[Courses] [python] Googling isn't cheating :-)

Akkana Peck akkana at shallowsky.com
Fri Jul 8 01:57:37 UTC 2011


A couple of people have said things like this:
> no clue, and googling kind of feels like cheating.

while other people are googling away, so I thought I should clarify:
as far as I'm concerned, if you aren't sure of the answer at first,
but by googling you can find what you need to write a program that
works, that's absolutely fine.

In fact, if you think of programmers as people who know everything
and just toss off programs without thinking twice, don't!
In practice, a surprisingly large fraction of programming time is
spent searching online for documentation, tips and algorithms.
Googling is an important part of being a programmer.
Even if you're completely fluent in Python (or whatever language
you're using), there are hundreds of libraries you can use to
solve problems without writing everything from scratch, and
no one can remember how to use all of them.
(I'll be talking a little about importing libraries in lesson 4.)

Of course, once you google and get the answer, I hope you read
through it and make sure you understand why it works ... maybe even
try modifying the program or writing something different to make sure
you're using it right. And if you don't understand, feel free to ask!

	...Akkana


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