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.
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.