Programmers

[ICESTORM]

Do you remember and type everything?

Like, if you were to do many long and complex API calls..
Do you know how to do everything right there?


Or do you refer to something like a book or MSDN... etc?

I use to mess with VB and made things, I knew the syntax.
But I did a lot of copy & pasting....

[DigiRev]

I usually use the API viewer for API function declarations... and you can't be expected to know, much less, remember how to use all of them. Unless you use them frequently.

I often find myself going to to the Mentalis website to see the documentation for an API function unless it's really common.

For other code, yeah... you should know how to do it. Not from memory though, but by knowing and understanding what all the code does. Then you don't have to memorize anything.

That comes just by repetition. When I learned VB6, I learned by looking at other code and trial & error. Instead of copying & pasting, I'd re-type it line-for-line. And it's time consuming, but after a few times of doing that, you'll understand what it does and won't have to copy/paste or whatever.

Luckily, the VB6 syntax is pretty easy and straight-forward, so even a beginner can look at a piece of code and more-or-less understand what it's doing.

[vb5prgrmr]

Remember everything? No.

Me, myself, and I, usually do at least three iterations through complex code.

1st)Creating the base/proof of concept
2nd)Removing unused, commented out, usless code
3rd)Documentation, documentation, and more documentation.
4th)Not really an interation but once the demo is working and saved, the code is moved over to production.

About a dozen books, a few thousand examples, half a dozen forums, twenty-thirty some odd websites,...

It may have taken me about a dozen years to finally figure it out but I have started to go back over a lot of my saved code and started making them plug and play where I can. Meaning making base objects out of them. Not necessarily classes, but pieces of code where the base is completed, commented to the seventh level of he ll (at least), and can easily be added to a project with a minimum amount of customizing, and just to be on the safe side, those comments I add to the code point out where it can be customized.

Good Luck

[Hack]

Moved To General Developer

[techgnome]

I heard a quote a number of years ago.... paraphrased, it basically said that good programmers will try to memorize as much as they can about everything. A great programmer though, will only memorize a few things, and know where to look up the rest.

-tg

[abhijit]

Do you remember and type everything?

Like, if you were to do many long and complex API calls..
Do you know how to do everything right there?


Or do you refer to something like a book or MSDN... etc?

I use to mess with VB and made things, I knew the syntax.
But I did a lot of copy & pasting....

Certainly Not Everything.

Some things I remember. I keep switching between PL/SQL, VB, VB Scripting and SQL Loader scripts. I need to keep referring to the documentation when that happens. I have the standard oracle documentation installed on my work computer.

[Max Peck]

I heard a quote a number of years ago.... paraphrased, it basically said that good programmers will try to memorize as much as they can about everything. A great programmer though, will only memorize a few things, and know where to look up the rest.

-tg

Precisely. Why waste your mind on storage? It exists to think. Storage is cheap.

-Max

[techgnome]

The way I look at it... my mind isn't a storage facility... it's an indexing system.... unfortunately some of my indexes need to be re-built, statistics updated and the recall routines probably need an overhaul...

-tg

[JuggaloBrotha]

The way I look at it... my mind isn't a storage facility... it's an indexing system.... unfortunately some of my indexes need to be re-built, statistics updated and the recall routines probably need an overhaul...

-tg

So you're operating with a corrupt catalog?

[Christopher_Arm]

If I remember everything in programming that I learned, I would be burnt out long ago my head long exploded with algorithms spilling out instead of brain matter.

From the humble days of my Commodore 128, I started with Basic and Fortran 77 back in the day on the VAX computer dinosaurs of the past working in a room that had to be kept cold to accomodate them and then went to TurboPascal, Pascal, Assembly Language, Small talk, C++, Java, PL/SQL, ASP, VB script and Javascript, basic Unix, Visual Basic 6 and then .NET today.
Some of languages I have mentioned whether procedural or object oriented are already past if not one the path of obsolence. So with exception for the governing rules structure that they follow the language that was worthwhile yesterday is useless today. And memory should be a progression of accumulating and honing the superset of knowledge needed for today.

[ntg]

If I remembered everything I've learned, I'd hook up an ethernet cable in my spine and post myself on the Internet as a web service.

I mostly remember the important things and know what documentation/reference to call up to find out the details.

[modpluz]

i don't remember everything i've learnt, but i always have a manual that always comes handy(and as always, i know what to do - it is how to go about it).

and did i mention? those manuals comes in handy for useful references most of the time and when they don't, i look it up on the web.

[oceanebelle]

I barely remember anything substantial in coding even the code I do. Keywords generally don't stick into my brain unless they are repeated 1000000 times in 1 second succession. When I need to go back to a code, I have to see the code again to understand and remember or read documentation. I like using google to jog up my tainted memory for the different languages I have used before.

[mendhak]

It's not about remembering the exact signature, but remembering how to look up the signature the next time you need it.