> From: Jim Davis
>
> I had a rather impromptu interview today.  One of the
> questions got me thinking.
>
> I was being asked about the speed of my coding and was
> waffling a bit (since I honestly don't know how to answer
> that... doesn't it depend on the problem at hand?)  He then
> refined the question and asked "do you need the reference
> when you code?"
>
> I answered "Sure."  He asked "Why?" and I answered "Why would
> I want to memorize everything in there?"  He didn't seem
> happy with the answer.
>
> It got me thinking.  I've always felt that it's more
> important to know where information is (and be able to get to
> it quickly) than to "know" it.  I consider myself a good,
> fast coder, but I code with a good reference manual at my
> fingertips (or livedocs.macromedia.com in a dedicated window).
>
> I've never considered this a negative... any opinions?  Do
> you use the manual often?  Would you hire somebody that did?
>
> It's just something that I've never considered as
> particularly positive or negative until today.

I use the manual (or the Intranet version of the docs) all of the time

I know the parameters of the functions and tags I use all of the time,
but for the tags I rarely use, I'm forever digging

Also, the rarely used functions, I often can't remember it's exact name,
so I'll glance to see what it's called and know what it does rather than
know everything in the books

CF is such a big language that it's almost impossible to know everything
(unless you're on the Uncle Ben level <g>)

A similar questions would be: Do car mechanics use the manuals for the
engines? If not, then shouldn't they know everything about every engine
they work on?

Just my $0.02
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