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Coding is boring, unless

blog.enki.com

1–10 of 158 posts

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#2
> Because 50% of my code (hyperbole intended!) was a direct copy/paste of Stack Overflow. And another 40% was a copy/paste from other scripts. Either my colleagues’ scripts or my own. It became repetitive. And there was little creativity or learning involved.

How is this even possible? I've never had a job where copying and pasting code would have helped. It blows my mind every time I read this kind of claim, to the point that I sort of refuse to believe it's true. Are there people who get paid to do things that simple that they can be copied and pasted from Stack Overflow?

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#3
For me boredom hits when I'm working on some kind of 'not changing the world in a positive way' project.

I believe every project has it's boring parts. But when the goal is positive it helps to get thrue.

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#4

> Because 50% of my code (hyperbole intended!) was a direct copy/paste of Stack Overflow. And another 40% was a copy/paste from other scripts. Either my colleagues’ scripts or my own. It became repetitive. And there was little creativity or learning involved. How is this even possible? I've never had a job where copying and pasting code would have helped. It blows my mind every time I read this kind of claim, to the…

He pointed out that it's a hyperbole.

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#5

> Because 50% of my code (hyperbole intended!) was a direct copy/paste of Stack Overflow. And another 40% was a copy/paste from other scripts. Either my colleagues’ scripts or my own. It became repetitive. And there was little creativity or learning involved. How is this even possible? I've never had a job where copying and pasting code would have helped. It blows my mind every time I read this kind of claim, to the…

For the first year or so of learning Ruby and Rails, I did end up copying and pasting alot from SO. In fact, I think I had a streak of visiting SO every day for at least a year, and that wasn't idle browsing, that was "Oh shit I'm stuck, better hit up SO".

So now when I hear claims like this, I just assume it's coming from someone that is new enough to a specific technology that relying on SO is necessary for them.

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#6

> Because 50% of my code (hyperbole intended!) was a direct copy/paste of Stack Overflow. And another 40% was a copy/paste from other scripts. Either my colleagues’ scripts or my own. It became repetitive. And there was little creativity or learning involved. How is this even possible? I've never had a job where copying and pasting code would have helped. It blows my mind every time I read this kind of claim, to the…

It always amazes me that there are people out there willing to hire and pay full these type of workers who scour SO for answers without working hard on the problem and expanding their knowledge and expertise in the process.

No wonder that our field and profession is suffering from bad image and quality problem when so-called pros copy and paste all the time on the job.

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#7

> Because 50% of my code (hyperbole intended!) was a direct copy/paste of Stack Overflow. And another 40% was a copy/paste from other scripts. Either my colleagues’ scripts or my own. It became repetitive. And there was little creativity or learning involved. How is this even possible? I've never had a job where copying and pasting code would have helped. It blows my mind every time I read this kind of claim, to the…

It always amazes me that there are people out there willing to hire and pay full these type of workers who scour SO for answers without working hard on the problem and expanding their knowledge and expertise in the process. No wonder that our field and profession is suffering from bad image and quality problem when so-called pros copy and paste all the time on the job.

When the deadline is tight and you don't have to debug the bluetooth stack to see why it doesn't work on Samsung XYZ on Android ABC, then SO is a godsend.

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#8

> Because 50% of my code (hyperbole intended!) was a direct copy/paste of Stack Overflow. And another 40% was a copy/paste from other scripts. Either my colleagues’ scripts or my own. It became repetitive. And there was little creativity or learning involved. How is this even possible? I've never had a job where copying and pasting code would have helped. It blows my mind every time I read this kind of claim, to the…

Probably because they're just manipulating some crappy, inconsistent API, or a buggy library. Nothing to figure out, just have to find the incantation that works.

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#9
I hope that's somebody's living quarters in the photo, and not their office! I've worked at a couple of offices that felt tightly packed, but they were nothing by comparison to that ;)

As a long-term proposition, I'd say that table is suitable for no more than 3. (Not sure what official guidelines are, but I'd say you'd need around 150cm x 75cm, or 5' x 2'6", per person. That gives you enough room for keyboard-laptop-monitor depthwise, and two monitors-plus-space widthwise. But the more the merrier, of course... humans are social, but not THAT social.)

Re: Coding is boring, unless

#10
I don't know. I've been writing c# for years and I still go to SO for things. Sometimes it's even stuff I should know, like creating a text file. However I don't do some of these tasks often enough to remember by heart and it's not an exciting problem to figure out so I go for SO. I don't see a problem with that at all. I also don't get the sentiment that you're not a real coder if you use SO and copy paste code. I don't always have the luxury to figure out which sorting algorithm is fastest for the dataset I'm working with. Sometimes I have to meet a deadline. A great developer is one who writes easy to parse code that is as bug free as possible in the alotted time frame. There are times when it's important to do some r&d and learn more, but there are also times when you need to ship. It really depends on what the task is. You can't paint the whole thing with broad strokes.
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