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Nočnica Mellifera
Nočnica Mellifera

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I'm a senior developer and I regularly google "html image tag"

Based on the Twitter meme from a few years back (kind of hard to search for but I'll add an example as soon as I find one), I'd like to hear the ways that you're not quite as smart/knowledgable as a junior dev might expect.

For me all of HTML is still a foreign language and I regularly google the most basic elements!

Oldest comments (42)

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r7e98kva profile image
Markus

For me css is just trial and error.

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nocnica profile image
Nočnica Mellifera

real

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Tobias Struckmeier

There are so many resources out there now. Please take the time and effort to learn it.
I see so many developers spreading hate on it. But they never invested dedicated time on it.
Big rewards at the end of the rainbow :)

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Daileny Hernandez Barreiro

I google the sql update syntax almost every time that I need it, I don't know why I forget it!!!!!

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nocnica profile image
Nočnica Mellifera

oh yeah that's a huge one. I used to write sql every day, but now whenever it comes up I have to google the most basic syntax!

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Kona Arctic

We're developers not because we can regurgitate every last word of the HTML5 standard but because we can engineer and build clean, scale-able, maintainable, and working software.

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Matteo Nunziati

I work with a number of companies each one requiring a different tech/lib/language. While I'm in my 13th year as a coder I constantly Google for everything.

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Cécile Lebleu

During the past couple of weeks, every day, at least twice, I've searched for "js foreach syntax". There's something about it I can't stick in my brains.

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Martin Wheeler

I always forget how to use Date objects in JS, I'll probably never get the hang of them.

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Arber Braja

No wonder. Working with time and date is one of the trickiest part (and most bug ready then everything else) then any other concept ... not just in Javscript but in a lot of other languages too.

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Jacob Herrington (he/him)

I'm also a senior developer and I google dumb stuff constantly. Your brain can only hold so much! 🤷‍♂️

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midblue profile image
Jasper Stephenson

I think I'm 90% of the traffic to that CSSTricks complete guide to Flexbox article.

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arberbr profile image
Arber Braja

Long live CSS tricks flexbox article :p

Way more easy then to read the specs and most of the articles out there regarding flex.

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Mark Harless

It’s such a beautiful site.

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Vom Com

Then I'm the other 10%. Align-self, align-content, align-items, and then none of those do anything because the divs aren't properly display: flex, display: inline-flex, display: flexbox, display:row, flex-flow: .... / this is better than floating divs, I'm told. /

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Paul Truong

Best article on the Internet

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Giovanni Cortés

I have worked 7 years as Django Developer and I google how to start a new project in Django

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nocnica profile image
Nočnica Mellifera

This one is so relatable! I still grab an “expressJS starter” off a google search even though I write Node almost every day!

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Maria Zaitseva

Yesterday I googled how to concatenate strings in Swift. Yes, it was "+", like in almost every other language I worked with, and yet I wasn't sure.

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Justin Edwards

I prefer string interpolation on languages that support it.

let multiplier = 3
let message = "\(multiplier) times 2.5 is \(Double(multiplier) * 2.5)"
// message is "3 times 2.5 is 7.5

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tailcall profile image
Maria Zaitseva • Edited

I agree, string interpolation is cool, but sometimes I feel that some simple operations are more readable if you just use concatenation, like when adding a prefix to a string.

let prefixedString = prefix + string
// versus
let prefixedString = "\(prefix)\(string)"

When my brain sees latter, it thinks "oh, some serious formatting is probably going on here, I should totally spend time and energy to carefully investigate it".

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diek profile image
diek

I google a lot the next ones:

  • alter table sql syntax
  • grant privileges sql syntax
  • parameters order in php's built-in array functions
  • regex search/replace in js and python
  • dict and iterators differences between python2.x and python3.x

And i don't think i'm worst professional or less senior because of that, the things i most search are in fact the ones i use less in my daily work, i don't feel insecure about the fact i cannot remember everything.

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Nicholas Duffy

This page has been viewed 8 million times and I think half of them are mine. stackoverflow.com/questions/927358...

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Paweł Kowalski • Edited

Well, because you are senior, your brain is occupied with things a little less trivial than html img tag syntax that you can find in 2 sec.
I would say its perfectly normal and desirable state of things.

There is a quote attributed to Albert E.:

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”

I strongly believe in it in my field of work.

Remembering everything is domain of the robots, not humans, who train to be better at searching for things/solutions using abstract thinking.

Im on regex101.com every time i have to write any regexp. ;)

PS. Emmet is a pretty nice tool to minimize duckduckgo.com trips on a daily basis. Or snippets in general. img<tab> => <img src="" alt="">

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Bill Mitchell

That's the exact quote that came into my head when I read the post. Great minds think alike :)

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Aaron

I think it is a great point that you have made here. I follow #100daysofcode on my instagram feed and I see so many photos of people learning / starting out who have taken massive amounts of notes about the sorts of things people have mentioned in the comments below, I understand you need some sort of a background but I think they are focusing their energies on trying to memorise things than learning to be a dev

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nocnica profile image
Nočnica Mellifera

Yeah this article struck such a chord I’m going to write “what to memorize, what to write down, and what you can just google”

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Simon Foster

Reading all these comments make me feel much better, I feel I'm always Googling for the simplest things - many of them mentioned already!