need access to “this” within the function… and if they don’t, things break, without really knowing why (even though they know the solution). TLDR: the best developers I’ve worked with go beyond “knowing the solution” to “knowing why the solution is the solution”. Understanding “why” something is the way it is becomes difficult when something like Copilot autocompletes the correct answer.

makeitdouble 5y ago

When phones still had IR blasters, I got stuck for 3 weeks straight on a IR library that needed to imitate the sequences coming from a TV remote. Code was “done” in 2 days, the rest was spent in front of a TV to have my sequences get recognized. Literally went to the library to read books on IR and make sure I understood what the doc was saying. Asked around to find people who worked on these kind of sequencing. Went to a small repair shop and bribed the tech to give me hints on how remotes work. It was fun in retrospect, maddening and incredibly taxing at the time.

MonaroVXR 5y ago
What would you do differently?
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  With prior knowledge of how quirky it is, I'd sacrifice way more time finding an expert from the start. I don't think we did anything fundamentally wrong, short of underestimating the problem space. It's also not as if I was left in my corner for weeks, I got pretty good advices (like go finding more help and returning to basics). Getting info before the internet, before makers got into habits of published maintenance manuals etc. life was just way harder.