I am a CS student with several years of experience in C and C++, and for the las

Question

I am a CS student with several years of experience in C and C++, and for the last few years I've been constantly working with Java/Objective C doing app development and now I have switched to web development and am mainly focused on ruby on rails and I came to the realization that (as with app development , really) I reference other code way too much. I constantly Google functionality for lots of things I imagine I should be able to do from scratch and it's really cracked my confidence a bit.

Basic fundamentals are not an issue, I hate to use this as an example but I can run through javabat in both java/python at a sprint - obviously not an accomplishment and but what I mean to say is I have a strong base for the fundamentals I think?

I know what I need to use typically but reference syntax constantly. Would love some advice and input on this, as it has been holding me back pretty solidly in terms of looking for work in this field even though I'm finishing my degree. My main reason for asking is not really about employment, but more that I don't want to be the only guy at a hackathon not hammering out nonstop code and sitting there with 20 Google/github tabs open, and I have refrained from attending any due to a slight lack of confidence...

Is a person a bad developer by constantly looking to code examples for moderate to complex tasks?

Explanation / Answer

Copy-paste blindly: bad.

Look up documentation, read code examples to get a better understanding: good.

I'd rather work with someone who looks up things all the time and makes sure everything works as intended than someone over-confident who thinks he knows it all but doesn't. But the worst is someone who doesn't bother understanding how things work, and just uncritically copies code from the web (and then when the bug reports start raining down is unable to fix anything properly).

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