The readings and responses listed here should take you approximately 40 minutes.
To start this assignment, click the button in the upper right-hand corner that says Fork. This is now your copy of this document. Click the Edit button when you're ready to start adding your answers. To save your work, click the green button in the bottom right-hand corner. You can always come back and re-edit your gist.
1. How to Use Google to Solve Your Programming Questions by Coding in Flow (15 min)
- Your key take-aways OR how you're going to implement specific points (minimum 3):
- It is obvious now, how much time can be saved with just a few simple additions to my search!
- Theres been so many times I've wanted to exlude a word from a search and all I have to do is add "-" before the word.
- Using these shows how taking the extra second to be more precise and specific can end up saving lots of time in the long run.
2. Do Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently? by Umer Mansoor (10 min)
- Your key take-aways OR how you're going to implement specific points (minimum 2):
- YES THEY DO. Using google is valuable to a programmer as it is impossible to know everything.
- Google is an extremely useful tool to save time and energy that someone else has already put in. Making it much easier to learn new concepts instead of starting from scratch.
- Theres no shame in using google, experienced programmers often use it more than beginners.
3. 20 Google Search Tips to Use Google More Efficiently by Joseph Hindy (15 min)
- Briefly describe (in your own words) each of the tips below AND provide an example of a search that captures the sentiment of the tip
- Tip 2: Using quotes narrows down your search to just the words you entered in order. Instead of any random assortment of the words. Ex. Search for: Hockey video game. This could end up being, video hockey game and give me results of actual hockey game videos instead of hockey video games. Thus using quotes "Hockey video game" would hopefully narrow my results to just video games about hockey.
- Tip 3: Use a hyphen "-" before any word you wish to exclude entirely from your search. Ex. Animals -spiders. Excludes any result that contains something about spiders.
- Tip 4: Use "site:" to search a specific site for soemthing. Ex. Toothpaste site:Walgreens.com. This would only search Walgreens.com for toothpaste.
- Tip 9: Add OR between to things to search for both. Ex. Ice cream near me OR Frozen Yogurt near me. Searches for both ice cream and frozen yogurt places near me.
- Tip 13: Use words as if the website was saying it to you. A search for "What to do about stolen bicycle" could be replaced with "Report stolen bicycle" to narrow results to a place to report your bicycle stolen.
- Tip 14: Use more more important words to limit clutter in your results. Searching for: Lowest calorie item I can order at taco bell. Instead using: Healthiest item at taco bell. Can end up getting to the results quicker and by using less words.
- Tip 17: Use more description. Searching for: Best way to get fit. This search doesn't provide a lot for google to go off of when finding the best way for me specifically. Searching instead for: Workouts for a 20 year old man. This lets google look for more specific results containing ways of getting fit that are geared toward me rather any random person.
If you have any questions, comments, or confusions from any of the readings that you would like an instructor to address, list them below: