Knowing What to Search For

by RAMGarden

Learning all the details of even one programming language is hard or maybe even impossible.  Instead of trying to learn a new programming language by sitting through lectures, tutorials, and classes, you can pair basic knowledge with web searches to help you get there faster.  Before there were quick web searches and widespread programming forums with tons of examples, if you wanted to learn something like, "How do I make my batch script stop with that 'press any key to continue' message" you had to go find the book about Windows batch scripting.  If you didn't own that book, you had to drive to the library or buy the book at a physical store.  From there, you had to hope you would find what you were looking for in the index so you could jump to the correct page without having to read the entire book (if you were lazy).

Today it is a lot easier.  Thanks to easy web searches, you can type "windows batch press enter" and the very first result is a page from Stack Overflow showing exactly what you need.  Spoiler alert: it's the pause command.  So without sounding like an old man with, "Back in my day we had to walk to the library in the dead of summer to read books to answer our programming questions," I want you to know that learning how to program specific things is really just learning what to search for.

The best combination is to learn the basics of programming and scripting so that you can then have a toolbox of generic phrases and words that will get you what you need.  You should not be trying to memorize APIs and libraries when you can just search for the API reference docs and then know what to search for inside there.  Once you've completed dozens of projects in a handful of programming languages, you will eventually memorize the parts that you use most often.  But that is just what comes with experience.

Another good example for a search might be "C# for each syntax" in case you've been doing Python stuff for a year, but now you need to build something else that requires C#.  You didn't memorize the full syntax, but you know that you need a for each statement since that is one of the tools in your toolbox that lets you loop through all the items in a list of things.  If you learn and memorize these basic things, you will be much better off than trying to memorize entire languages.  It is easier this way because now you can apply your knowledge of what to search for to other programming languages such as "python for each syntax" or "typescript for each syntax" or even "XSLT for each".

So take time to learn the basics, but don't kill yourself trying to learn an entire programming language and its specific syntax for different methods and functions.  Instead, leverage the power of today's search engines by knowing what to look up.  And don't forget to vote up the helpful answers from those incredible programmers kind enough to share their knowledge on Stack Overflow and other forums and blog posts.

Want to know more?  Check out this blog post that talks about this concept in more detail: coderscat.com/learn-programming-languages