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I agree completely on the internet access. Very hard to work through issues without online resources nowadays. How did we do it before there was such great on

I agree completely on the internet access. Very hard to work through issues without online resources nowadays. How did we do it before there was such great online help like StackExchange?

AlexMuir 13y ago
I now find a lot of better answers through Github issues and personal blogs. I should remember to search Github code when I'm stuck trying to figure something out.
- mathattack 13y ago
  The point is similar though - need the cheap internet connection on both.
larrys 13y ago
" How did we do it before there was such great online help like StackExchange?" Books. And if you were lucky you would buy 2 or 3 so you could triangulate something that didn't make sense. At least that is what I did. Also plenty of trying and iteration. Try this. Try that. For hours on end. (Not sure by your question if you had done this or were just asking btw.). When I bought a Unix system (mid 80's) it came with a bound set of maybe 10 manuals iirc. Getting other books was difficult I had to drive miles to a University bookstore to even find anything on Unix or C. Software wasn't free of course. It cost real dollars and was pretty expensive and came on floppies.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I hear you, and that's how I learned. :-) But I find it much tougher on the topics I'm learning today. Perhaps it's because the old stuff is hard wired because it needs to be, but I keep less of the new topics in long term memory because I can outsource that storage to Google?
  - larrys 13y ago
    Yeah the memory thing is a problem for sure. I've noticed that and it worries me. A few years ago I built this php/mysql just to store things that I learned or figured out (correct syntax for rsync might be an example) so I wouldn't have to re google them. [1] But now what I'm seeing is that most things can be found by google quicker than in the format I am using the db for. (But it's still helpful because I can cut paste and edit). I also use a wiki to keep track of what I have found that is helpful. Putting something in the wiki seems to help a little. My point is in the past there would have been much more memorization reinforcement (see [1] below) than today. My brain is totally getting lazy because it knows the answer is right at my fingertips one way or another. When I used to do the 3x5 cards [1] I typed it up, printed it, reduced it, pasted it and the act of creating and using those "flash" cards made me memorize the answers. The other problem is the flood of information. To many cool and interesting things to test out and get the hang of. I remember back when I tried C for the first time (don't even think there was c++). Could work with that for a long time since there wasn't really anything else to play with. [2] [1] Old way of doing this used to be 3x5 cards or those 8.5 x 11 plastic (can't think of the actual word for it) cheat sheets like "Unix Quick Reference". See: http://www.bookdepository.com/Unix-Inc-Barcharts/9781572223974 http://www.bookdepository.com/Unix-Inc-Barcharts/97815722239... [2] I'm not a programmer but I do some programming to help with what I do. And have been doing it for a long time. So perhaps if I was doing this full time and my needs were different (instead of intermittent) this would be less of an issue for me.
    - ZoFreX 13y ago
      Stop cutting and pasting and start typing. I try to copy from memory, but even writing it out while looking at the original still seems to help retention.
      - larrys 13y ago
        I actually do do that almost always. Habit started with books actually. Exactly true as far as learning and retention. Noting even that when learning php somethings that I cut and pasted had weird invisible embedded characters that caused things to fail [1]. That was actually a pretty good learning experience trying to take something that appeared correct character by character and figure out why it wasn't working by stripping things down the the basics. [1] Might have been on w3schools or something like that.
Nicholas_C 13y ago
Think of the value added by StackExchange and other websites. The amount of efficiency the Internet has created is incredible.
reeses 13y ago
We read the source code, reverse-engineered existing applications and hardware, wrote test harnesses, and implemented things ourselves. :-)
tokenrove 13y ago
Last year, I spent about six months without regular Internet access. It was fascinating watching my muscle memory adjust, and it got me thinking about how I worked in the past. Not just StackOverflow (which I don't find very useful for what I do), but the tendency to immediately google for a library, or current papers on a class of algorithms, or a piece of code I can study to see the preferred idiom for something. In some ways I was more productive than before, but I tended to reuse less code, and use less sophisticated algorithms and data structures to solve problems. Having good code around to read became a lot more important, as did having access to good books, and good man pages. (It reminded me why I loved OpenBSD so much in the 90s) The most positive thing that came out of it was reading a lot more code; I realized one of the habits that had diminished most since sometime in the last decade was the habit of reading the source code for something when I had a problem with it, instead of immediately googling it. It made me think that maybe younger programmers should try working without a connection now and then (say, for a week at a time). Also that open source has really changed things; there's so much stuff that I don't even think about writing myself now, because I know someone out there has already written and open sourced.
epsylon 13y ago
Books and Usenet.

I agree completely on the internet access. Very hard to work through issues without online resources nowadays. How did we do it before there was such great online help like StackExchange?

AlexMuir 13y ago

I now find a lot of better answers through Github issues and personal blogs. I should remember to search Github code when I'm stuck trying to figure something out.

mathattack 13y ago
The point is similar though - need the cheap internet connection on both.

larrys 13y ago

" How did we do it before there was such great online help like StackExchange?" Books. And if you were lucky you would buy 2 or 3 so you could triangulate something that didn't make sense. At least that is what I did. Also plenty of trying and iteration. Try this. Try that. For hours on end. (Not sure by your question if you had done this or were just asking btw.). When I bought a Unix system (mid 80's) it came with a bound set of maybe 10 manuals iirc. Getting other books was difficult I had to drive miles to a University bookstore to even find anything on Unix or C. Software wasn't free of course. It cost real dollars and was pretty expensive and came on floppies.

mathattack 13y ago
I hear you, and that's how I learned. :-) But I find it much tougher on the topics I'm learning today. Perhaps it's because the old stuff is hard wired because it needs to be, but I keep less of the new topics in long term memory because I can outsource that storage to Google?
- larrys 13y ago
  Yeah the memory thing is a problem for sure. I've noticed that and it worries me. A few years ago I built this php/mysql just to store things that I learned or figured out (correct syntax for rsync might be an example) so I wouldn't have to re google them. [1] But now what I'm seeing is that most things can be found by google quicker than in the format I am using the db for. (But it's still helpful because I can cut paste and edit). I also use a wiki to keep track of what I have found that is helpful. Putting something in the wiki seems to help a little. My point is in the past there would have been much more memorization reinforcement (see [1] below) than today. My brain is totally getting lazy because it knows the answer is right at my fingertips one way or another. When I used to do the 3x5 cards [1] I typed it up, printed it, reduced it, pasted it and the act of creating and using those "flash" cards made me memorize the answers. The other problem is the flood of information. To many cool and interesting things to test out and get the hang of. I remember back when I tried C for the first time (don't even think there was c++). Could work with that for a long time since there wasn't really anything else to play with. [2] [1] Old way of doing this used to be 3x5 cards or those 8.5 x 11 plastic (can't think of the actual word for it) cheat sheets like "Unix Quick Reference". See: http://www.bookdepository.com/Unix-Inc-Barcharts/9781572223974 http://www.bookdepository.com/Unix-Inc-Barcharts/97815722239... [2] I'm not a programmer but I do some programming to help with what I do. And have been doing it for a long time. So perhaps if I was doing this full time and my needs were different (instead of intermittent) this would be less of an issue for me.
  - ZoFreX 13y ago
    Stop cutting and pasting and start typing. I try to copy from memory, but even writing it out while looking at the original still seems to help retention.
    - larrys 13y ago
      I actually do do that almost always. Habit started with books actually. Exactly true as far as learning and retention. Noting even that when learning php somethings that I cut and pasted had weird invisible embedded characters that caused things to fail [1]. That was actually a pretty good learning experience trying to take something that appeared correct character by character and figure out why it wasn't working by stripping things down the the basics. [1] Might have been on w3schools or something like that.

Nicholas_C 13y ago

Think of the value added by StackExchange and other websites. The amount of efficiency the Internet has created is incredible.

reeses 13y ago

We read the source code, reverse-engineered existing applications and hardware, wrote test harnesses, and implemented things ourselves. :-)

tokenrove 13y ago

Last year, I spent about six months without regular Internet access. It was fascinating watching my muscle memory adjust, and it got me thinking about how I worked in the past. Not just StackOverflow (which I don't find very useful for what I do), but the tendency to immediately google for a library, or current papers on a class of algorithms, or a piece of code I can study to see the preferred idiom for something. In some ways I was more productive than before, but I tended to reuse less code, and use less sophisticated algorithms and data structures to solve problems. Having good code around to read became a lot more important, as did having access to good books, and good man pages. (It reminded me why I loved OpenBSD so much in the 90s) The most positive thing that came out of it was reading a lot more code; I realized one of the habits that had diminished most since sometime in the last decade was the habit of reading the source code for something when I had a problem with it, instead of immediately googling it. It made me think that maybe younger programmers should try working without a connection now and then (say, for a week at a time). Also that open source has really changed things; there's so much stuff that I don't even think about writing myself now, because I know someone out there has already written and open sourced.

epsylon 13y ago

Books and Usenet.