Why Googling is the most important skill a developer must have.

1 out of 100 Tips to master Ruby on Rails

Published in

Ruby or Rails

3 min readOct 9, 2013

Most people don’t know how to google. Googling require a certain ingenuity and hack in order to find exactly what you are looking for. You don’t have to stop googling if the search engine is not finding your first query. There are many tricks you can use and I like to call this skill: Googling Engineering.

I tell people, ‘I have a Ph.D. from Google University.’
Kris Carr

The rule number one is: Don’t ask. If you’re wondering how to do something just google it.Although I genuinely love to help people; I can easily be annoyed when people ask me repetitively “How do I do this and that”(when I’m busy). In our generation of technology, asking when you’re in front of a computer is obsolete; Google! You can find almost anything! There are 55,000 blogs created everyday, 48 hours of video uploaded per minute! Your answer is out there. Always remind yourself that if you can’t find your answer, you didn’t search it correctly, didn’t search it enough or didn’t search it at all. Many people been there before you facing the same problem or asking themselves the same questions. I often say that; “if you’re asking how to learn rails, it’s probably because you didn’t know how to google”. I learned rails mostly by googling. I actually bought a motorcycle before I even knew how to ride it, then watched a Youtube video on how to ride a bike and shift gears. The next day, I got my driving license. I would repeat it to anyone: If you’re wondering how to learn something, just google it. It’s either on google or on Youtube! This is precisely why I believe that Youtube is the best invention of this decennia! And guess who owns Youtube?.. Google! Forget the garage! Any kid in his bedroom today can learn how to do or build anything right on his computer.

It’s true that there are tricks and tips and filter but the basis of becoming a great Googler has absolutely no secrets. Just google exactly what you are trying to do or what you are trying to learn. Learn not to ask first, but to Google first then, Google after and so on. Force yourself to find what you need on your own! This skill is like a muscle, you need to train it and you’ll only get better at it, and learn more thing by doing it.

As a developer when I say “Googling” I mean being ingenious enough to figure out how to find what your are looking for. Whenever it’s in the Documentation, Github, Stack Overflow, in the source code of your app or the server log. When I have a bug that I’ve never seen before I always find ways to find a solution somewhere on the web. More than often, the answer doesn’t come from my first search... but I don’t ask, I keep searching. I play with the browser and the search engine of every platform to find exactly what I need. Googling skills, attention to details and determination will make you a better problem solver and overall a great developer.