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The best programmers I know

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628 points kiyanwang | 4 comments | 09 Apr 25 06:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.649s | source
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gwbas1c ◴[09 Apr 25 12:36 UTC] No.43631365[source]▶
> Read the Reference

> Don’t Guess

I find that, when working with a new "thing," I often like to guess for about an hour or so before I really do a deep dive into the reference. Or, I'll read a stackoverflow answer or two, play around with it, and then go to reference.

Why?

Often there's a lot of context in the reference that only makes sense once I've had some hands-on time with whatever the reference is describing.

This is especially the case when learning a new language or API: I'll go through a tutorial / quickstart; "guess" at making a change; and then go back and read the reference with a better understanding of the context.

BTW: This is why I like languages and IDEs that support things like intellisense. It's great to be able to see little bits of documentation show up in my IDE to help me in my "guess" stage of learning.

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1. ctxc ◴[09 Apr 25 13:27 UTC] No.43631816[source]▶
This is why I tend to Google instead of chatgpt everything. I always end up finding these little interesting nuggets in comments/threads in SO
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2. socksy ◴[09 Apr 25 13:48 UTC] No.43632067[source]▶
I think my preferred LLM usage style these days is to try something on my own, and then get the LLM to critique what I did. I think it's both better for learning (just like learning natural languages, it's better for learning to make a mistake and be corrected than it is to look up the right answer each time), and also I think the stakes are lower since you're not relying on the LLM to not hallucinate. You can also learn some new threads to pull on that you can investigate on your own etc
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3. ctxc ◴[09 Apr 25 13:57 UTC] No.43632193[source]▶
Makes sense. I learnt swift recently with LLM as my first starting point - basically "I know java and python, explain swift syntax". It was great.

Once I got to architecture I got a general direction and relied on googling (eg. Lots of nuance to if I should use swiftData/coreData/sqlite etc found in conversation threads)

4. skydhash ◴[10 Apr 25 12:52 UTC] No.43643275[source]▶
If I’m writing in an unfamiliar language or using an unfamiliar library, I will mostly have several browser tabs opened. That’s because the docs usually have caveats and other tips that will be missing from LLMs. And a book can do wonders for strengthening your foundations.