My knowledge-gap confession: even after many years with the languages, I can't write a main() in Python or Java without looking up the format.

So many things like that!

I don't know if I could tell you with confidence the proper way to get a string length in any language. Is it a global function or an object method or property? Is it length or count or size? I have to look it up or rely on intellisense every time. I do too much bouncing between languages.

Well, I know it in BASIC. Len().

No purpose in memorizing something that doesn’t meaningfully improve your understanding of the language, you only need it every now and then, and you can find it nearly instantly.

With Java 24 it’s now:

    void main() {
   
    }

IntelliJ completes the format for me. I never write it by hand. Also I have never coded in something other than an IDE.

I’ve spent so much time in both the .NET and JS worlds that I can't even begin to count how many times I’ve typed `Where` when I meant `filter` or vice versa.

What, `def main():`? Or do you mean the __name__ == "__main__" thing for distinguishing whether the code was imported?

I set up some .NET services years ago. Since then it was just adding new stuff. If I was asked how to set up another service, I would have no idea how to do it

In python, it's trivial:

def main(): # code

The dunder syntax you see around isn't required.

Continuing the confessions: I do php.net/<function_name> at least twice a day

It's the main benefit of Rust ;)

(obviously it's not but it is super nice that main in Rust is just:)

    fn main() {
    
    }

LLMs are wonderful for this. I can't write hardly a line of shell script without looking something up. And then there are three different ways to do <thing> so I spend time beard-tugging as to which way to do it. Now I just tell the LLM what I want changed about this shell script and look at what it comes up with. 100% of the time it's fine.

"Knowledge means knowing where it is written down."

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