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How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

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Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#71

Post by busterarm »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #65
busterarm wrote: post #25

I once had a brief contract helping out a two-person Rails consultancy where pretty much all they did was follow RailsCasts. They got very angry at me several times for not doing things "the Rails way". We were on Rails 4, which I already had loads of experience with. The RailsCasts they were following were written for Rails 2. They literally had no idea all of the ways Rails had moved on between those versions. Thei…

With the right connections you can have a very comfortable life with receiving grants from DARPA. I used to work for a startup founded by ex DARPA guys and it quickly showed that there was an insider club of current and former DARPA people that lived off grants.

I 110% believe you :D

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#72

Post by [deleted] »

arduinomancer wrote: post #29

IMO its not even that we're copying people's logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages. For example if I forget the name of a function for something in a particular language I don't even go to the docs, I just google something like "python reverse list" and click the first SO link.

[deleted]

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#73

Post by bckr »

sumtechguy wrote: post #60
mgkimsal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. web search (google/bing/ddg) - often that will lead to SO, but also turn up some other relevant forums. 2. docs on package X. If I'm reasonably certain a problem is with a specific package, I'll search for a forum or issue tracker (often GitHub) for that package. 3. language-specific community. there are some lang-spec sites/forums that help with the nitty-gritty sometimes that SO and similar sites don't always ge…

and lord help you when you are on page 6 of a google search and not finding it... :(

I would take that as evidence that I'm not doing something common, which is soft evidence that I'm not doing it the right way. I haven't had to do anything really novel, mostly I just have to do various forms of plumbing.

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#74

Post by tabtab »

If terrorists really wanted to disrupt civilization, then S.O. would be a prime target. I'm just the messenger, shore it up, you've been warned. I'd estimate it solves at least 1/3 of the glitches I encounter from day to day.

That being said, I can't stand their all-or-nothing moderating. Let low-rated messages exist, but be hidden by default, similar to Slashdot and Reddit.

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#76

Post by P_I_Staker »

metalforever wrote: post #11

This is an unpopular opinion but I think the answer to this may depend on the age of the engineer. For example, I learned programming before stack overflow. I have most of the standard library syntax in my head and mostly look at spec documents. Once in a great while I will go on stack overflow if I can’t debug a problem but I don’t post on there . In the same way, I suspect some engineers like using video to learn t…

"Kids these days"

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#77

Post by [deleted] »

henrikeh wrote: post #58
arduinomancer wrote: post #29

IMO its not even that we're copying people's logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages. For example if I forget the name of a function for something in a particular language I don't even go to the docs, I just google something like "python reverse list" and click the first SO link.

Is it just me or is this also a symptom of Python's documentation being really strange to navigate and generally having a massive impedance mismatch with Google? When I search on Google for "python reverse list", not a single link is to the official Python documentation. Not even if I search for "python reverse" does the documentation page show up. Searching for "python reverse documentation" leads to the second link…

[deleted]

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#78

Post by rualca »

arduinomancer wrote: post #29

IMO its not even that we're copying people's logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages. For example if I forget the name of a function for something in a particular language I don't even go to the docs, I just google something like "python reverse list" and click the first SO link.

> (...) acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages.

I see it more as an expert system where problems and their solutions are documented in a queriable way.

What stack overflow offers is more than your run of the mill documentation. It leaves a paper trail of weird corner cases and their workarounds.

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#79

Post by ev1 »

sneak wrote: post #31

I think whatever feature in my browser lets websites determine when I copy text should be ripped out, along with the site's ability to snoop on my scroll position. The sandbox has been broken.

I believe firefox lets you set dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled => false

Re: How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?

#80

Post by ralusek »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #55
arduinomancer wrote: post #29

IMO its not even that we're copying people's logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages. For example if I forget the name of a function for something in a particular language I don't even go to the docs, I just google something like "python reverse list" and click the first SO link.

It's a shame that most manuals have evolved to web pages that you can't download as PDFs or eBooks. Now you usually have to go online to find that keyword, and as you're online already, might as well google for the whole answer. One of the most productive times in my career was programming for the IBM i in the 90s. There were manuals online, but you could also download indexed PDFs versions. IBM did a superb job with…

That's interesting that you say that because I actually have the opposite reaction. When I go to look for documentation and find that it's a PDF, I want to die.
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