I really, really, really don’t agree about how long it takes to Google. I’ve actively compared how long it takes. There’s no comparison. Emacs with fuzzy search is insanely fast and I can find anything within seconds. And google - it really isn’t that fast. You end up trawling through anywhere from 1-5 different sites looking for the exact right piece of information and the right context, then you need to scroll through them, evaluate the different answers because they end up answering different things, then you try different solutions because you don’t remember which one was correct. It all adds up.

I spent this year learning how to use Docker and I feel this was the perfect use case. A lot of obscure incantations to do things and the documentation is ... well, extensive. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and exactly where it is, it can take what feels like forever to find what you need, when you just want to keep working. Instead, I can refer to my notes within seconds for the exact pre-crafted commands that do everything I need, plus supplementary information about pitfalls and issues I’ve run into.

And the longer it takes, even if it’s just 10-20 seconds longer (and it’s usually minutes longer), the longer it takes to get back into what you were doing before. I try to keep context switches as minimal as possible, and google simply isn’t precise enough compared to a hand-crafted knowledge database with the right tools. Hell, since I use Emacs for nearly everything, I can pretty much switch to my notes immediately. I’ve reached a point where it really annoys me when I have to google, because I know how long it can take to find a workable solution.