The readings and responses listed here should take you approximately 60 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. Learning Fluency by Turing alum Sara Simon (30 min)
- Your key take-aways OR how you're going to implement specific points (minimum 3):
- The idea of fluency and how it applies to coding, programing and everything that comes with it is a language to become fluent in.
- Most anyone can find ways to relate coding to their own past experiences.
- The piece about jumping in is a part I found especially interesting, because the times I've tried to learn coding in the past, I've done exactly that and have gotten very stuck. I'm looking forward to being able to gain new skills to get myself out of those ruts, even just the Googling section has been helpful.
- This passage also made me think a lot about discipline and sticking to what you're doing, even when it is hard.
2. 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):
- I really like the method of using "(technology) [topic]" and "(technology) [topic] tutorial" to get documentation and a good jump into whatever it is that I'm trying to learn.
- Another that I will implement is trying to spend time in multiple sources, be they blogs, articles, ect instead of just being on MDN or something similar.
- The refresher on using "" and (-) in searches was good to see and something I want to try to practice to use more fluently.
3. 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):
- I liked the emphasis on using Google as a tool to research and actually understand what you're doing and not as a tool to just copy and paste from and I want to have that mindset going into the majoriety of problems.
- Also not being afraid to use Google as the valuable tool it is to developers.
4. 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: Google will search exactly what is in the quotes and require all parts to be in the results, exactly as written. If I search peanut butter sandwich, I might get results with just peanut butter or just sandwiches but if I search "peanut butter sandwich" I will only get results written that way.
- Tip 3: Google is going to omit anything attached to the (-). if I use that same peanut butter sandwich search but I'm getting a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I can write my search as "peanut butter sandwich" -jelly and get my desired results.
- Tip 4: Google will return results from a specific site. Maybe I want to see peanut butter sandwich pictures from Twitter. I could search it as "peanut butter sandwich" site:twitter.com
- Tip 9: This will let you search for multiple things at once. If I felt ready to see those peanut butter and jelly sandwich pictures, but not totally ready to let go of just peanut butter, I could search it as "peanut butter sandwich" OR "peanut butter jelly sandwich"
- Tip 13: This seems to be teaching us efficiency in our searches. It seems like using the (verb)(noun)(technology) verbage is where this tip is going.
- Tip 14: This seems similar to tip #13 but with more of a lean into simplicity. Using verb words like "repair" instead of "how to fix"
- Tip 17: What I get out of this tip is that sometimes our searches just aren't going to yield the results we desire and that sometimes we're just going to have to try changing words around or simplify our searches.
If you have any questions, comments, or confusions from any of the readings that you would an instructor to address, list them below:
@andrewckinstler, nice work on this!