• NABDad@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It depends on how hard you push the envelope. The closer you get to doing something no one has ever done before, the more likely you are to be in your own.

    Of course, any time you’re doing something no one has ever done before, it’s prudent to consider whether you should.

    • xpinchx@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Lol this applies to so many things. Maybe there’s some prestige to doing something for the first time, but really there were probably a dozen people that contemplated it and decided against it for good reasons.

    • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Of course, any time you’re doing something no one has ever done before, it’s prudent to consider whether you should.

      As a pentester I approve this message

    • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      I still have to look up basic things even when I’m doing that, sadly.

      Things like “how do I reverse an array?” Will always be in my Google history because I can’t remember “.reverse” exists.

      Could I reimplement “.reverse” or just read the docs for an array? Yes. Will I? Never.

      • Nahdahar@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I feel you, my problem is that I switch between languages too much. I’m learning rust right now as a hobby, but I’m technically a frontend dev with years of experience in angular and react, and a couple months ago I have been put on a legacy rails project, which we’re rewriting for Angular x Java stack (thankfully my roommate is a Java backend dev, he’s been a lot of help) and on top of this I maintain my Cyberpunk 2077 mods written in lua, c++ and redscript (swift-like).

        Send help.

        • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          How do I do thing that I do every day, but in this language I’m using today

          Modding is definitely a nightmare though. One day I’m writing the latest python. The next I’m looking at some C library that was published half a decade before I was born and is for some reason deep in the bowels of the game engine I’m modding

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      Doing something nobody has ever done before should be something we strive for.

      Do we really need more websites that are really just front-ends on databases?

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’m old enough that when I was in school, teachers were telling us that we’d never have calculators in our pockets wherever we’d go.

    • TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.worldOP
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      11 months ago

      I’m that old, too. Can you imagine a student back then saying, “I’ll have a calculator, flashlight, camera, video recorder, music collection, and games to pass the times I have to wait on others.”

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Wikipedia was started in 2001, and Google in 1998. Who was saying this to you when you were 2?

        • Micromot@feddit.de
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          11 months ago

          The platforms existing doesn’t mean they have been as wide spread as they are today

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            They said “no Google and no Wikipedia,” not “Google and Wikipedia were not as widespread as they are today”

            • PwnTra1n@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              I feel like you misread. I think they meant Wikipedia and google not allowed for sources.

                • PwnTra1n@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  The subject became “stupid shit teachers say that is not applicable in the real world” and in that context the subject never changed. They were probably told “you won’t have a calculator in your pocket all the time” as well as “don’t using the internet(google and Wikipedia) as sources” which was very common to be told around the time when they would have been in school. I’m not attacking you I just think you misunderstood as everyone is possible of doing.

    • tooclose104@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      This wasn’t all that long ago though. I’m only in my 30’s and was told this in elementary school in the 90’s and early 2000’s. The iPhone was first released only 16 years ago.

    • Punkie@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I was told this, too, but when I got to Functions and Analytical Geometry, they started suggesting calculators. Now kids have laptops, gees.

    • Steve@startrek.website
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      11 months ago

      Thats a stupid statement in any year after the “pocket calculator” was available in the 70s

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Not really. The first ones were quite expensive, and it was uncommon to have one on your person at all times like we now do with smartphones.

        • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          Yes really, if your job requires lots of calculations you’d be stupid not to have one, even back when they were expensive.

          Every machinist I know, even the crusty old ones, carry a calculator in their pocket. It’s indispensable. Why wouldn’t you carry one if you need it all the time?

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Pretty sure the teacher wasn’t assuming that every single child in class was going to be a machinist.

            In fact, most people aren’t machinists.

            • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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              11 months ago

              And yet my point stands: if you need to do a lot of calculations at your job, you’d be stupid not to have a calculator in your pocket. And if you don’t, then the time it takes to find a calculator will be negligible.

                • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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                  11 months ago

                  Uh what, that’s literally the point lol. The “you won’t have a calculator” has been complete and utter bullshit for literally over half a century.

  • If Only@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Googling does become a hell of a lot easier if you know what the concept you’re looking for is called.

    • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I find myself going to ChatGPT for this stuff now.

      “I’m trying to do something like [concept]. What is that called and can you give me an example”

      Usually I get my results faster and easier than Google.

      • hswolf@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        be careful using it as your only source of truth, even more so when you don’t know what you’re searching for exactly

          • Punkie@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            While I never had it happen, it could give you wrong command line switches that do damage. For example, when I asked how I could list volumes attached to an AWS instance, it gave me a “modify-volume” command instead of “describe-volume” command. Thankfully, I caught that before I cut and paste it.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            11 months ago

            It’s bad enough at programming that you can often see the problems without the help of the compiler

            Last thing I asked it for, after the fourth draft still had undeclared variables and called imaginary libraries (which if they existed would be great)

            It was good for coming up with a nice structure for a small program

        • Nahdahar@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You can ask it for source now with browser integration. Previously the browser extension was a separate model with gpt3.5 which was pretty bad, now it’s just integrated into gp4. It works a million times better and it’s great that it doesn’t break the flow of the conversation.

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        I had an emailed a question that I didn’t really know where to go with, so I asked Copilot to answer the email factually. Sent that email with a note of ai origin, but it was close enough and got us into right track

  • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org
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    11 months ago

    “There is no point in reinventing the wheel” is my favorite saying when it comes to things like this.

    If something has been done over and over again, there is no point in doing it yourself from scratch. It wastes time, money, and effort that could be spent on creating something new.

    Humanity’s greatest strength is being able to add to the previous generation’s knowledge base, too!

    If we had to relearn how to do the same things in the same way, in every generation, we would still be in the stone age…

    When I manage folks, I expect them to steal if its already been done and especially if it’s been done to death.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      If I relied on my college CS textbooks as reference for anything I code now, not only would it have been outdated 2 years after purchase, but it’s been ten damn years now. Only actual reference books I have are for theory. And even then it’s probably not the best source anymore.

    • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      there is no point in doing it yourself from scratch.

      Learning. The point is to learn.

      You don’t have to learn everything that way, but you understand things a lot better when you’ve built them from scratch, and that underlying foundation enhances the entire knowledge stack.

      • soapyplasm@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I like both of your guys’ points. Keeping all old knowledge while deconstructing and rebuilding it to make it understandable to newer generations is pretty great in my opinion

  • averagedrunk@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    I’ve made it two decades in IT and related fields by searching for answers using Google. I accidentally took my laziness, love of automation, and ability to Google and became an SRE. Then I accidentally became a senior software engineer because the director on that side of the house liked my initiative and was sure my skills would translate. I protested but got a substantial bump to do it.

    I’m failing upwards by abusing stack overflow and search engines.

      • averagedrunk@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Yep. I’ve got company access to GitHub Copilot, a personal subscription to ChatGPT, and I use Bing Copilot.

        Bing and ChatGPT have a lot of utility overlap. Those things don’t do my job for me but they do generate initial ideas and double check my code. I also use GPT as my rubber duck that kind of talks back. I literally tell it to be a rubber duck and pretend to know nothing, then chat with it. It’s pretty great for that. Better than the bear that sits on my desk, but not as fun to look at.

        Those are the newest tools in my arsenal of “Make computers do my job and rake in the paycheck”.

        • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I ask ChatGPT to roleplay as my 90s sitcom programming teachers Chip Bytefield, makes me giggle a lot more when I use it for ‘poor mans’ peer programming :-). Gonna try your idea too, sound fun!

  • shiroininja@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I literally made money on a contract this year doing something I’d never even done. Thank you google. Love it

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    As someone who worked in tech support and a sys admin role, yes, and thank you. I would say 90% of all issues and problems I had were either solved or pointed in the right direction since 2006, the year I started.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’ll do you one better. I’ve learned that in the absence of online information for a bug or fault, that I’m most likely attempting something that is better solved another way. Like, nobody does it like the harebrained thing I just invented, so it’s just me and everyone else with a (different) working solution.

  • SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip
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    11 months ago

    Do teachers actually say this these days? Or are you making it up just for the sake of the meme.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        for us oldbies, who went to school before the internet was popular, it used to be “You won’t have a calculator with you everywhere you go!”

        • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You won’t always have access to books from a printing press, youngster, so you must derive all knowledge from first principles!

          And ftr, there’s always been a good reason to learn things from first principles, and for teachers to encourage students to practice learning from first principles. You end up with a deeper understanding about it, can answer more questions on your own, and can ask better questions and get faster answers, if you understand the layers beneath your question.

          That’s still no excuse for teachers being dishonest about the reason though. I don’t believe that teachers in the 70’s and 80’s thought calculators were just gonna go away.

    • linkrulesx10@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      As a teacher, no. Now we say don’t trust the Google summary, click a link for more information!

      • Shard@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Funny. In my day Wikipedia just came out and they used to give the same advice. In comparison, I would wager any random wiki article has a better chance of being more reliable and a better answer to your question than a Google summary.

        • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Eh, there are entire categories of questions that can’t and shouldn’t be answered by searching wikipedia. A technical howto, for example, doesn’t belong on wikipedia because wikipedia articles are listings of facts, not narratives about following a process. They just aren’t meant for, or structured for, that type of question.

          Stackoverflow also leaves a lot to be desired in that area, though, so you still need a search engine to find them.

      • tweeks@feddit.nl
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        11 months ago

        Also might be good to recommend them to use multiple links / sources, and look for opposite views to broaden their perspectives on topics.

  • dan1101@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Googling problems certainly helps but you still need enough knowledge to define the problem, Google it, and implement the solution.

    I get the impression that a lot of posted solutions are from people who actually spoke to high level tech support for various hardware/software because how else would they know things like what obscure registry key with a very arbitrary name to add?

    • iamericandre@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      That’s a big part people don’t understand is you need to know enough about your problem to google the correct terms and find what you need. Googling itself is a learned skill.

      • Punkie@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        This is so true. That’s why there’s no shame in using Google or Duckduckgo or even Chatgpt. You have to know enough to phrase the right question, know how to filter the right answer, and then use it.

        I can Google a Chinese dictionary, but that won’t make me fluent in Chinese.

  • Yuion@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Google search results have become so bad i barely use it today. Its even better to use chatgpt. You have to take every answer with a grain of salt but usually it can give you a few options and give you resources to work with. Google search sucks ass. The amount of times i do NOT find what im searching for is way too high

  • r00ty@kbin.life
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    11 months ago

    Well, you need the basics of software development to start with. But sure, I’m not going to make my own implementation for every problem I come across. That would be insanity and a colossal waste of time.

    However, people googling or using ChatGPT to create code they do not understand themselves, are just cargo cult programming, and it will bite them in the arse/ass (delete as applicable).