Basic Things We Google

I use Google a lot in my job. Not only to search things I don't know, but also things I should know very well. For a long time, I didn't feel good about it. Until, I read this stream of confessions from skilled senior developers on the Twitter. As a developer interested in graphics, I should know that using references isn't bad. Graphics use references all the time and they don't feel bad about it. In fact, it is advised to use them. The final result is what matters. In a same way, you aren't a bad coder if you don't know bubble sort from head. Or if you need to search syntax of switch statement every single time. Unless, of course, you don't know anything and you paste things from Stack Overflow mindlessly.

So I decided to ask my colleagues which basic things they have to Google when writing a code.

Luděk: As for myself, I had to recently look for enum definition in Java because of missing semicolon I wasn't able to track down. I'm also not very confident when writing for loop from memory because I'm overusing NetBeans auto-completion way too much. System.out.println() is in my head forever saved as sys, CTRL+B, Enter. God bless the auto-completion.

Tomáš: Despite having 7 years of experience as a dedicated DB developer, I have to Google the syntax for CREATE TABLE command almost every time. Please don’t tell my boss.

Juraj: I’m still waiting for the day, when I will be able to use basic UNIX commands like grep, or find, or God forbid, curl with parameters correctly on the first try (relevant XKCD - https://xkcd.com/1168/).

Tibor: When de/compressing .tar.gz files, I always have to google the correct parameters.

Vojta: I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to use C getopt function correctly without copy-pasting it from an obscure online tutorial. Actually, this goes even for the most simple C Makefile… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Author: Luděk Novotný