• Time - In the time it takes to learn something like PHP, you could search google, find the scripts you need, implement them and make bank while the guy who tries to learn PHP is still debugging his scripts.
• Bigger & Better - One fundamental truth on the net is that if you think you have come up something good, there's always somebody who has already done it, only it's bigger and better than yours. So, makes sense to search google first.
• Experimentation - The biggest and most significant discoveries and inventions in human history have come when people are experimenting or trying to learn something. If all you do is search google for answers, what's the chance that you'll come up with something new?
• The Human Brain - It needs to feed on problems in order to grow and become sharper. If you don't stuggle, you'll never find out what you are capable of. Worse, your capacity to face problems and come up trumps is also deminished.

Motivation

Two of the most basic motivations are necessity and pride in your creation. If you are in dire need of something, would you spend time trying to build it from scratch or would you do a google search? As for pride in your creation, well - Read the following biography - Ramanujan. If you managed to go through that, then let me add one more line to that. This fellow tried to commit suicide when he found out that the work he had put in for years and years to discover brilliant stuff had already been done before. That, my friends, is the point - What's the chances of people putting in effort if somebody somewhere has already done it and google knows about it and you know that google has the answers?

Summary - It's like google has put up a wall - On one side are the people who are doing the learning and adding new stuff into google. On the other side are people whose only job is to make use of google. Every minute, the count on one side of the wall keeps going down, and the count on the other side keeps going up. It's going to reach saturation soon and then?
This article was written after I googled for similar material and didn't find it.

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