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Oh, man, yes. My memory is pretty bad. Especially, it turns out, with coding stuff. I recently started to record myself making coding projects. It’s been reall

Oh, man, yes. My memory is pretty bad. Especially, it turns out, with coding stuff. I recently started to record myself making coding projects. It’s been really enlightening about some of my bad habits. For example, I look EVERYTHING up with a search. I knew that I did this, but, watching myself, I’m learning it’s worse than I imagined. Also, boy do I ignore my editor and let it work against me instead of for me. I gotta fix that. You can watch me struggle on YouTube if you want to see what I’m talking about. Most of my videos are scheduled to come out in the next few weeks. http://youtube.com/codazoda http://youtube.com/codazoda

yamtaddle 4y ago
I'm like this. I've been paid to write code in perhaps ten to twelve languages over a twenty-two year career but if you put me in front of a blank notepad.exe and told me to solve fizzbuzz in any language I chose, I'd struggle to complete it in any of them without made-up function names or incorrect syntax or something. I constantly crib from surrounding code, and google the basics, copy-paste a starter block, or rely more than usual on autocomplete when starting from scratch. I'm entirely sure I convinced one interviewer I was one of those much-feared "fakers" when I used the wrong method invocation syntax in a language I'd worked in for years and had written code in as recently as the prior week.
evanelias 4y ago
Honestly in some ways, I think having a poor memory actually makes me a better engineer. For example, out of necessity I always thoroughly comment my code and write descriptive commit messages, even for solo projects. This is especially important for background context which isn't readily apparent just from the code itself, as that context is easily forgotten. Regarding ignoring your editor: I do that on purpose! I avoid use of many IDE features, especially when learning a new large codebase. I find that after grep'ing for some method enough times, I'm more likely to memorize its location; eventually I develop the muscle memory for going to the right file, as well as a more complete understanding of the codebase's layout and design. In contrast, if I lean on IDE jump-to-definition features, I find that memorizing the codebase layout is completely hopeless for me. The IDE then becomes a crutch which also impedes my ability to get an intuitive feel for the architecture.

yamtaddle 4y ago

I'm like this. I've been paid to write code in perhaps ten to twelve languages over a twenty-two year career but if you put me in front of a blank notepad.exe and told me to solve fizzbuzz in any language I chose, I'd struggle to complete it in any of them without made-up function names or incorrect syntax or something. I constantly crib from surrounding code, and google the basics, copy-paste a starter block, or rely more than usual on autocomplete when starting from scratch. I'm entirely sure I convinced one interviewer I was one of those much-feared "fakers" when I used the wrong method invocation syntax in a language I'd worked in for years and had written code in as recently as the prior week.

evanelias 4y ago

Honestly in some ways, I think having a poor memory actually makes me a better engineer. For example, out of necessity I always thoroughly comment my code and write descriptive commit messages, even for solo projects. This is especially important for background context which isn't readily apparent just from the code itself, as that context is easily forgotten. Regarding ignoring your editor: I do that on purpose! I avoid use of many IDE features, especially when learning a new large codebase. I find that after grep'ing for some method enough times, I'm more likely to memorize its location; eventually I develop the muscle memory for going to the right file, as well as a more complete understanding of the codebase's layout and design. In contrast, if I lean on IDE jump-to-definition features, I find that memorizing the codebase layout is completely hopeless for me. The IDE then becomes a crutch which also impedes my ability to get an intuitive feel for the architecture.