alt Hacker News1965: learning how to punch your own punch cards is part of the learning process
1995: struggling with docs and learning how and where to find the answers part of the learning process
2005: struggling with stackoverflow and learning how to find answers to questions that others have asked before quickly is part of the learning process
2015: using search to find answers is part of the learning process
2025: using AI to get answers is part of the learning process
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Replies
Unironically, yes.
Now get back to work.
This is both anachronistic and wrong.
To the extent that learning to punch your own punch cards was useful, it was because you needed to understand the kinds of failures that would occur if the punch cards weren't punched properly. However, this was never really a big part of programming, and often it was off-loaded to people other than the programmers.
In 1995, most of the struggling with the docs was because the docs were of poor quality. Some people did publish decent documentation, either in books or digitally. The Microsoft KB articles were helpfully available on CD-ROM, for those without an internet connection, and were quite easy to reference.
Stack Overflow did not exist in 2005, and it was very much born from an environment in which search engines were in use. You could swap your 2005 and 2015 entries, and it would be more accurate.
No comment on your 2025 entry.
Has the quality of software been improving all this time?