The readings and responses listed here should take you approximately 25 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. 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):
- Being a competent coder is as much about being able to execute tasks you've never executed or studied before.
- Google searches are a learning tool, and also a tool for checking your work as you go.
2. 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 tells Google to search for a specific phrase rather than individual words in that phrase. For instance, if I want to know the title of the song "this is not my beautiful house" - the quotes help google weed out photos of beautiful houses.
- Tip 3: I've always thought of using a hyphen to prevent google from searching certain terms as subtracting search results. So if I search computers -mac -apple, hopefully it'll only show results from other manufacturers.
- Tip 4: This one was new to me. If I only want to see song lyrics from the Talking Heads on genius.com I can search Talking Heads site:genius.com.
- Tip 9: I can search for this OR that, whether it be two slightly different versions of the same idea (in an attempt to cast a wider net with a specific search), or two different things entirely. Searching elephant OR giraffe will present results for both animals, but not limit itself to trying to find pages that discuss both animals at once.
- Tip 13: When searching for an answer to a problem, I always try to think of how the answer will be phrased. Unless I have very specific language from an error, or know exactly what's causing a problem, I find results are more specific to the issue when you figure out what the fix would look like. So "my computer won't play music" may help, but if I search "troubleshoot soundcard macbook pro" I'll more quickly find results addressing my issue.
- Tip 14: Google isn't a human so grammar isn't helpful - in fact, prepositions, words like "the" "a" "that," and others all exist on virtually every webpage, so they can potentially bloat your search results with unrelated content. So instead of searching who wrote the book that says I think therefore I am I might search author "I think therefore I am"
- Tip 17: When sorting through almost all the information known to man it's important to be really specific. If I'm searching for greens, it's probably important whether to specify if they're leafy, or if I'm looking for different shades of green, or has my skin turned green and have I also grown 6 feet taller? This information can drastically affect the search results.
If you have any questions, comments, or confusions from any of the readings that you would like an instructor to address, list them below:
- No thank you :)
@GreysonElkins
Great takeaways here- your first point makes me think about how quickly tech changes and evolves- you have to stay flexible as a developer and learn new things as they come. Sometimes, that even means ditching old habits, patterns, or syntax if it becomes outdated!