[jcadam]

> A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want.

I don't find myself in these situations nearly as often as I did back when I was a junior engineer. But damn, I'm sure I looked busier (and more stressed out) back then.

[ams6110]

I was mostly through that phase of my career before any of those things were available. Toward the end of it, stack overflow had just launched. I mostly relied on printed books for help with languages and frameworks I was using.