5 ms·

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 prob

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.

abdulhaq 11y ago
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.
sohcahtoa 11y ago
I think there are two ways to view what the job most programmers do is. IMO it isn't to write code, it's to solve business problems. Code just happens to be the tool that you use to do that, most of the time. Anyone who tries to solve a problem by staring hard at a blank piece of paper instead of just googling the answer is not making effective use of their time.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Indeed. Some would call it lazy - I prefer "leveraging the combined knowledge and experience of all humanity".
- lubonay 11y ago
  You are missing the forest for the trees. Reaching for Google and SO as your first impulse when confronted with a problem will deteriorate your ability to find your own solutions in the long run. Use it or lose it, as they say. And besides, any non-trivial problem can't be solved by copying code from SO alone.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Most companies don't solve non-trivial problems. For instance, 90% of web development is regurgitating the same CRUD for different customers. Most of the work consists of wiring standard components together in a standard way, and slapping some CSS on top of it. If you're trying to think too much and reinvent too much, you'll waste a lot of time. Source: did too much webdev in my life already, and wasted way too much time doing things by myself.
    - gotchange 11y ago
      > For instance, 90% of web development is regurgitating the same CRUD for different customers. Maybe on the face of it, it looks like this to you but in reality it's bit complicated esp if you're aiming for more differentiation from your competition but if you're looking for just cookie-cutter, run-of-the-mill, copycat solutions, then all the products on the market definitely look the same.
      - babuskov 11y ago
        You are both right. 90% of the websites on the Internet do look the same. You only have 10% (probably even less) products that are special and noteworthy.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      I do webdev and I solve real and unique business problems. The web is just a convenient frontend for our users. Our backend has complicated data processing and solves unique problems. I know you said most and not all but just giving a counter example.
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
        It's not really a counter example because TeMPOraL's claim applied to the majority. Following the resulting advice of using whatever gets the job done quickly (eg copy/paste) will pay off for the vast majority of developers in that space. Your example is a red herring here as the comment just wasn't about the minority doing original stuff. Good for you that you ended up in one of those positions, though. Probably enjoy your job more. :)
  - gotchange 11y ago
    > Use it or lose it No pain, no gain.
  - varelse 11y ago
    Grabbing quick and easy answers from the Google and SO leaves me more time for the really interesting problems in my experience so far. And it's the really interesting problems that make writing bespoke C/GPU kernels worth the time involved in their creation so double-good, no? To be fair, sometimes I try to solve problems for an hour or so before going to the Google or SO, and when I find I derived roughly the same approach, I consider it a done-deal that it's probably the right way to solve the problem at hand. I would love to see a coding interview where the interviewee has access to Google/SO. It's a far more realistic portrayal of their on the job capabilities IMO. It would also force interviewers to come up with more interesting questions.
  - nodamage 11y ago
    Disagree. My time is valuable, and I already have enough difficult problems to solve that I'm not interested in creating extra work for myself. If a quick 2-second Google/StackOverflow search reveals the solution to my problem, I'll happily take it and move on. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't start with that. Pride?
- Bahamut 11y ago
  It depends on the problems you're solving - SO does not help with problems of architecture. For code structuring, staring hard at a sheet of paper or nothingness can absolutely be more effective.
  - sohcahtoa 11y ago
    Can't argue with that. Although I do think architecture is where patterns start to be useful - again, relying on pre-existing solutions rather than creating your own.
- aninhumer 11y ago
  Of course, but anyone who tries to solve a problem by copying the first piece of code they find on SO without even trying to understand the problem is likely to be similarly ineffective in the long term.
- gotchange 11y ago
  Technical workers solve technical problems not business problems. Upper management folks instead solve business problems. Our job as techies is to model/define the business problem in technical terms and then work on it. That's why they pay us and if some are not competent or proficient enough with their tech tools, that will reflect poorly on the quality of their finished product and copying and pasting won't always save the day for them. Also and this is very important, if they would like to grow professionally, they ought to work on their own and develop their skills organically or fear that they'll be stuck forever in the "apprentice" level for their whole career.
  - walshemj 11y ago
    Sorry you are totally wrong here
- moron4hire 11y ago
  If a business problem can be solved by copy-pasta, then it's a common business problem and copy-pasta hasn't really solved it.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Exactly, and most business problems are not all that unique. User input from form X goes to storage Y, output in report Z. There, I bet I've described, in a very high level summary, at least 50% of programming projects out there in one sentence. SO is a valuable resource because all these wheels need to get re-invented over and over everywhere. Unless you're lucky enough to be working on an inventive project at an inventive company, programming tends to be like plumbing: run this pipe from the source here, through that wall, to the sink there.
  - babuskov 11y ago
    100% of programming projects involve transforming inputs into outputs ;)
ryandrake 11y ago
Why? Do you get more sales or market share if your engineers are sitting there working hard on inventing wheels that are one Google search away? You're the manager. The engineers on your team have 20 or so tasks to do, rote, boring stuff, such as "serialize object X to JSON" and "send serialized stream to server Y". Would you rather your team 1. take a day or so to "work real hard" re-implementing JSON serialization, or 2. just copy/paste something already working, spend an hour or so adapting it to the project, then move on to the next task?
amyjess 11y ago
You would probably be horrified to find out that doctors diagnose most common illnesses by looking symptoms up in their med school textbooks. The more tech-savvy doctors now use WebMD. Or by how most family lawyers do 90% of their work by entering names, etc. into a Word template that was written years ago. Getting my will written was an eye-opening experience: I told my lawyer who I wanted my property going to, who I want it going to if my first choice predeceased me, and who I didn't want my property going to, and he just typed a bunch of names into his template, hit "print", and called a couple of witnesses and a notary into the room so we could all sign it. My living will was even simpler: I told him I wanted one, so he just typed my name into his template and had it printed and signed just like my regular will. From the customer's perspective, what matters is that their problem gets solved, not how it gets solved.

abdulhaq 11y ago

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.

sohcahtoa 11y ago

I think there are two ways to view what the job most programmers do is. IMO it isn't to write code, it's to solve business problems. Code just happens to be the tool that you use to do that, most of the time. Anyone who tries to solve a problem by staring hard at a blank piece of paper instead of just googling the answer is not making effective use of their time.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Indeed. Some would call it lazy - I prefer "leveraging the combined knowledge and experience of all humanity".
lubonay 11y ago
You are missing the forest for the trees. Reaching for Google and SO as your first impulse when confronted with a problem will deteriorate your ability to find your own solutions in the long run. Use it or lose it, as they say. And besides, any non-trivial problem can't be solved by copying code from SO alone.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Most companies don't solve non-trivial problems. For instance, 90% of web development is regurgitating the same CRUD for different customers. Most of the work consists of wiring standard components together in a standard way, and slapping some CSS on top of it. If you're trying to think too much and reinvent too much, you'll waste a lot of time. Source: did too much webdev in my life already, and wasted way too much time doing things by myself.
  - gotchange 11y ago
    > For instance, 90% of web development is regurgitating the same CRUD for different customers. Maybe on the face of it, it looks like this to you but in reality it's bit complicated esp if you're aiming for more differentiation from your competition but if you're looking for just cookie-cutter, run-of-the-mill, copycat solutions, then all the products on the market definitely look the same.
    - babuskov 11y ago
      You are both right. 90% of the websites on the Internet do look the same. You only have 10% (probably even less) products that are special and noteworthy.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    I do webdev and I solve real and unique business problems. The web is just a convenient frontend for our users. Our backend has complicated data processing and solves unique problems. I know you said most and not all but just giving a counter example.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      It's not really a counter example because TeMPOraL's claim applied to the majority. Following the resulting advice of using whatever gets the job done quickly (eg copy/paste) will pay off for the vast majority of developers in that space. Your example is a red herring here as the comment just wasn't about the minority doing original stuff. Good for you that you ended up in one of those positions, though. Probably enjoy your job more. :)
- gotchange 11y ago
  > Use it or lose it No pain, no gain.
- varelse 11y ago
  Grabbing quick and easy answers from the Google and SO leaves me more time for the really interesting problems in my experience so far. And it's the really interesting problems that make writing bespoke C/GPU kernels worth the time involved in their creation so double-good, no? To be fair, sometimes I try to solve problems for an hour or so before going to the Google or SO, and when I find I derived roughly the same approach, I consider it a done-deal that it's probably the right way to solve the problem at hand. I would love to see a coding interview where the interviewee has access to Google/SO. It's a far more realistic portrayal of their on the job capabilities IMO. It would also force interviewers to come up with more interesting questions.
- nodamage 11y ago
  Disagree. My time is valuable, and I already have enough difficult problems to solve that I'm not interested in creating extra work for myself. If a quick 2-second Google/StackOverflow search reveals the solution to my problem, I'll happily take it and move on. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't start with that. Pride?
Bahamut 11y ago
It depends on the problems you're solving - SO does not help with problems of architecture. For code structuring, staring hard at a sheet of paper or nothingness can absolutely be more effective.
- sohcahtoa 11y ago
  Can't argue with that. Although I do think architecture is where patterns start to be useful - again, relying on pre-existing solutions rather than creating your own.
aninhumer 11y ago
Of course, but anyone who tries to solve a problem by copying the first piece of code they find on SO without even trying to understand the problem is likely to be similarly ineffective in the long term.
gotchange 11y ago
Technical workers solve technical problems not business problems. Upper management folks instead solve business problems. Our job as techies is to model/define the business problem in technical terms and then work on it. That's why they pay us and if some are not competent or proficient enough with their tech tools, that will reflect poorly on the quality of their finished product and copying and pasting won't always save the day for them. Also and this is very important, if they would like to grow professionally, they ought to work on their own and develop their skills organically or fear that they'll be stuck forever in the "apprentice" level for their whole career.
- walshemj 11y ago
  Sorry you are totally wrong here
moron4hire 11y ago
If a business problem can be solved by copy-pasta, then it's a common business problem and copy-pasta hasn't really solved it.
ryandrake 11y ago
Exactly, and most business problems are not all that unique. User input from form X goes to storage Y, output in report Z. There, I bet I've described, in a very high level summary, at least 50% of programming projects out there in one sentence. SO is a valuable resource because all these wheels need to get re-invented over and over everywhere. Unless you're lucky enough to be working on an inventive project at an inventive company, programming tends to be like plumbing: run this pipe from the source here, through that wall, to the sink there.
- babuskov 11y ago
  100% of programming projects involve transforming inputs into outputs ;)

ryandrake 11y ago

Why? Do you get more sales or market share if your engineers are sitting there working hard on inventing wheels that are one Google search away? You're the manager. The engineers on your team have 20 or so tasks to do, rote, boring stuff, such as "serialize object X to JSON" and "send serialized stream to server Y". Would you rather your team 1. take a day or so to "work real hard" re-implementing JSON serialization, or 2. just copy/paste something already working, spend an hour or so adapting it to the project, then move on to the next task?

amyjess 11y ago

You would probably be horrified to find out that doctors diagnose most common illnesses by looking symptoms up in their med school textbooks. The more tech-savvy doctors now use WebMD. Or by how most family lawyers do 90% of their work by entering names, etc. into a Word template that was written years ago. Getting my will written was an eye-opening experience: I told my lawyer who I wanted my property going to, who I want it going to if my first choice predeceased me, and who I didn't want my property going to, and he just typed a bunch of names into his template, hit "print", and called a couple of witnesses and a notary into the room so we could all sign it. My living will was even simpler: I told him I wanted one, so he just typed my name into his template and had it printed and signed just like my regular will. From the customer's perspective, what matters is that their problem gets solved, not how it gets solved.