[HN Gopher] How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?
___________________________________________________________________
How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?
Author : prakhargurunani
Score : 87 points
Date : 2021-04-19 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stackoverflow.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (stackoverflow.blog)
| busterarm wrote:
| 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.
|
| Their codebase was an absolute mess as well. This was an
| application that was supposed to contain medical records and it
| had broken routes that were leaking data everywhere
| unauthenticated. And they were mad that I spent two weeks
| cleaning all of that up and bulletproofing their application.
|
| I was happy to move on from that one, but it taught me a lesson
| about just how valuable sales skills are. These two people were
| living a comfortable lifestyle off a single paying client
| (essentially getting money indirectly through DARPA) and were
| punching way above their weight technically.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| 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.
| busterarm wrote:
| I 110% believe you :D
| piokoch wrote:
| Why "government founded grants", "medical software",
| "incompetence", "very profitable" and "data leaks" are always
| magically joined together...
| busterarm wrote:
| It gets much more interesting than that...
|
| The field itself is a poorly understood area of medicine. By
| that I mean, it's only about 50 years old and no two doctors
| practice alike.
|
| It's science, but nobody has consistent repeatable steps that
| seem to be conclusive beyond their own individual labs. The
| treatments are extraordinarily expensive.
|
| I'll leave it at that because I'd prefer not to give
| identifying details (even though I basically have), but
| really the whole thing was eye-opening for me.
| elpakal wrote:
| How about a GitHub Action which scans lines of code in a PR patch
| for exact matches on SO? As a reviewer it would be helpful to see
| 1) was copy pasta 2) what SO comments say about the code (eg has
| it broken)
| vmception wrote:
| Its one thing when you need to remember how to make a GET request
| with a certain framework, you can copy and paste that answer, its
| another thing when you need to integrate the request into your
| asynchronous queue and store the results in an ORM with JSON
| serialization, cant copy and paste that
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| "We pretty much captured everything except the actual text being
| copied."
|
| Didn't realize I need to browse Stack Overflow in incognito
| mode...
| dkersten wrote:
| Interestingly, I don't remember when the last time I did so was.
| I seem to be relying on SO less and less. I do sometimes use it
| as a quick reference, usually because its one of the first
| results on search engines, but its typically just a quick "ah,
| that's the function for that" or "ah, that's how you do X" rather
| than actually copying code.
|
| I'm trying to think what's changed, I guess I've just been
| writing stuff that either I'm super comfortable with or is niche
| enough that there's not that much on SO that's helpful. Looking
| in my browser history, the last thing I looked for that I got an
| answer on SO is what's the differences between C++'s
| std::scoped_lock and std::unique_lock, which was a few days ago.
| I still use SO, just not as frequently as a few years ago.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _I 'm trying to think what's changed_
|
| Among other possibilities:
|
| SO suffers from hostile moderation and a generally unwelcoming
| culture, perhaps even worse than Wikipedia. This has a profound
| chilling effect on positive, substantial contributions,
| particularly from new contributors.
|
| SO had a great strategy initially with relying on search
| engines to index everything, but it never seems to have solved
| the recency/relevance problem. In that respect, it has become
| its own worst enemy, with old answers about obsolete versions
| and practices often ranking highly in search results.
|
| The first of those problems then exacerbates the second,
| because the same cultural issues get in the way of both
| updating answers to old questions and asking new questions that
| might be superficially similar to ones that already exist but
| actually need a different answer.
|
| Meanwhile, in many areas of programming, documentation from
| other sources has become both better in quality and more
| readily located thanks to other well-known sites and high
| search engine rankings. Relatively speaking, SO simply isn't as
| useful if there is already primary documentation that answers
| questions correctly and comprehensively.
|
| And finally, you personally may have grown as a developer over
| time, becoming both more capable of solving problems for
| yourself and more familiar with whatever tools you use
| regularly, so you might not need external help so often.
|
| FWIW, I'm also in the "rarely visit SO any more" camp. I think
| I have a kind of banner blindness for SO hits on search results
| pages now, perhaps because I'm assuming that following a SO
| link is unlikely to provide a useful answer so I almost always
| check other plausible sources first. On those occasions when I
| do get as far as visiting SO, I'm usually reminded of why I
| tend to work this way now.
| [deleted]
| fredley wrote:
| I have spent multiple hours digging into something, found _my own
| Stack Overflow answer_ and pasted it back in.
| water8 wrote:
| Why did you spend hours digging into something you already knew
| the answer to?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Solving a problem once doesn't guarantee it's added to your
| knowledge. Learning needs repetition, if you solve that
| problem once a year, you'll learn it very slowly.
| rolisz wrote:
| They didn't know it any longer. They are using StackOverflow
| as a second brain, offloading knowledge to it.
| ralusek wrote:
| Pensieve.
| daveidol wrote:
| Knowing something at some point in the past does not mean you
| currently remember it!
| Kranar wrote:
| Because "knew" is past tense. There are a lot of things that
| I once "knew" but no longer "know", and it's nice when that
| past knowledge is documented somewhere.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Not OP, but... more often than I care to admit, _past me_ is
| perfectly aware of the answer to this problem, but _present
| me_ has long since forgotten.
| nmg wrote:
| I do this with documents and help articles I've published.
| "Here, let me show you how to do this." 6 mos later: "How the
| heck did I do that?... oh yeah. That makes sense, neat."
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| What's worse is when you find your own answer and don't even
| remember writing it!
| nitrogen wrote:
| Worse still is finding entire old projects with your name on
| them and not remembering them at all.
| danaris wrote:
| Personally, I try not to copy & paste things I don't understand--
| unless there's not enough information around the code to explain
| it, in which case I first copy & paste it, then tweak it and test
| it enough that I _do_ understand it.
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| Ha! Joke's on them. I type it out so it makes it look like I'm
| doing more work. (But in all seriousness, I normally do type it
| out, so it forces me to remember what I'm using better.)
| niix wrote:
| Same, I've always done this for anything like this (i.e.
| tutorials), just to make sure what I'm learning sticks with me
| a bit more.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Right? Who is _literally_ copy /pasting, that seems dangerous.
|
| I'd describe it as learning the concept/tactic/technique from
| the SO answer, and if me then implementing that
| concept/tactic/technique in my own code just so happens to look
| the same as the provided example, that's fine.
|
| Frequently it doesn't, either!
| mhb wrote:
| The learning works better if you cut and paste it twice, forget
| to change something and then discover it after a few hours of
| debugging.
| p4l4g4 wrote:
| This, yes! Not necessarily the copy/paste part, but
| definitely the debug part!
|
| I generally like deeper debug sessions, preferably without
| too much pressure. Getting deep understanding for a problem
| and figuring out a solution were the most valuable learning
| experiences in my career. The satisfaction you get from
| finding a solution to a hard problem, makes them more
| memorable. Even if the lessons learned afterward are not
| spectacular, then at least you got a chance to sharpen the
| tools in your belt to pin point problems as they occur!
| kemiller wrote:
| Well, hello, Junior. That's thinking!
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| Ha! Nice username :)
| arduinomancer wrote:
| 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.
| davnicwil wrote:
| Just in case this idea needed any more validation, a few years
| ago Stackoverflow _themselves_ launched a 'Stackoverflow for
| Documentation' product [0], and eventually shut it down
| because, as was probably obvious to many going in and certainly
| in retrospect, this product was of course.. just Stackoverflow.
|
| [0]
| https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-d...
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| 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 their documentation, there was hardly any need to look up
| anything in the Internet, whatever you needed was in the
| manuals, examples included.
|
| Of course you still used the Internet at work, but mostly for
| mingling with your peers and having technical discussions,
| although too many people still blindly copied/pasted from the
| forums.
| ralusek wrote:
| 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.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| PDFs are horrible as eBooks, but in a manual I prefer the
| fidelity of a PDF than the reflowing of an ePUB, or the
| fickleness, slowness, and potential unavailability of a web
| page.
|
| A well structured and correctly indexed PDF is a godsend,
| because you just open the table of contents, quickly locate
| what you're looking for, click and there is your answer. As
| I said, IBM excels at writing documentation. Every language
| has a Language Reference manual, and a Programmer's Guide
| manual. The first is for reference, the second is to learn
| how to use it, including examples.
|
| Don't take my word for it, you can check out, for example,
| the COBOL manuals here:
| https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.1?topic=languages-cobol
| afiori wrote:
| for this specific use case a single html file that you
| open in the browser might be the best option (at least
| php offer that option and I appreciated it).
| ghaff wrote:
| I think it depends. For something well-structured like a
| cookbook I'd prefer PDF in most cases. But it really
| varies. For example I find most guidebooks do a decent
| job of Kindle these days and have actually switched over
| to a significant degree because it's really useful to
| have everything on my phone.
| agallant wrote:
| You may be interested in https://devdocs.io (offline-friendly
| documentation tool). And if you prefer a straight up desktop
| app - https://zealdocs.org
| milkytron wrote:
| I also really enjoyed Dash when it was free to use:
| https://kapeli.com/dash
| jabo wrote:
| Why not pay for it or get your employer to pay for it,
| especially if you enjoyed it?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Thank you. I've used it, although it adds a lot of
| complexity for the same features than a folder full of
| manuals would give.
|
| I'm probably too set in my ways, but I prefer references
| that are always available offline. Devdocs.io once in a
| blue moon would forget about my choices, and I would hate
| to redownload them.
| simonsarris wrote:
| I do this for <canvas> sometimes and get... myself in 2013
| answering somebody
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| This happens to me too. It freaks me out, because it means
| that not only I forgot the answer, but that I forgot that I
| ever knew the answer.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Also been there, however mine was me answering my own
| question. Several years later I helped myself out again with
| it.
| number6 wrote:
| list.reverse()
| henrikeh wrote:
| 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 to the Build-in Functions page
| (https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html), which is
| what I "need".
|
| Excuse the comparison, but "matlab reverse list" has the top
| three to the official documentation (all of them relevant, but
| slightly different semantics). Why can't Python be better than
| that?
| klmadfejno wrote:
| > 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 to the Build-in Functions page
| (https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html), which is
| what I "need".
|
| But what you want is probably ls[::-1]
| [deleted]
| nurpax wrote:
| It's not just you. Python seems to suffer from Python-
| specific "tutorial sites" being SEO'd above Python's official
| docs. I don't know what it is about the Python documentation
| that lowers its rank on Google search results. In general,
| not a big fan of Python docs.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| "Back in the good old days", you'd get detailed documentation
| with for example DirectX. The whole visual c++ experience was
| so good. I never needed to look up anything. Browsing for
| documentation is such a zone-exiter...
|
| Rails, Some gens, and some Java projects are the few properly
| documented projects out there.
| [deleted]
| hannofcart wrote:
| I have a hunch that this tendency to look up SO rather than
| actual language/API docs is prevalent more in some ecosystems
| than in others.
|
| For eg, with Rust and Go projects I would invariably read the
| actual docs (which I find are very accessible to read) as
| compared to when I write Python or C++ where I'm happy to SO my
| way through my task.
|
| However, what I've found is that reading the actual docs is
| better for multiple reasons: 1) it reinforces your learning /
| memory via spaced repitition 2) you tend to glean some extra,
| related useful info from the docs.
|
| These days I try and put myself in a no SO straitjacket as far
| as possible, forcing myself to read the actual docs instead.
| rualca wrote:
| > (...) 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.
| [deleted]
| aejnsn wrote:
| I did work for a small company whose "director of software
| development" had copied and pasted verbatim basic details from SO
| enough for it to become a theme. He would copy long, drawn-out,
| language-level examples from SO rather than use the idiomatic,
| syntactic sugar provided by the framework and its docs. The
| duplication would drive me insane.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| ev1 wrote:
| I believe firefox lets you set
| dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled => false
| [deleted]
| johjohjoh wrote:
| Don't paste from stackoverflow and do not hire people who paste
| from stackoverflow or anywhere online. This is literally how
| software is compromised. I worked with people at another company
| who had compromised a small part of Google and several banks this
| way. They contacted the security department later but they were
| surprised by the number of companies they were able to compromise
| just by posting instructions online.
| dvirsky wrote:
| I would add - unless it's a very short snippet and you
| understand exactly what it does. My top SO answer is how to
| convert and IP address from string to integer representation in
| Python. It's one or two lines, it's perfectly fine to copy that
| sort of thing. I've actually copied my own code from SO on
| several occasions.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > Don't paste from stackoverflow and do not hire people who
| paste from stackoverflow or anywhere online
|
| Crucial corollary: "... that you don't understand".
|
| Blindly copy/pasting what you don't understand is the problem.
| If it's too complex to analyze, it doesn't belong in Stack
| Overflow.
| joinmoin12 wrote:
| Things started to become more interesting when we asked more
| detailed questions about who was copying and what they were
| copying.
|
| https://www.geogebra.org/resource/krdc3fxd/Ig5ImkxMQlMX4XvI/...
| mattnewton wrote:
| I don't think that link is what you meant to paste?
| cratermoon wrote:
| Often enough to inspire this: https://github.com/drathier/stack-
| overflow-import
| tomrod wrote:
| This seems like a terrible idea!
| [deleted]
| flimflamm wrote:
| This seems like a terrific joke!
| PhillyG wrote:
| I'm enjoying the license it uses:
|
| "This module is licensed under whatever license you want it
| to be as long as the license is compatible with the fact
| that I blatantly copied multiple lines of code from the
| Python standard library"
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. This made my afternoon :)
| tomrod wrote:
| Indeed!
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| A terrible, horrible, _wonderful_ idea...
|
| (Kind of like one of the Grinch.)
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I'd be curious at the length distribution. I tend to copy search
| terms (LongJavaClassNameThingy) to find some separate
| documentation.
|
| I assume what's going on with the subset of high rep people that
| do a lot of copying is they're doing searches for duplicate
| posts.
| [deleted]
| cardanome wrote:
| I think copy and pasting code is very useful for a junior
| developer and nothing to be ashamed of. You will learn by
| debugging and modifying it.
|
| As a more senior person, I rarely do copy whole snippets. I will
| look for general inspiration or to confirm my idea and check if
| there is a better solution. I wont blatantly copy as it rarely
| fits into my architecture and code style so it is faster to just
| directly write it how I need it.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| On a side note, use caution when doing a copy/paste from a
| website into a terminal. There are several things you can do to
| reduce the risk. Here [1] is a demo of one risk vector. The
| article links back to a discussion here on HN from 2013 on some
| things you can do to mitigate the risk.
|
| [1] - https://thejh.net/misc/website-terminal-copy-paste
| lucb1e wrote:
| In recent Bash versions this seems to have been fixed
| (available in Debian Bullseye, currently the 'testing' branch):
| when you paste something, it'll never auto-execute, even if it
| contains newlines.
|
| It's actually quite annoying as I'll often copy from my
| terminal itself, purposefully with the trailing newline, and it
| now refuses to execute. I need to move my hand from mouse to
| keyboard to hit enter and then (often) back to mouse.
| Dragonai wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this!
| f154hfds wrote:
| So I have copied this answer into probably 100 separate bash
| scripts over the years:
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/246128/9084915
|
| I've thought about saving it somewhere (sometimes I copy from my
| other existing scripts) - but it's just too convenient to
| google/copy directly out of the webpage.
| lucb1e wrote:
| That link goes to:
|
| > a useful one-liner which will give you the full directory
| name of the script
|
| So we don't all have to click to find out what this is about...
| math-dev wrote:
| All Day, Everyday.
|
| (p.s. SO Blog is really cool - they always post many good and
| informative articles there).
| nathias wrote:
| I have copied the code one time in 2 years, but I ended up
| heavily modifying and then refactoring anyway ...
| rriepe wrote:
| _copy and paste find and replace
|
| those are fine, but use a tab not a space
|
| CTRL shift L or I'm in hell
|
| but please, don't merge my rebase_
| podiki wrote:
| ....I have lots of questions about this "homegrown web tracking
| tool" (assuming this isn't still part of a joke?). What??? Was
| this opt-in? Did they track across everyone? What was collected?
| This is troubling, to say the least.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Serious question: why is this troubling?
|
| I don't see the big deal, at all. This is absolutely nothing
| compared to what big advertising & social media do. Taking a
| count of people who hit ctr+c? Who cares, I can't see any
| possible scenario of how that data could be used in a bad way
| unless you think SO is going to email employers with a time
| spent & ctrl+c count or something?
| cryptoz wrote:
| Not OP, but, the troubling parts for me are 1) the tone of
| the post, and 2) the larger-than-SO issue of the gap in
| understanding copy+paste for the average user.
|
| 1) The post says "unfortunately" they cannot tie logged-out
| users to their logged-in account. In no moral way is this a
| reasonable perspective to me. It is _extremely_ fortunate
| that SO does not build the tech to track you as a logged-in
| user when you are logged out. That 's a bad precedent to set.
| Sure, some sites do that, but I think they shouldn't.
|
| Other examples of the tone in the article abound. It's
| troubling for sure.
|
| 2) It is up to the web devs themselves to decide what goes in
| your clipboard. Many users don't know this. Sites that
| exploit the gap between user expectation of privacy while
| copy+paste as well as tracking do not match with reality.
| Stack Overflow is merely one of many players here, but they
| way they exploit this gap is mildly upsetting.
|
| Something needs to be done, either technically or
| communication to users, about copy+paste reality.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. Honestly I still don't see the
| big deal though. It's just a little bit of fun with an
| interesting statistic, not everything needs to be so doom &
| gloom serious.
| podiki wrote:
| I wasn't trying to be all "doom and gloom," but as one
| concerned about tracking (yes, all the social media and
| stuff you mention, which I try to be very conscious
| about) the casual mention of adding in tracking to a
| particular event really could have used more context and
| explanation (especially given the technical audience). I
| love see the data analysis on SO, but there is a general
| need for transparency and opt-in on the internet. Not
| saying this was a huge deal, but the fact that it can be
| so casual speaks to the larger issues I'd say.
| benpopper1 wrote:
| Hey there - I work at SO. Understand your concern and wanted to
| share some details.
|
| Browsers fire a copy event when you copy, just like a click
| event fires when you press on a button. We just added analytics
| to it like we would any other feature on the site.
|
| We didn't track the content of your copy (browsers don't let
| you see the text content) but we did track the following:
|
| Meta data about the post and it's parent post like the id,
| owner, score, tags, if it was a question/answer, if it was
| accepted
|
| If your copy was from a code block or from text content
|
| The Referer header
|
| Standard analytics properties like the date/time, approximated
| location, account metadata
|
| Here's our privacy policy on analytics: "Analytics information
| Stack Overflow uses data analytics to ensure site functionality
| and to optimize our Product and Service offerings to you. We
| use web browser and mobile analytics to allow us to understand
| Network and Apps functionality. In doing so, we record
| information including, for example how often you visit the
| Network, how often you contribute content, Network and Apps
| performance data, errors and debugging information, and the
| type of activity you engage in while on the Network or in your
| use of our Products and Services. We may on occasion share this
| information with third parties for research or product and
| services optimization."
| quesera wrote:
| > Browsers fire a copy event when you copy, just like a click
| event fires when you press on a button. We just added
| analytics to it like we would any other feature on the site.
|
| This is a bit misleading.
|
| More accurate would be: Stack Overflow is able to configure
| our web pages to track certain of your activities on the
| page, including Copy and Click. We do that.
| podiki wrote:
| I appreciate the response and detail here, would have liked
| to see that in the original post.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| I do it all the time for clever tricks (especially SQL things
| like tally tables), but like to leave the permalink to the answer
| that seems best (from the share link below the answers) as a
| comment in my code.
|
| If it's something I had to google for once, it's likely needed in
| the future and sometimes it's easier to search my own code for
| all SO links than follow the thread through the labyrinth
| again...
| shpx wrote:
| Stack Overflow answers are licensed under a CC BY-SA
| license.[0] If you copy and paste a function without (at least)
| linking to the question, isn't that copyright infringement?
|
| [0] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/
| lucb1e wrote:
| That depends on various factors. Without doing a copyright
| law for dummies, the short of it is that a few lines are
| often not copyrightable at all, but otherwise yes. Hence, in
| my code I actually link to the answer when I re-use a
| function (one example that comes to mind is a string->number
| hash function in javascript to assign random but consistent
| colors to items).
| tabtab wrote:
| 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.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I never copy/paste directly but I try to understand what's going
| on. It seems there are two kinds of devs: some that just want
| things get done and others what want to understand. The people
| who just want get things done will probably be happy copying some
| code verbatim.
| metalforever wrote:
| 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 things or debug things but it's not for me.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Possibly, but I don't know where the inflection point lies.
|
| Before StackOverflow was a "thing," I recall noticing that it
| was easier to google spec documents on an electronic component
| even though I had the manufacturer's databook and Application
| Notes just across the room.
|
| The ease of searching the pdf on google outweighed the ease of
| getting up and paging through the physical book. The main
| difference was in Application Notes: I could sit down and read
| some of the better ones like a novel (I'm looking at you,
| Analog Devices :-) and that was easier with the dead tree copy
| than the online one.
| buro9 wrote:
| This is probably true. Having lived without the ability to
| search any random problem and have a snippet of code there, I'm
| used to searching for academic papers, RFCs, or reference
| documentation and then build up my understanding and make an
| implementation that way.
|
| There are times that I've not done this though, for example a
| couple of years ago I was struggling to comprehend how to
| convert some math from a paper into actual code (the symbols
| were more than a little odd and I swear a bit of the equation
| was missing) and yet searching Github revealed a repo where
| someone had produced snippets of different obscure algorithms.
| Not quite a cut and paste, but definitely a "read the answer".
| djbeadle wrote:
| My secret move when I'm having trouble setting up a new
| library or dependency is to search for some common code from
| it on Github.
|
| For example, how do I use the Python requests library (bad
| example because it has great documentation) would lead me to
| searching "import requests".
| paxys wrote:
| It's less about age and more about the stack you work with. I
| know several experienced engineers who have the entire Java
| library memorized, but have them work on a slightly different
| stack (or even a newer SDK version) and they will be blindly
| Googling for answers like anyone else.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| "Kids these days"
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Sometimes you want a discussion of the pros and cons of the
| various ways to tackle a problem, in order to find the best
| approach for your application.
|
| This kind of information is almost never in standard
| documentation.
| ketzo wrote:
| Yep. There's nothing quite like the experience of going on
| Stack Overflow for a particular problem, and the "best
| answer" is _almost_ what you need...
|
| but you scroll down, and there's a different version that's
| _exactly_ what you need! except it 's for an older version of
| the library...
|
| but there's a comment on _that_ answer, from two years later,
| with a quick note on "if you're at version 7+, just do Y
| instead of X."
|
| Absolutely wonderful.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| I look for the clearest, cleanest shortest solution and then I
| make it better.
| nynx wrote:
| I've found that the amount I use stackoverflow is inversely
| proportional to the quality of the documentation of the language
| I'm using.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Definitely. Looking at my browser history for stackoverflow +
| PHP, it seems to be things to do _with_ PHP, such as how to
| prevent a referrer from being sent when users click a link on
| my website. That 's of course not actually part of the PHP
| language, so it would seem like I'm rarely looking up how to
| use PHP APIs on stackoverflow. I've always found PHP docs to be
| the best of any language that I've used.
| chenster wrote:
| Pastegrammer
| exhilaration wrote:
| One of the interview questions I ask is, "if you run in a problem
| you can't solve, where do you go online to find answers?" Anyone
| that doesn't answer Stack Overflow is - in my opinion - either
| lying or very, very new to the industry. (This is for .Net/C#
| jobs so maybe it's different for other languages.)
| reidrac wrote:
| Searching online to find help to solve a problem doesn't equal
| to use Stack Overflow, at least in my experience.
|
| It may be the type of problems, but I can't even remember the
| last time that DDG took me to SO and it was actually the answer
| that I was looking for.
|
| I think I've found more answers searching for open issues in GH
| than anything else.
| MrOxiMoron wrote:
| to be honest, I use my search engine of choice, yes stack
| overflow often comes up in the results, but also GitHub issues
| of people having a similar issue, often for other projects that
| use the same tools/libraries I do.
|
| so I go to my search engine for answers, not stack overflow
| directly.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Yeah. I'd raise an eyebrow at Stack Overflow if they didn't
| also include Google. Google will get me official API docs,
| blog posts diving in deep about it, Github issues, as you
| say, -as well as- anything relevant on Stack Overflow.
|
| Maybe they meant to go -ask- questions? Which...I rarely ever
| do, despite being in this game for over a decade. The few
| times no one has asked the question I have, it usually has to
| do with a library or missing functionality, and that tends to
| get resolved (at least with an answer of "yeah, that isn't
| supported") via an email.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| right, often if it is a particular error message Github
| issues for the library and version you're using is more
| useful.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Eh depends on the language. For elixir I go to the elixirforum
| not stackoverflow
| busterarm wrote:
| I've been in this industry around 20 years and I can't remember
| the last time I looked at SO to answer one of my own questions.
| Other people's, sure, but usually I look at the source code for
| answers to my questions.
|
| The results are more consistent.
|
| Now Github Issues on the other hand...
| mgkimsal wrote:
| 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 get (or, more often, SO is out
| of date but still marked 'best').
|
| That SO often tends to be where you end up doesn't, imo, mean
| you should always start there. If the same SO links are at the
| top of many search engines, that's probably a very good
| indicator, but you almost always need to broaden out when
| researching.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| and lord help you when you are on page 6 of a google search
| and not finding it... :(
| bckr wrote:
| 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.
| scaladev wrote:
| Why would I go to Stack Overflow? If it has any decent answers,
| they'll be right at the top of Google (or whatever) search
| results. If it doesn't, I just saved myself the need to do a
| second search.
| methodin wrote:
| Search is the only correct answer. SO may be the first click
| often but limiting your problem solving to that is not
| something an experienced dev will do.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| it really depends on the severity/depth/weirdness of the
| problem. I often run into things I don't know the names of or
| need documentation for how to do with a particular
| library/framework, those almost end up being solved on Stack
| Overflow - if I actually have a problem that I cannot 'solve',
| Stack Overflow is almost never actually helpful (some times it
| helps to try to write out a question that is clear enough for
| Stack Overflow to accept, because then you might think of what
| you actually have to research)
| Lichtso wrote:
| I disagree. From your perspective I must be a liar, and that is
| fine by me.
|
| As, I can't recall the last time I found anything helpful on
| that platform, that any of my questions were actually answered
| and certainly not that I copied & pasted any code. I am not
| claiming that it never happened. It is just so rare that I
| wouldn't answer your interview question that way. To me that
| platform is an internet points farm combined with Groundhog Day
| of basic questions. I might be an extreme outlier of our craft.
| Just keep in mind that we exist and that not everybody
| answering the question "incorrectly" is a liar or an idiot. In
| fact, I would say that only those candidates who answer
| differently are truly interesting.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| It's often faster to google on stack overflow for python code
| than write it yourself.
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