4 ms·
Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to
by forgotusername6 4y ago
Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to look it up".
It's a statement that I agree with. There is just too much knowledge to know it all. These days there is a very real skill in knowing how to search i.e. a second order version of the above statement "you need to know where to find out how to look this up".
- arcbyte 4y agoThere's a HUGE difference between looking something up to reactivate sleepy memories and learning something new for the first time. There are some really technical things ive done in the pasy that I couldn't do without a reference right now, but once I've got the reference I don't need to be reminded about low level details or edge cases or gotchas - it's all still there in my head I just need to see the road map and it will all come back to me.
- nolroz 4y agoYep, my dad used to sum this up as "All Engineering school does is teach you where to shit." I guess I may have gone with "where to eat" but he had a flair for the dramatic.
- tester756 4y agoBut still, there's "minimal required knowledge".
- sam0x17 4y agoLike how to use google
- tester756 4y agoNope. I wouldn't want to go to doc that has to Google basic stuff.
- sam0x17 4y agoConversely, I wouldn't want to go to a doc who doesn't know how to Google basic stuff.
- epgui 4y agoUnderestimating the amount of knowledge required or of importance to know (yes, even when google exists) is just another form of the infamous Dunning-Kruger.
- sha256sum 4y agoGoogle’s search mechanisms and rankings have changed a lot over my lifetime. I don’t usually trust it to find the right answers to problems in my field unless it’s a very well supported technology. I don’t agree that “knowing how to Google” is a skill in its own right for this reason. Hell they even claimed not long ago they would fix quote searches but they seem worse than ever.
- forgotusername6 4y agoIt depends. I haven't yet in my career come across something that I couldn't research online because I hadn't been taught it. Usually the first step is to discover which words to use, reading around the domain. Once I have the words I can usually find out everything I need to do my job. Knowledge is so easily acquired these days that, while useful, it is not essential. I hire people with zero domain knowledge for that reason.
- setr 4y agoI see people struggling to find the correct initial keywords to search on all the time; and I have the same problem trying to google domains I don’t know. But this can usually be solved with sufficient effort, though I don’t know many people who are willing to put in that effort. But more problematic is when people don’t know there’s a problem to google in the first place — it seems to do the job — which is usually resolved by both education and experience, but is ultimately a result if they don’t know what they don’t know. The knowledge is generally out there, but you need to know you’re looking for it, and it’s only in the common/trivial problems that it’s so obvious that the compiler/tooling/customer just flat-out tells you you’ve missed something
- As_You_Wish 4y agoOh, rly? Explain this to me by looking it up. https://imgur.com/Bj24AAR https://imgur.com/Bj24AAR