It's absolutely normal. And pretty natural.
Sometimes, you have this song stuck in your head whose name you just can't remember! And what do you do? You go on Google and just write up some words and the song comes up, right? Now, this means that you know the song but don't remember what it was called.
Similarly, programmers usually do the same. Suppose you're using a new library; you understand how it works, what it's built on, but you forget how to do something very specific? Say, for a HTTP Framework, you forgot how to send HTTP Headers specifying CORS. I'd bring up the library documentation and see what all is mentioned; it usually takes me one or two tries before it's imprinted in my head.
This is usually a very, very good practice. Always consult the documentation before posting a question.
And this does not, in any way, make you a bad programmer.
However, if you are looking up something very basic things (like what does === vs. == mean; or what does the typeof operator do) and that too, very often, that is a bad practice. But, if you are searching when to use === vs. ==, that is something good.
In it's simplicity, you can break up searching online into two broad categories:
And both of them are fine.
If you see yourself consulting the web too much for something basic, you might need a fresher perspective on the topic! And this, again, is very good! It really extends the amount you know about something.
Shreyansh Pandey
node, coffee and everything in between