
If you want to pass, cheat. If you want to learn, research - pius
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/02/if-you-want-to-pass-cheat-if-you-want.html
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noonespecial
If you want to learn, care.

Otherwise, whatever.

That's my school experience anyway. I think if you are passionate about a
language the simple fact that you care about it will mean that you want to
know everything about it that you can. If you're just trying to get the job
done quickly, use a cheat sheet or whatever. Only the former attitude will
make you a better programmer.

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DaniFong
I've been sitting here learning rails with the highly appraised book 'agile
web development with rails (v2)', and I often just don't find the information
dense enough, or specific enough. Lately I've just been reading RDoc, or the
code directly. I've actually found that to be more effective.

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raganwald
I've had the same experience with certain books. That suggests to me you might
want to try a new book. Of course, different books have different slants.
Books designed as introductions for someone entirely new to the subject or as
quick references are not going to be as mind-expanding as books designed for
the intermediate or advanced reader.

So far, I have found "The Rails Way" quite good when I've used it as a
reference, if that is any help to you.

~~~
DaniFong
Is that preferred to honing arcane source groking skills?

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raganwald
Should I (a) google something, (b) read the source, (c) read blogs, or (d)
read a book about it?

Yes.

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cstejerean
I'm surprised at home many times I actually RTFM and are amazed by
functionality that I didn't think was there. It's tempting once I get the core
of a language or technology under control (especially when in a rush to
deliver a working application) to cut some corners and just lookup exactly
what I need (and miss out on all the things I didn't know I needed).

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imsteve
If it's already been done, then why re-invent the wheel? Cheat to win!

Yeah I do miss really good programming books though. Haven't seen one of those
in quite a while.

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newton_dave
I'm a dead-tree fanatic, but I've also found that it's the blog entries (when
available) regarding functionality that do more digging than a book (usually)
has the time for.

A blog entry is strongly-targeted to the specific issue; that's why there was
a blog article. While I can't cut-and-paste from a Real Book (tm) I could just
as easily type in a code sample mindlessly, without any thought to how it
works, why it works, or its relation to anything else.

I view this as a discipline vs. time vs. curiosity issue rather than the
information source, but (as I've been told recently, quite a bit) I'm
abnormal.

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staunch
I try to do this as well. I also have a really strict rule about never doing
copy/paste. I _always_ type every last character into my programs. Partly
because I'm ridiculously anal about not having any extraneous characters slip
in, but mostly because it slows me down enough to make sure I commit
everything to memory.

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alaskamiller
not really a good example. goog queries can be equally as pedantic as dead
trees. i look up solutions and nowaday it's mostly blog entries but they
provide greater insight than an author can with the dry subject of coding.

this isn't like punching in numbers into a calculator and not knowing what
those + - * / symbols do. grepping information can be from so many references.
i mean.. i don't throw out butterflies and hope their wing movement effect the
disk write on my computer, i just want to make a program work.

