Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> If you have to stackoverflow every single line of code that you are attempting to write all the way down to each individual print statement and array access

Then you may be a perfectly adequate programmer. This, what, doubles the length of time it takes to type out the program? Triples? Typing out the program is not what takes the time!

I've just spent a couple of days writing a plugin in a language I don't know. (The system documentation spends two paragraphs explaining how hard it is to solve the problem I solved.) Yes, I had to look up absolutely everything (including basic language syntax – repeatedly), and that was really annoying, but most of my time and effort went into figuring out how to do the thing.



You already have programming knowledge that you can use to leverage toward that task. For a complete beginner, such a project might be a non-starter.

Like, once you learn a programming language, you already know the syntax for 90% of all languages.


Here's a collage of some of my favourite bits. (I've inlined some functions, but this is nearly as readable as the actual code.)

  open Option Parse Scan;
  (maybe embedded --| minus -- name >> (fn arg => ((if ! testing then #2 arg |> Output.writeln else (); #1 #> curry getOpt) arg (implode [])))) -- command_name "supply" >> (op ^)
What does this say?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: