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Shouldn’t the question be whether it’s better or worse than copy-pasting random functions from StackOverflow you found when googling?

Waterluvian 5y ago
Do people actually just copy paste? When I was much greener I never found that to work. The interface had to be thought about. And inevitably there’d be other details to modify. If anything this just makes that easier to do wrongly. It wants to offer you code that’s not yours that you didn’t conceive of thoughtfully.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  I’ve copy/pasted parts of code, but then I typically always link to the actual SO answer in the code. Sometimes it’s just the most pragmatic thing to do.
- oriolid 5y ago
  I have fixed some very broken code at work, and person who had originally added the code to the project just commented to the PR "I copied it from StackOverflow so it must be right". That person had architect title and I don't, so he must have been doing something right.
ekster 5y ago
It isn’t really being sold as “are you the kind of developer who copies and pastes code you don’t understand from StackOverflow? The have we got an efficiency improvement for you!”
dkersten 5y ago
IMHO its worse because on StackOverflow, people can comment, upvote/downvote, add their own answers etc if the random code has issues or shortcomings or is a bad idea for whatever reason. With copilot, you have to trust it or trust that you can figure out if there are issues (which, if you're a beginner learning, you probably can't and according to that security articleq[1], in many cases even experienced programmers may not notice[2]). With StackOverflow, that's also the case, except you have many more eyes vetting it. [1] https://gist.github.com/0xabad1dea/be18e11beb2e12433d93475d72016902 https://gist.github.com/0xabad1dea/be18e11beb2e12433d93475d7... [2] Two quotes from the article: "Oh, and they're both wrong." and "Both look plausibly correct at a glance". If the entire selling point is to write code faster, are we really going to give the code more than a glance? Personally, I find figuring out code I didn't write a lot harder than writing it from scratch, in most cases, because I understand my intent, while I don't understand the intent of others without some deep thinking.
playcache 5y ago
I can't say copy pasting has ever worked from me for stack overflow, unless it's something really rudimentary and I just want a quick example.

Waterluvian 5y ago

Do people actually just copy paste? When I was much greener I never found that to work. The interface had to be thought about. And inevitably there’d be other details to modify. If anything this just makes that easier to do wrongly. It wants to offer you code that’s not yours that you didn’t conceive of thoughtfully.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stingraycharles 5y ago
I’ve copy/pasted parts of code, but then I typically always link to the actual SO answer in the code. Sometimes it’s just the most pragmatic thing to do.
oriolid 5y ago
I have fixed some very broken code at work, and person who had originally added the code to the project just commented to the PR "I copied it from StackOverflow so it must be right". That person had architect title and I don't, so he must have been doing something right.

ekster 5y ago

It isn’t really being sold as “are you the kind of developer who copies and pastes code you don’t understand from StackOverflow? The have we got an efficiency improvement for you!”

dkersten 5y ago

IMHO its worse because on StackOverflow, people can comment, upvote/downvote, add their own answers etc if the random code has issues or shortcomings or is a bad idea for whatever reason. With copilot, you have to trust it or trust that you can figure out if there are issues (which, if you're a beginner learning, you probably can't and according to that security articleq[1], in many cases even experienced programmers may not notice[2]). With StackOverflow, that's also the case, except you have many more eyes vetting it. [1] https://gist.github.com/0xabad1dea/be18e11beb2e12433d93475d72016902 https://gist.github.com/0xabad1dea/be18e11beb2e12433d93475d7... [2] Two quotes from the article: "Oh, and they're both wrong." and "Both look plausibly correct at a glance". If the entire selling point is to write code faster, are we really going to give the code more than a glance? Personally, I find figuring out code I didn't write a lot harder than writing it from scratch, in most cases, because I understand my intent, while I don't understand the intent of others without some deep thinking.

playcache 5y ago

I can't say copy pasting has ever worked from me for stack overflow, unless it's something really rudimentary and I just want a quick example.