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Discussion on: I'm An Impostor

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

Absolutely. I feel like there's this urban legend about this army of crappy coders who blindly copy-n-paste everything out of StackOverflow without understanding how any of it actually works. In reality, I've rarely witnessed this from any coder - even the most junior ones. Sure, they may search StackOverflow (we all do), but it' almost always serves as a catalyst to better understand the actual solutions that are being suggested.

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siddharthshyniben profile image
Siddharth

Yep. We mostly copy logic, not code.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Not so much an urban legend as much more a joke that spread too much among beginners. In itself it's just self-deprecating humour among programmer. We're all aware that we have to rely on online help a lot, so it makes sense to joke about it.

In itself, this might even be a good thing: Experienced developers continuously joking about how much we all rely on looking things up sends a strong signal to beginners that this isn't a bad thing. As much as I hate the joke for how over-used it is, the message it sends, although very hyperbolic, isn't a bad one: "None of us really has a clue, so don't worry if you need to look something up".