jason_stone59•6d agoMost Upvoted

The whole "just Google it" advice is driving me nuts

I keep seeing people tell new coders to just Google their errors, but that's terrible advice for someone who doesn't even know what keywords to search for. Last week I spent 3 hours on Stack Overflow because I kept typing "array not working" instead of "undefined index offset" - two totally different things. If you're helping a beginner, at least give them the right terms to look up first. Has anyone else noticed this causing more frustration than it solves?

3 comments

3 Comments

elliot_roberts6d ago

The "map without the town" thing hits hard. Best trick I learned was asking chatgpt "what's the technical term for this problem" first, then googling that.

theas286d ago

My buddy spent two hours searching "frozen screen" before someone told him it was a "driver timeout error".

lucasw846d ago

One specific example I see all the time is people telling someone to "just check YouTube" for a skill like changing a tire or replacing a faucet, but they don't mention that you have to search for the exact car model or pipe diameter to get a useful tutorial. It's the same frustrating pattern where skipping that one specific detail turns a 10 minute fix into hours of digging through irrelevant stuff. Honestly, it feels like giving someone a map but not telling them what town they're looking for, which just sends them in circles.