If you’re working on the same type of thing everyday you’ll likely remember how to reverse an array in JavaScript. The other day I was trying to remember how to reverse a string in JavaScript… that was fun.
Those are usually people who aren't changing languages or frameworks. Memory is mostly recency and repetition, so if you want better memory then narrowing scope is a good strategy. I'd rather go broad so that I can better make connections between things but have to always look up the specifics especially now with LLMs right there
This is the knowledge in the head vs. in the world thing from Design of Everyday Things - if the knowledge is easily accessible in the world you will naturally keep it there not in your head. Maybe Google/LLMs are so fast this is the result.
It is normal to not remember this, I certainly agree do not. It is not normal to use a dev environment, where you need to use Google to answer this question.
Also Google does incredibly poorly on these types of questions, often linking absolute slop instead of the official documentation. Git for example has great documentation, but if you look for it through Google you get AI slop articles which answer your question in 30 paragraphs.
If you internet search "mdn array", you get the following as the first result:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
Then `⌘F`/`Ctrl-F` "reverse", the first result will be a link to this page:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
The second result will give the non-mutating ES6 version:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
Hell, even internet searching "mdn array reverse" will give you `reverse()` as the first result.
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I genuinely find it concerning that it takes 20 minutes of "Googling" for the "Senior Developer" to work out something that is easily findable in the documentation.
It's especially worrying that they are then advising junior developers to do the exact same thing.
I appreciate that the author is trying to be encouraging. That's valuable, and we need more of it in this industry at the moment. But advising people that it's okay to avoid reading the documentation first is bad advice, in my opinion.
bdangubic•3mo ago
webdevver•3mo ago
klardotsh•3mo ago
rstuart4133•3mo ago
The reason is pretty straight forward. I'm a senior developer. If I ask an LLM a question about my domain of expertise, I usually often get hallucinations or 100's of useless words saying nothing. That's because I already know most of what the LLM's have seen on the internet.
But if I ask it for background information in a topic I'm new to, an LLM is great starting point.