Am I good or am I bad?

[Luis]

Apologies if this question is off-topic for this group.

During the course of developing my asp pages I often have to look up
how to do certain things and do a bit of research in my books or this
amazing forum. Does this mean that I'm a "bad" programmer?

Should I "know" how to do almost everything, or do the pro's still
have to refer to their "sources" when they need to do something that
they haven't done very often before?

I understand that every asp programmer should (I hope!) know the
basics, such as what a response.redirect is and when to use it, but
what about the more advanced stuff?

e.g.
I recently spent a bit of time looking up how to correctly loop
through a recordset (show 10 records on a page and have a 'Next' and
'Back' button at the bottom of the page).

Am I good or am I bad?

;->

 

[rick watkins]

Hey Luis

Don't worry about it mate.

A programmer is only as good as the resources at his/her disposal.

Keep it up!

Regards
Rick Watkins
Web Developer
eMed-Media

 

[Bob Barrows]

Apologies if this question is off-topic for this group.

During the course of developing my asp pages I often have to look up
how to do certain things and do a bit of research in my books or this
amazing forum. Does this mean that I'm a "bad" programmer?

Should I "know" how to do almost everything, or do the pro's still
have to refer to their "sources" when they need to do something that
they haven't done very often before?

I understand that every asp programmer should (I hope!) know the
basics, such as what a response.redirect is and when to use it, but
what about the more advanced stuff?

e.g.
I recently spent a bit of time looking up how to correctly loop
through a recordset (show 10 records on a page and have a 'Next' and
'Back' button at the bottom of the page).

Am I good or am I bad?

Seriously? Given that you found your own answer, I would say you are closer
to "good" than "bad". I won't say you're "good" without knowing more about
the solution you used. If you used a recordset loop to display your records,
that brings you down closer to the middle of the bad-good scale (the fact
that you found your own solution still prevents you from moving below the
middle of the scale in my book, anyways). If you found and used either
Getstring or GetRows, that pushes you very close to the "good" end of the
scale, especially if you found out WHY they are the better solutions (this
has been discussed many times in this newsgroup and in .asp.db - Google is
your friend).

Bob Barrows

 

[Phill. W]

.. . .

During the course of developing my asp pages I often have to look up
how to do certain things and do a bit of research in my books or this
amazing forum. Does this mean that I'm a "bad" programmer?

Nobody can "know" everything and everyone has different strengths
(need a one-liner - ask Rick!). By keeping your eyes open for
better advice, solutions, etc., you're actually making yourself a better
programmer.

If you only ever did the same things all the time, you might still be
writing COBOL batch programs... ;-)

Regards,
Phill W.

 

[Mike]

IMHO knowing where to look for the the answers is half the battle.

Mike

 

[Mike]

Should I "know" how to do almost everything, or do the pro's still
have to refer to their "sources" when they need to do something that
they haven't done very often before?

When I interviewed for my job 3+ years ago, they barely asked me about what
I know. That was all on the resume anyway. Rather they asked me about past
problems and how I resolved them.

I told them that I would typically read manuals or reference books, ask
questions on Usenet, search on Google or Deja, ask peers that may have done
something similar, experiment in a non-production environment, etc..

They didn't ask me what TCP meant or to write code (although this might
happen for a position that is purely programming).

Employers know that the tech field is changing constantly and they really
want someone who can adapt, not necessarily someone who can memorize an ASP
reference book.

You might even get questions like "would you jump out of a plane if I asked
you" or "how would you move mount fiji". There is no right answer, the way
to answer the question is to demonstrate your outside-the-box thinking.

Would you jump out of a plane? It depends...
* what's the altitude
* what's the speed
* what's the geographic location
* why are you jumping
* would you have a parachute
* what's the consequence of not jumping

If the plane were sitting on a tarmac and you could jump down without
injuring yourself, then sure. But you wouldn't know this without knowing
the problem better.

How would you move mount fuji?
* impossible question, you can't really move a mountain using existing
technology
* why move it? can you move something else relative to the mountain?
* is there even a mount fuji (i don't know)
* can you just tunnel into it?
* etc.

Anyway, the point is it's not really what you know, but how you learn and
how you approach problems.

 

[Jeff Cochran]

During the course of developing my asp pages I often have to look up
how to do certain things and do a bit of research in my books or this
amazing forum. Does this mean that I'm a "bad" programmer?

I wish more programmer's were bad if you are...

Should I "know" how to do almost everything, or do the pro's still
have to refer to their "sources" when they need to do something that
they haven't done very often before?

You learn the 60% that occurs regularly, you need to refresh the 30%
you don't see very often and you'll always need to look up the 10%
you've never seen before.

I understand that every asp programmer should (I hope!) know the
basics, such as what a response.redirect is and when to use it, but
what about the more advanced stuff?

Every programmer should undertstand the *logic* behind the code, but
the code syntax can always be looked up. For example, you should know
how to do a loop, with a pretest and post test, and understand why
you'd choose which test to use. Remembering that it's "WHILE" and
"WEND" instead of "DO WHILE" and "END" is less important.

I recently spent a bit of time looking up how to correctly loop
through a recordset (show 10 records on a page and have a 'Next' and
'Back' button at the bottom of the page).

Okay, do that a few more times and you won't have to look it up any
more. That's called "learning".

Am I good or am I bad?

Off hand I'd say bad, but it's not your coding that I'm judging on.


Jeff