What do you find yourself searching for again and again?

Publish Date: Jan 11 '19

17 29

For what is likely the 6th time, I Googled netlify multiple github repos custom domain. And for the 6th time, I've come across this purple link about setting up a redirects reference in the main repo.

Will I ever learn? Unlikely. Most of the battle is knowing how to find the answer. Since I've found this answer 6 times now, I'm getting pretty good at it. At least this time I logged in to StackOverflow to star the question and upvote it and its answer.

It seems most developers are frequently asking the internet how to exit vim, but what do you find yourself searching for again and again?

(Runner-up for me is git cherry-pick's documentation, because I don't trust myself to not screw up the syntax)

Comments 29 total

pretzelhandsJan 11, 2019

One day I'll remember the parameter order of functions like strpos, in_array and array_search. That day is not today.

Some of them use needle first, some of them haystack. But I always find myself reaching for php.net because for the life of me I can't remember.
- David J EddyJan 11, 2019
  I got tired of that as well, so I made this:
  
  davidjeddy / normie
  
  Wrapper library that provides normalized function interfaces for the PHP standard library.
  
  Normie
  
  Badges
  
  Contributors
  
  David J Eddy me@davidjeddy.com
  
  Description
  
  Normie (short for Normalizer) attempts to make using the PHP Standard Library (SPL) function calls more consistent by implementing a norm_{function name}() wrapper function declarations. This library DOES NOT over ride the SPL functions in any way.
  
  Examples
  
  Function parameter order examples.
  
  Arrays fn()
  
  Normie array functions follow the 'array source X, operator Y (callback,key, needle, etc), other parameters are Z' mentality. The complete list of array functions are viewable here.
  
  SPL: array array_map ( callable $callback, array $arr1, array $_ = null) { }
  
  Normie: array norm_array_map( array $array, callable $callback, array $userdata = null): array
  
  Strings fn()
  
  Normie string functions follow the 'Search X string or Y target, replace with Z string' mentality. The complete list of string functions are viewable here.
  
  SPL: array explode ( string $delimiter , string $string [, int $limit = PHP_INT_MAX ] )
  
  …
  
  View on GitHub
  
  "...Normie string functions follow the 'Search X string or Y target, replace with Z string' mentality..."
  
  Feel free to use it and provide any feedback.
Andy WermkeJan 11, 2019

CSS flexbox properties! 🙈

The really basic ones are fine, but is it align-items, align-content or what right now? Even if I used those props multiple times the same day already...

Fortunately, Chrome autocompletes the URL to the cheat sheet right as I start typing "flexbox" in the address bar. It knows me so well... 😅
- André Costa LimaJan 12, 2019
  
  Haha, so true! Especially flex short-hand.
Grzegorz ZiemonskiJan 11, 2019

Almost every basic thing you might want to do in Python. I’ve started using the language a couple of months ago and it seems to have its own quirks everywhere 😀
- David J EddyJan 11, 2019
  
  That never changes, always have the docs nearby :).
TxaiJan 11, 2019

REGEX!! I simply can't remember the syntax. Also various functions from C standard libraries specially strtok and pthread_create
- Tom VanAntwerpJan 11, 2019
  
  If you want some regex practice, I really enjoyed these games.
  - TxaiJan 11, 2019
    
    Defintely gonna try these, thx
- jdelgitJan 11, 2019
  
  Anytime I want to do anything with regex I use regexr.com/, you can test if it's gonna work on a sample of your dataset.
  
  Has a handy cheatsheet on the sidebar as well
- ItsASine (Kayla)Jan 11, 2019
  
  Now I just skip straight to regex101 rather than search and inevitably just give up and type symbols in regex101 until it does what I want.
  
  I conditioned myself to not search for regex help, I guess ^^;
- André Costa LimaJan 12, 2019
  
  Yeah, regex can be hard sometimes. Gladly, there are some great tools out there to guide and help us figuring out the right expression.
Alan BarrJan 11, 2019

The flags for untarring and unzipping a .tar.gz file
David J EddyJan 11, 2019

Linux grep and find options; specifically 'how to find text in a file globally'. I really should just make an alias.
- Valentin BacaJan 11, 2019
  
  Not to throw another command in the mix, but ag the silver searcher is really, really great.
  
  99% of the time I use ag where I would use grep or find.
Tom VanAntwerpJan 11, 2019

If an effort to get past some of this, I've started adding anything I google too frequently into Anki for me to study and memorize. I've found spaced repetition learning to be very useful.

It used to be that, if I wanted to hunt down every file in my repo with a certain bit of text in the code, I'd have to Google exactly how to phrase that in grep. Now, I just know to grep -rl "the string in question" /path/of/repo. I wouldn't say I've "learned grep", but I know that one command that is all I want 99% of the time. Little quirks of languages, remembering the order of things in bash commands, bits of APIs you need all the time--all of them great candidates for a flash card. If I weren't using an SRS system, I'd be wasting lots of time looking it up because I never memorized it.

There are still plenty of things I don't have memorized; but I keep adding to my study deck and, slowly but surely, cutting down on Googling.

Edit: for a good general explanation of spaced repetition systems, I recommend this interactive by Nicky Case.
Glenn StovallJan 11, 2019

Lately I've been doing so much with react-google-maps I've bookmarked the docs page: tomchentw.github.io/react-google-m...
Michael TharringtonJan 11, 2019
Right now, it's just basic terminal commands for me. Haha, total newb. But, I got my flash cards and am getting better. I trust these things will sink in eventually. 😄
- Valentin BacaJan 11, 2019
  
  Good luck!
  
  I think that this post would be very helpful because it gives what commands other devs use the most:
  
  dev.to/abhinav/which-is-the-most-u...
  - Michael TharringtonJan 11, 2019
    Bookmarked! Much appreciated. 👍
Ben HalpernJan 11, 2019
There is certain functionality, like how to conduct basic operations on data structures, which I definitely know myself if I think hard enough about it, but I default to Googling it anyway. It's just easier to offload some of it to the cloud, especially if it's wordy.

For example getting a random value in a JavaScript array:
var item = items[Math.floor(Math.random()*items.length)];
That's wordy and kind of unintuitive. I don't even try to remember just how to do it.

In Ruby, for me it's probably simpler to remember:
item = items.sample
Of course, there are plenty of operations I similarly Google every time in every language including Ruby.

Any time postgres stops running on my machine, I go find this command:
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres start
I probably could remember that, but I've never bothered.
garthgoldwaterJan 11, 2019

Amazon AWS tutorials. I find the organization of their console to be basically inscrutable even when I fully understand what it is I'd like to do—can be very hard to find and order the operations. And the docs are pretty rough from a clarity perspective so I end up having to look at three of them and a blog post to identify what's actually going on.
Molly Struve (she/her)Jan 12, 2019

ActiveRecord query methods! All the includes, selects, joins, etc. AR has so many tricks that I can never remember them all so I am always Googling 😊
Jacob ColbornJan 12, 2019

The most basic thing that I look up is how to find the largest directories on a Linux workstation. I have been using Linux for about 6 years now and I still have to look up the du command syntax every single time I use it.
Josh BrownJan 12, 2019

PHP Date format. Every. Single. Time.
Divyesh ParmarJan 12, 2019

How to do certain stuff with Git and when to use git cherry-pick or git submodules.

Most of the times I search how to not add certain files in this commit and only few others without even git add those particular files
Evaldas BuinauskasJan 12, 2019

How to reset branch contents to what's on remote 😐
- ItsASine (Kayla)Jan 12, 2019
  
  Lately, I've taken to deleting my local and repulling a fresh branch from remote :)
  
  I suppose I should just hard reset.
juliaviiJan 12, 2019

Unzip taz.gz.

Its one of that commands I literally use one time every three months and completely forget the flags every time i use.

Add comment