Haha right? Not saying this is you but whenever people try to tell me I have impostor syndrome, I’m thinking like “incompetent people exist. I’m just one of them”.
And yeah, a lot of people in the comments are running away from the joke, but realistically, to copy+paste code and have it work, you generally have to have a grasp of the code, at least to ask what you want and to paste it and change the variable names, and write the lines to stitch it all together.
Add imposter syndrome on top of that, and it may seem like you don’t do anything of use because you copied 3 functions out of a 1k line file.
Do people really constantly copy-paste code? If I don’t know something I’ll look it up, but then I’ll read the answer and apply it to the code I’m writing rather than copying it directly. I rarely see a piece of code that I can copy over directly into what I’m doing, and even if I can it’s usually not thr best idea because the naming etc would be inconsistent
Depends on the language. I’m not gonna find shit to copy-paste for what I’m doing in Scala 3 or F#, but in Rust or C++ I’ll frequently Google an issue I can’t figure out and someone will have some fancy black magic hacker solution with super-iterators and turbofishies and weird type inference that I couldn’t think of myself and just throw it in my code with some minor modifications :)
I may do that already when I get stuck… Tbf I am trying to learn and only ask it to explain how to do something or if I have a bug I can’t figure out. I feel sometimes it’s just best to get an answer if I’ve been stuck for a while because I’m not making progress anyway.
It’s not too bad for learning a new language, but you still have to make an effort to understand why the code it’s giving you works… or doesn’t work which can happen often.
When I was messing around with it, I had to go back and fix it’s code more often than not. It’s still useful for get the be bones of a program going though.
Funny, I’ve been in my current support/devops role for 9 years and every year I wonder more what the hell I’m doing. It somehow seems like I get dumber/lose knowledge/the field expands much more rapidly than my broken mind can keep up with.
I feel like a glorified script kiddie most of the time. I couldn’t program my way out of a wet paper bag if my life depended on it.
I feel like most of my googling of simple code is because I know what I’m trying to do, but I don’t remember the correct function name and or language structure for the language I’m currently using.
This is about 50% of what I use ChatGPT for. Something I’ve done many times before, but I just need a quick reminder about the exact syntax.
The other 50% is just creating DTOs that have properties that are suitable for parsing JSON or XML or can be used to dump data from SQL into. The boring shit.
Honestly, I hate these memes. As an old school hacker/programmer who has been doing this for many decades, I can usually just start thinking in code and start dumping out everything I need from my brain through my fingers to the keyboard. I never copy-and-paste code from online for something I’m coding (I don’t count something like copying a script to do a quick shell task of some-sort; for something like Amazon’s directions for installing Corretto I’m not going to type all that out manually; and I don’t really consider that “programming”).
But as a tech manager (and former University comp.sci instructor), I know this happens more often than I’d prefer. But some of the worst code I’ve had to review has been copy-and-paste jobs where the developer didn’t understand the task correctly and jammed in something they found online as a quick solution. I get that I started in a generation where you had to understand the problem and code the solution from scratch (because the Internet crutch wasn’t what it is today) — but the fact that so many younger developers revel in the fact they copy-and-paste code on the regular makes me sad.
+1 ai tools are fine if you already know what you want to write and it speeds up the process of coding. But when ai tools are writing code you don’t understand, you cannot verify that any of the code is actually correct and doesn’t introduce bugs. Ditto for copy-pasting.
As funny of a joke “all programmers copy and paste” is, after 9 years that impostor syndrome should be gone, and if you still can’t figure out a solution without copying and pasting, maybe it is time to go back to the basics and learn how to code.
I’ve only been programming seriously (for work) in the last two years and honestly don’t get the copy pasting memes. I get copy pasting a 1-3 line terminal snippet sometimes, but idk how people are getting away without actually writing their own code.
I only program non-seriously for work on occasions and I’ve rarely used copy/pasted code. Except maybe some of my own code because of using lazy logic trees to deal with variation in the data being processed. Doesn’t need to be pretty or efficient. Just needs to work well enough so I do a less manual work.
I program professionally, and I copy paste all the time. The difference is when I copy paste, its 10-20 lines of code, not a line or two— and I’m not fishing for a solution to the problem. I already have the optimal solution in my head, and I am just searching for the solution I already know. It’s just faster than typing it by hand 🤷🏻
I do this often. Not because I can’t do it myself or understand what I’m doing, but why would I write the exact same code when it has been done and pasted online a million times?
I’m a senior developer and I rarely copy and paste… I’ll sometimes look at some other code to get ideas, but I retype it. It helps me understand the code, and I can refractor it or write it differently as I go.
Pretty much. I try to tell juniors that the things I’m teaching you is things I made a mistake on. I have a decade of failure and I’m trying to help you shortcut it.
That approach never sinks in with anyone I train. They seem to remember that I told them something about something so they do that not remembering I said not to do that.
But as soon as someone gets to an intermediate level and start thinking for themself and make those exact same mistakes.
“We’ve been doing things wrong this whole time! I figured out a better way!” Then spend a lot of time implementing the “better” way only to find out it performs like shit and actually takes more work to implement and maintain anything.
I’ve been professionally programming for 18 years now. And honestly, I hate writing code from scratch. I copy/paste code from other parts of my codebase and just tweak as needed. Writing code from scratch feels like I’m doing something wrong.
The feeling before writing a piece of code in an empty file isn’t unlike the feeling I get when I’m about to step into the hot tub. Once I’m in I’m good, but I really have to psyche myself up to get in
Edit: Come to think of it, it’s the same with writing
Funny you say that. I’m 18 days from having a 10-page paper due that will determine whether I graduate in May or not, and I have yet to start it. Like you, I just need to get past that initial hump, and then it’ll go smoother.
Because, as I can attest as someone in their forties…
Boomers spent my youth telling me that I just needed a college degree, any college degree, and I would have a great job lined up for me almost anywhere.
Later, after many of us had graduated into a world that was absolutely fucking us we were told “Your degree was useless, why did you invest in something stupid that nobody uses like Early Childhood Education?” (something literally every child needs, adults with competent knowledge of early childhood education…)
Further, they would go on to say “Look at the tech industry, there’s good jobs there. Only STEM degrees matter, who gives a fuck about art or the human condition or literature. Who needs fucking “media literacy” and who needs to learn from the past to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes! LEARN TO CODE!”
“Learn to code” has been shoved down people’s throats by Boomers in positions of power for two decades now. After massive layoffs in the tech industries, it has become an even bigger joke than it was, because what are all those coders without jobs supposed to do? Learn to code? Pretty sure they already did that step.
Hmmm. Okay… but if someone doesn’t understand the code they are haphazardly copying and pasting until it “works,” they should learn how it works or they are a liability.
How shocking that my prediction that answering your question was just you looking for a wedge in to be able to be rude to me has been proven true. Because yeah, I didn’t make the joke, so what does that have to do with the joke I did make? This is a meme forum, jackass, not a place to pull out your “/r/iamverysmart” bullshit.
I usually don’t give idiots who make demands like “answer the question” the benefit of the doubt.
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