Program offline

Question

I was wondering.

When I started to program a few years ago, it was easier to get the documentation on the harddrive and browse it from there, than go online to get some help.

With the years the internet speed has reach most of us, and now it is easier to get a reference directly in internet.

As a matter of fact I would find rather difficult to program nowadays without being connected all the time.

When was the last time you program offline? Do you NEED to be connected to internet all the time just like me?

Answer 1

The last time I did this was in the beginning of the year at the Airport in Amsterdam where the WLAN was way too expensive and I was bored, so hacked around in python and since the docs of the standard lib are always installed, it was okay, but it's true, that it feels weird nowadays to program w/o an internet connection.

Answer 2

I find offline programming to be a bit like being on a long car ride, once you realize that you won't be able to pee for some time, you will undoubtedly need to do just that.

Answer 3

The last time I programmed offline was about an hour and a half ago. I go to my favorite cigar shop on Sundays and code every week. Admittedly, I have a copy of the book from which I'm currently learning (Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X 3rd Edition) digitally via Safari, and all of Apple's documentation on the machine, so it's not critical that I be online.

I tend to prefer working online because I can access documentation, Google and StackOverflow, but it's definitely not critical for me anymore. Oftentimes I find the constraint of not being online useful -- it helps keep certain distractions away.

Once I'm out of learning mode on Obj-C and Cocoa, I might prefer being online -- but even there, again, all the docs are on the machine, and I've downloaded several other manuals and guides as PDFs which I can reference. (I rarely, if ever, need to be online for .NET/Windows development, as long as I have a local MSDN for the occasional API that I forget or need assistance with.)

Answer 4

Definitely. Its like a new era of human knowledge. If you want to know something - you search for info, if you are in doubt - you search for people opinions, if you struggling with problems - of course you search for possible decisions!

Yes its not so good in long term, because man should think for himself too, but definitely it allows us to be quicker in getting knowledge and dealing with troubles.

I'm trying to be connected all the time when I'm working.

Answer 5

I try and be connected when ever I am working, whether that be at home or at work. Sometimes I take my laptop to places where I can not get online.

I really depends on what I am doing if I will actually mind not having the internet, sometimes I find it can be a burden when you are trying to get things done. eg Hit Complie->Go off and check lifehacker.com->loose about 30 minutes of work. So without the internet there I have no other option but to sit there and wait.

Having said all that I do believe that there are so many great resources out there, its hard sometimes to get the information without it, and most of the time my productivity increases due to the speed in which I can look things up and then move on to the next thing rather then just sitting there trying to figure out how to tackle a problem.

Answer 6

It really depends on what type of your current programming projects. I have worked offline for a couple of weeks on a largish C++ project with git as VCS, which worked really well as you have the complete history on your laptop. Familiarity with the programming language certainly helped as well. I can imagine needing the net if I'm working on gluing projects with php/ruby/python/java (perl to a lesser extent as perldoc is very decent.) or if the project vcs is subversion or cvs (you can still make do, but much less convenient.)

Answer 7

I use online JDK documentation, but offline MSDN documentation, mainly because I find the MSDN docs browser easier to navigate than the online version. If I knew I was going to develop offline for a while, I'd just download and extract the JDK docs - not a problem. Being offline doesn't mean not having a web browser.

There's actually something to be said for developing offline - it takes you away from concentration-killers such as email, StackOverflow, newsgroups etc. If you're reasonably confident in what you're coding (so don't need to look for explanations of odd behaviour in blogs etc) I don't think it's that much of a problem at all.

Answer 8

I'm continually referring to documentation, and do a lot of coding on my laptop - so I always keep the docs on there. Disk-space is cheap, so there is absolutely no reason not to have a full set of docs.

Answer 9

I do a majority of my coding offline. Having the doc and all of the source on the laptop, makes it easy.

Answer 10

wget -m is your friend

Answer 11

Most of my programming is done offline, as part of our work environment.

Well, it sucks. No matter how many ebooks and documentation you download, Murphy makes sure the answer you're looking for isn't there.

On the other hand, it does make one a better programmer, because you have to figure how things work on your own.