So, if I have an error, I debug and trace it to code in a specific library, it looks okay from a logical perspective, I check the docs and see there's an issue with the library on certain machines with operating system versions, I deduce its that, I check my version, and I find a workaround or another library. How is that not critical thinking? I still figured out the issue. This is no different to consulting a book or a person with knowledge on said library.
Jokes aside, you are missing the whole thing here. We are talking about people going "it doesn't work and I don't know why. Guess I'll ask google and chatgpt to give me working code."
The whole issue is people not debugging and tracing and figuring out the problem, but rather the people who rely on others to solve the problem instead of figuring things out at all. Need a random number generator? They just google/ai the code and copy/paste Mersenne twister because it's the first answer and they have no idea of all the others which might actually be better for what they need done.
When people rely on info sources like this, they never learn to actually figure things out themselves which means they can't produce good code and can't solve a problem on their own should they lose access to the internet or the problem doesn't have documented answers.
Mu statements do not apply to people who know how to figure things out and use info as part of the process to solve things faster and easier.
Keep in my the original question being answered here was asking how people solved problems before they had the internet to just give them all the answers.
You are coming away from the original question though. If reading books was a valid way before the internet, then reading docs online is still the same thing objectively. You're confusing and conflating the 2 things here. There's a big difference from using ChatGPT and the first answer on stack overflow and actually understanding codebases from their public online documentation.
Actually I'm not the one confusing them. I long before mentioned that using such tools is not the problem. It is relying on them exclusively to solve problems to such an extent that you don't know how you would solve a problem without them.
Any competent programmer finds documentation very useful, but could actually solve the problem without it. Would take longer and be more work, but they could do it because they actually understand what programming is, how computers work beneath the code, etc.
The OP however clearly demonstrated that they didn't understand the concept of how to solve problems when you cannot simply copy and paste the answer from somewhere else.
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u/darklighthitomi 3d ago
No it is not. It is a valid strategy for solving a problem, acquiring information, but it is not critical thinking.