I basically learned programming by ExpertSexchange, Google (and Altavista...), SourceForge and eventually StackOverflow + GitHub. Many people with more experience than me at the time always told me I was making a deal with the devil since I searched so much, didn't read manuals and asked so many questions instead of thinking for myself.
~15 years later, I don't think I'm worse off than my peers who stayed away from all those websites. Doing the right searches is probably as important as being able to read manuals properly today.
>I basically learned programming by ExpertSexchange, Google (and Altavista...), SourceForge and eventually StackOverflow + GitHub. Many people with more experience than me at the time always told me I was making a deal with the devil since I searched so much, didn't read manuals and asked so many questions instead of thinking for myself.
no they didn't, no one said that
i know that because i was around then and everyone was doing the same thing
also, maybe there's a difference between searching and collating answers and just copy and pasting a solution _without thinking_ at all