I think it's fair to say that if you're stretching yourself, or working on challenging problems, a reasonable amount of time is spent researching. If you don't know how to do something, you research it. Whether you find it in a textbook or on Stack Overflow, it's essentially the same thing.

Unless you think "good" coders reinvent algorithms they don't know from first principles?

I'd wager there's a difference between what jemfinch is talking about and what you're talking about.

I used to unilaterally believe that coding exercises or algorithm quizzes on interviews were silly because if I had to solve some given problem I would just google it. And that's true, I would. However, as I've gotten a little more experienced I've realized that there is extreme value in expanding the domain of problems for which I don't need to google, because either A). I've happened to read about it on my own time or B). I've encountered a particular troublesome component before.

In other words, I think it is entirely reasonable for the hiring process to properly evaluate a programmer's toolset. Yes, I think researching via Google is or should be a piece of everyone's process, but it matters greatly what kind of things you have to Google.

Do programmers encounter all sorts of algorithms when engineering software? In my experience, the only things I really need to keep in mind what are the consequences of certain data structures and algorithm types rather than their specific implementation, because often the implementations are built-in to the language, but the choice of which implementation of data structure and algorithm to use are more important. I use sorting algorithms very frequently. Usually it is just a call like "list.sort()".

Yet in interviews, the questions I get asked are more like "Implement <My favourite sort> in 20 minutes, no googling.

I mean, really?

The other day I was in an interview where I had to implement a queue in 30 minutes. The unit tests were already written and the IDE was eclipse.

I wrote the "correct" implementation for the queue in about 10 minutes but there was a bug I couldn't find; I've never used eclipse before and took a lot of time figuring out everything. In the last minute I finally tracked down my bug. I forgot to increment a variable. I fixed it and all the tests as well as the performance test passed. I didn't get the job because I took too long. (It was a graduate position and the last time I used Java was 2 years ago)

I was distracted with all the buttons on eclipse... Otherwise I'd never have missed the variable increment! I swear. Anyway the point is, if a programmer is ever implementing their own simple Java queue in production software it is not a good sign anyway. Why are you testing for that?

Good designers buy stock photos for generic things and fill in with custom bits to produce a finished piece.

Good programmers copy/pase boilerplate code and focus on the stuff that really makes it different. (iOS example) you don't write out all of the methods for a UITableView.. That would be a waste of time you copy/paste the methods you need and change the important bits.

I interpreted his statement as meaning that google searches replace the requirement to memorize minute details of things that aren't commonly used or necessary to commit to memory. For example, I may know about php's preg_match, but I haven't used it in 2 years... so if a project calls for it I can just do a quick search for preg_match and see all the details that I need to know. I didn't have to have everything in memory since I wasn't using it. We have a built-in garbage collector in our minds that slowly clears out things that we don't use. But when we do learn it for a second time it comes back very quickly.

Good coders are clever problem solvers and well-organized thinkers. They don't need to have photographic memories that store every possible command and instruction, even ones that they have never ever used and find no use for. As long as you know what is relevant for the current task and have a peripheral awareness of what else exists, you can do your current tasks and know what to search for in books or on google if something out of the ordinary is required.