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Do people really copy/paste from StackOverflow? I feel this is more a meme, rather than reality. I do check StackOverflow, but never have I took an answer verb
by tagyro 4y ago
Do people really copy/paste from StackOverflow?
I feel this is more a meme, rather than reality. I do check StackOverflow, but never have I took an answer verbatim.
I try to see if it's the same problem and what was the approach in deconstructing it, which I find more useful in the long run.
- coldtea 4y ago>Do people really copy/paste from StackOverflow? All the time.
- ldoughty 4y agoI've done it, and I know others that have, but I think it depends on people's definitions of copy/paste. I've certainly copied a sort anonymous function from SO, it was one-liner. Is that copy/paste? or is it only copy/paste if it's X lines? Otherwise I agree, usually I just get hints and go my own way.
- Timwi 4y agoIt depends on what you need. In most cases the code on StackOverflow is not exactly what you need, so you need to understand it in order to adapt it. But if you're looking for a specific well-defined algorithm (MD5, say) then you can just copy & paste it.
- Aeolun 4y agoThis has more to do with the code never being immediately copy-pasteable, not so much my reluctance to copy-paste from SO for licensing reasons.
- concordDance 4y agoAnecdata: Everyone I work with does.
- Flimm 4y agoAccording to Stack Overflow's blog: "One out of every four users who visits a Stack Overflow question copies something within five minutes of hitting the page." https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/30/how-often-do-people-actually-copy-and-paste-from-stack-overflow-now-we-know/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/30/how-often-do-people-ac...
- icoder 4y agoWell, to be fair, most of that is probably just copying the a particular syntax or built-in function, which (I think?) has nothing to do with copyright. At least for me, that's most of the copies I do, followed by the ones that basically are 'call these functions in order', then paste it as a comment and use it as cheat sheet, and only very rarely I copy a 'creative' snippet almost verbatim, like a regexp matching email addresses, a to-hex or a crc calculation. And perhaps that's actually tricky.
- tagyro 4y ago1 out of 4 feels about right, thank you for the link!
- mullen 4y agoI catch people using cut and paste code all the time. If there is a spelling error in code (Especially if it is in a code comment), I can guarantee you that someone copied and pasted it from StackOverflow.