Is coding just googling and copy pasting?

Developers make a lot of jokes that their job consists of basically googling everything.

Well it’s true. We do google a lot.

But as with anything in life there’s some nuance. And if you don’t know what nuance means, please google it (i had to the first time i came across the word lol).

Generally devs at all levels google and read tutorials, articles and stack over flow posts. We can’t be expected to know everything from the top of our heads. There’s simply too much information out there.

At the higher levels of seniority, you’ll see developers reading about different implementations of tools or solutions and the opinions that other devs have on those topics.

At the more junior levels, you see developer googling how to use basic functions in their languages or how to manipulate arrays and objects or carry out git commands.

Again if you don’t know what git means please google it. That’s the homework for this post.

That’s how we get to one of the in jokes of the development industry: developers listing ‘googling’ as a skill along with the languages and frameworks that they know.

Why is that the case?

Because knowing what to google and when to google is a crucial part of being a developer.

We also run into the situation where we can’t go looking for solutions to the problems that we have because they are company-specific and no one else would have similar problems.

That’s when we do some cheeky pair programming or ask for help from senior devs.

Now the real question for you is: would you like to learn HOW TO google like a developer?

Let me know!

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