• NABDad@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    It depends on how hard you push the envelope. The closer you get to doing something no one has ever done before, the more likely you are to be in your own.

    Of course, any time you’re doing something no one has ever done before, it’s prudent to consider whether you should.

  • If Only@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Googling does become a hell of a lot easier if you know what the concept you’re looking for is called.

    • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I find myself going to ChatGPT for this stuff now.

      “I’m trying to do something like [concept]. What is that called and can you give me an example”

      Usually I get my results faster and easier than Google.

      • hswolf@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        be careful using it as your only source of truth, even more so when you don’t know what you’re searching for exactly

          • Punkie@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            While I never had it happen, it could give you wrong command line switches that do damage. For example, when I asked how I could list volumes attached to an AWS instance, it gave me a “modify-volume” command instead of “describe-volume” command. Thankfully, I caught that before I cut and paste it.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            10 months ago

            It’s bad enough at programming that you can often see the problems without the help of the compiler

            Last thing I asked it for, after the fourth draft still had undeclared variables and called imaginary libraries (which if they existed would be great)

            It was good for coming up with a nice structure for a small program

        • Nahdahar@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          You can ask it for source now with browser integration. Previously the browser extension was a separate model with gpt3.5 which was pretty bad, now it’s just integrated into gp4. It works a million times better and it’s great that it doesn’t break the flow of the conversation.

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 months ago

        I had an emailed a question that I didn’t really know where to go with, so I asked Copilot to answer the email factually. Sent that email with a note of ai origin, but it was close enough and got us into right track

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I’m old enough that when I was in school, teachers were telling us that we’d never have calculators in our pockets wherever we’d go.

    • TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 months ago

      I’m that old, too. Can you imagine a student back then saying, “I’ll have a calculator, flashlight, camera, video recorder, music collection, and games to pass the times I have to wait on others.”

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Wikipedia was started in 2001, and Google in 1998. Who was saying this to you when you were 2?

        • Micromot@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          The platforms existing doesn’t mean they have been as wide spread as they are today

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            They said “no Google and no Wikipedia,” not “Google and Wikipedia were not as widespread as they are today”

            • PwnTra1n@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              I feel like you misread. I think they meant Wikipedia and google not allowed for sources.

                • PwnTra1n@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  The subject became “stupid shit teachers say that is not applicable in the real world” and in that context the subject never changed. They were probably told “you won’t have a calculator in your pocket all the time” as well as “don’t using the internet(google and Wikipedia) as sources” which was very common to be told around the time when they would have been in school. I’m not attacking you I just think you misunderstood as everyone is possible of doing.

    • tooclose104@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      This wasn’t all that long ago though. I’m only in my 30’s and was told this in elementary school in the 90’s and early 2000’s. The iPhone was first released only 16 years ago.

    • Steve@startrek.website
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      10 months ago

      Thats a stupid statement in any year after the “pocket calculator” was available in the 70s

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Not really. The first ones were quite expensive, and it was uncommon to have one on your person at all times like we now do with smartphones.

        • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Yes really, if your job requires lots of calculations you’d be stupid not to have one, even back when they were expensive.

          Every machinist I know, even the crusty old ones, carry a calculator in their pocket. It’s indispensable. Why wouldn’t you carry one if you need it all the time?

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Pretty sure the teacher wasn’t assuming that every single child in class was going to be a machinist.

            In fact, most people aren’t machinists.

            • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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              10 months ago

              And yet my point stands: if you need to do a lot of calculations at your job, you’d be stupid not to have a calculator in your pocket. And if you don’t, then the time it takes to find a calculator will be negligible.

                • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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                  10 months ago

                  Uh what, that’s literally the point lol. The “you won’t have a calculator” has been complete and utter bullshit for literally over half a century.

    • Punkie@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I was told this, too, but when I got to Functions and Analytical Geometry, they started suggesting calculators. Now kids have laptops, gees.

  • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org
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    10 months ago

    “There is no point in reinventing the wheel” is my favorite saying when it comes to things like this.

    If something has been done over and over again, there is no point in doing it yourself from scratch. It wastes time, money, and effort that could be spent on creating something new.

    Humanity’s greatest strength is being able to add to the previous generation’s knowledge base, too!

    If we had to relearn how to do the same things in the same way, in every generation, we would still be in the stone age…

    When I manage folks, I expect them to steal if its already been done and especially if it’s been done to death.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      If I relied on my college CS textbooks as reference for anything I code now, not only would it have been outdated 2 years after purchase, but it’s been ten damn years now. Only actual reference books I have are for theory. And even then it’s probably not the best source anymore.

    • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      there is no point in doing it yourself from scratch.

      Learning. The point is to learn.

      You don’t have to learn everything that way, but you understand things a lot better when you’ve built them from scratch, and that underlying foundation enhances the entire knowledge stack.

      • soapyplasm@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        I like both of your guys’ points. Keeping all old knowledge while deconstructing and rebuilding it to make it understandable to newer generations is pretty great in my opinion

  • shiroininja@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I literally made money on a contract this year doing something I’d never even done. Thank you google. Love it

      • ℛ𝒶𝓋ℯ𝓃@pawb.social
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        10 months ago

        I’d : contraction I + had, past participle active. Indicative of something having been done by the subject (in first person) in the past.

        "I did something I had never done (before / in the past).

        • xpinchx@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I did do this for web dev for a government contract. I got brought on for mobile optimizations but ended up doing full UI/UX design and marketing copy with no experience. All through their shitty in house WYSIWYG. $60/hr for a full year lol.

      • aard@kyu.de
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        10 months ago

        In IT contracting (at least the fields I’m around) it’s quite common that “being able to acquire new skills quickly” is one of the skills you get paid for, and the time needed for you to do that is accounted for in the project planning.

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    As someone who worked in tech support and a sys admin role, yes, and thank you. I would say 90% of all issues and problems I had were either solved or pointed in the right direction since 2006, the year I started.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I’ll do you one better. I’ve learned that in the absence of online information for a bug or fault, that I’m most likely attempting something that is better solved another way. Like, nobody does it like the harebrained thing I just invented, so it’s just me and everyone else with a (different) working solution.

  • SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip
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    10 months ago

    Do teachers actually say this these days? Or are you making it up just for the sake of the meme.

    • linkrulesx10@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      As a teacher, no. Now we say don’t trust the Google summary, click a link for more information!

      • Shard@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Funny. In my day Wikipedia just came out and they used to give the same advice. In comparison, I would wager any random wiki article has a better chance of being more reliable and a better answer to your question than a Google summary.

        • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Eh, there are entire categories of questions that can’t and shouldn’t be answered by searching wikipedia. A technical howto, for example, doesn’t belong on wikipedia because wikipedia articles are listings of facts, not narratives about following a process. They just aren’t meant for, or structured for, that type of question.

          Stackoverflow also leaves a lot to be desired in that area, though, so you still need a search engine to find them.

      • tweeks@feddit.nl
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        10 months ago

        Also might be good to recommend them to use multiple links / sources, and look for opposite views to broaden their perspectives on topics.

  • dan1101@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Googling problems certainly helps but you still need enough knowledge to define the problem, Google it, and implement the solution.

    I get the impression that a lot of posted solutions are from people who actually spoke to high level tech support for various hardware/software because how else would they know things like what obscure registry key with a very arbitrary name to add?

    • iamericandre@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      That’s a big part people don’t understand is you need to know enough about your problem to google the correct terms and find what you need. Googling itself is a learned skill.

      • Punkie@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        This is so true. That’s why there’s no shame in using Google or Duckduckgo or even Chatgpt. You have to know enough to phrase the right question, know how to filter the right answer, and then use it.

        I can Google a Chinese dictionary, but that won’t make me fluent in Chinese.

  • Zatore@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Im full time IT, a huge chunk of my job was learned through google. My current position looked incredibly different before we had phones and could research everything on the fly. I feel bad for tech’s who didn’t have access to research tools like we do now.

    • woodenskewer@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I work in controls and I couldn’t imagine how life was working with allen bradley stuff pre internet. there’s a manual for everything

    • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Well, for once it was far smaller code base and significantly simpler. Better optimized though since hardware was very limited. Middleware nightmare we are currently living in is no joke. Soon we’ll have to have search engine locally indexing stuff because code grew so big. People just include everything without thinking. Yea sure pull entire web browser for your note taking app because they were too lazy to learn few calls to UI library.

  • r00ty@kbin.life
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    10 months ago

    Well, you need the basics of software development to start with. But sure, I’m not going to make my own implementation for every problem I come across. That would be insanity and a colossal waste of time.

    However, people googling or using ChatGPT to create code they do not understand themselves, are just cargo cult programming, and it will bite them in the arse/ass (delete as applicable).

  • Yuion@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Google search results have become so bad i barely use it today. Its even better to use chatgpt. You have to take every answer with a grain of salt but usually it can give you a few options and give you resources to work with. Google search sucks ass. The amount of times i do NOT find what im searching for is way too high