• andyburke
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    1878 months ago

    I get the joke.

    But if, like me, you actually feel this here’s how I got away from it: make sure you actually understand things.

    Read the error message over and over again, look up the words, understand what it is saying.

    If something isn’t working, start reading the code and making sure you understand what each line is doing.

    It will feel incredibly slow and painful at first. Eventually you will strengthen those.muscles, however, and it’ll become second nature.

    Then you can cut and paste with confidence! 🤣

      • andyburke
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        668 months ago

        There are still some errors where you just need to know the fix. In that case it’s a baseball bat.

          • @[email protected]
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            158 months ago

            Filling the paper tray with US Letter sized paper. If you aren’t in the US, you don’t use it and might not even be able to buy any.

            • @bitchkat
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              8 months ago

              A non US printer would most likely not configure the tray for letter sized paper. It likely says “PC load A4” for the rest of the world.

              • @[email protected]
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                18 months ago

                The rest of the world gets ‘PC load letter’ when they try to print a document from the US which is configured for US Letter paper, or an application or driver decides to default to that paper size. And it’s very confusing, since they have no idea that ‘letter’ is a paper size.

      • @[email protected]
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        268 months ago

        Having worked at a copy place for a few years, that one makes me laugh every time.

        For those that don’t know, the error is Print Cartridge needs letter sized paper to be loaded. It is just out of paper.

        • @[email protected]
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          118 months ago

          You’d often get the error when there was paper in the printer though. Turns out the cause is the slightly different size between US letter page size and A4 page size. Technically the printer’s correct to complain (for the same reason it’d be correct to complain about an A4 sized print while full of A5), but virtually nobody gives a shit about that difference and so the “PC Load Letter” message just translated to “You have to push that stupid button before I’ll do anything because pedantry.”

        • @NegativeLookBehind
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          78 months ago

          Wrong. It needs to be taken to a field and beaten into tiny pieces

      • @bitchkat
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        38 months ago

        Paper cassette: load letter size paper (aka. the letter size paper tray is empty)

    • @[email protected]
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      238 months ago

      Additionally, don’t copy and paste anything until you understand it. If you don’t understand what code golf is being spewed, don’t take the top answer. If you don’t understand any answer, you probably don’t understand the underlying systems well enough and need to re-evaluate what your asking for.

      • @[email protected]
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        68 months ago

        The only difference between a novice and a professional is that a professional checks what they are copying to understand it first before allowing it into their codebase.

        Novices copy code to avoid having to understand it. Professionals copy code to avoid reinventing the wheel.

    • @saltesc
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      88 months ago

      ChatGPT is making me better because I’ve learned not to fucking trust it and double check everything it spits out to ensure its actually doing what’s asked of it.

      • @TexasDrunk
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        38 months ago

        I use it to help me lay out pseudo code and check it against what I come up with. It has made the way I structure things (and comment on things) way better.

    • @DharkStare
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      38 months ago

      Exactly. I cut and paste all the time but I make sure I know what the code is doing first before I actually add the code.

      • andyburke
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        28 months ago

        I am who my name says and I have a degree in CS if that’s what you are asking.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          Didn’t want to put too many details in the question for privacy sake. Knew a guy with your name in college, was curious if you were the same. Have a great day!

    • @fidodo
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      648 months ago

      The difference between a junior and senior developer is that a senior developer actually understands what he’s copy pasting

      • @Potatos_are_not_friends
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        108 months ago

        Pretty much. I try to tell juniors that the things I’m teaching you is things I made a mistake on. I have a decade of failure and I’m trying to help you shortcut it.

        • @hardcoreufo
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          18 months ago

          That approach never sinks in with anyone I train. They seem to remember that I told them something about something so they do that not remembering I said not to do that.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          But as soon as someone gets to an intermediate level and start thinking for themself and make those exact same mistakes.

          “We’ve been doing things wrong this whole time! I figured out a better way!” Then spend a lot of time implementing the “better” way only to find out it performs like shit and actually takes more work to implement and maintain anything.

          Everyone has to do that at least once.

      • @[email protected]
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        98 months ago

        I’m a senior developer and I rarely copy and paste… I’ll sometimes look at some other code to get ideas, but I retype it. It helps me understand the code, and I can refractor it or write it differently as I go.

      • @bitchkat
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        48 months ago

        Back in the olden days, our copy and pasting was retyping from manuals or magazines.

      • @LemmyKnowsBest
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        38 months ago

        But who’s the guy that originally wrote the code that everyone else is copy pasting? I think Nathan Kellert desires THAT level of expertise.

    • @blackbirdbiryani
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      178 months ago

      I’ve only been programming seriously (for work) in the last two years and honestly don’t get the copy pasting memes. I get copy pasting a 1-3 line terminal snippet sometimes, but idk how people are getting away without actually writing their own code.

      • @[email protected]
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        88 months ago

        I program professionally, and I copy paste all the time. The difference is when I copy paste, its 10-20 lines of code, not a line or two— and I’m not fishing for a solution to the problem. I already have the optimal solution in my head, and I am just searching for the solution I already know. It’s just faster than typing it by hand 🤷🏻

        • @[email protected]
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          58 months ago

          I do this often. Not because I can’t do it myself or understand what I’m doing, but why would I write the exact same code when it has been done and pasted online a million times?

      • @bitchkat
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        68 months ago

        Believe me, some people will find a way and they often copy and paste the same thing over and over because they don’t know how to create reuseable code.

      • I only program non-seriously for work on occasions and I’ve rarely used copy/pasted code. Except maybe some of my own code because of using lazy logic trees to deal with variation in the data being processed. Doesn’t need to be pretty or efficient. Just needs to work well enough so I do a less manual work.

  • @NOT_RICK
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    758 months ago

    It’s all imposter syndrome, all the way down

    • Fuck spez
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      168 months ago

      IDK man, all the way? I don’t think I’m good enough to have actual impostor syndrome like real developers.

      • @Kyrgizion
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        58 months ago

        Haha right? Not saying this is you but whenever people try to tell me I have impostor syndrome, I’m thinking like “incompetent people exist. I’m just one of them”.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      I may do that already when I get stuck… Tbf I am trying to learn and only ask it to explain how to do something or if I have a bug I can’t figure out. I feel sometimes it’s just best to get an answer if I’ve been stuck for a while because I’m not making progress anyway.

      • @stratoscaster
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        58 months ago

        I swear to God it gets things wrong like 50% of the time though (both syntax and conceptually) for programming.

        • @hardcoreufo
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          28 months ago

          When I was messing around with it, I had to go back and fix it’s code more often than not. It’s still useful for get the be bones of a program going though.

      • @[email protected]
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        48 months ago

        It’s not too bad for learning a new language, but you still have to make an effort to understand why the code it’s giving you works… or doesn’t work which can happen often.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          Oh yeah for sure. It’s given me incorrect code before but I was able to recognize the issue and fix the error which was mostly a logic one.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          It’s so great at getting unstuck and learning news ways of doing thing that everyone knows but me. Even if most of its actual code is borked.

          • @[email protected]
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            08 months ago

            Yeah today after getting three bad answers in a row from ChatGPT I was quoting Thanos… “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

  • @[email protected]
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    258 months ago

    To become a real programmer, you must install Copilot and let it copy and paste for you.

    • @KrankyKong
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      78 months ago

      I feel like im slowly losing my ability to program between copilot, phind, and chatgpt…

  • @waz
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    238 months ago

    I feel like most of my googling of simple code is because I know what I’m trying to do, but I don’t remember the correct function name and or language structure for the language I’m currently using.

    • @[email protected]
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      38 months ago

      This is about 50% of what I use ChatGPT for. Something I’ve done many times before, but I just need a quick reminder about the exact syntax.

      The other 50% is just creating DTOs that have properties that are suitable for parsing JSON or XML or can be used to dump data from SQL into. The boring shit.

  • @Kyrgizion
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    198 months ago

    Funny, I’ve been in my current support/devops role for 9 years and every year I wonder more what the hell I’m doing. It somehow seems like I get dumber/lose knowledge/the field expands much more rapidly than my broken mind can keep up with.

    I feel like a glorified script kiddie most of the time. I couldn’t program my way out of a wet paper bag if my life depended on it.

  • @MrJameGumb
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    168 months ago

    Wait, that’s a thing??? I can earn programmer money just by using copy & paste??? Maybe it’s time I changed jobs…

    • Zedd
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      428 months ago

      I spent years getting great with powershell so I can now confidently copy code out of chatgpt. Chatgpt’s ability to spit out close to correct code faster than I can type it is amazing, but useless if you don’t understand what the hell it’s trying to do.

      • mac
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        198 months ago

        Pretty much this, it’s the one use case for copilot, I know what I want to type anyway and copilot is usually close enough that 2 edits is faster than typing the whole thing and better for rsi.

        • @[email protected]
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          68 months ago

          Basically the work flow has changed from:

          Find a framework that I need to integrate for whatever reason. Go to GumboChumbo.io read the docs.

          Write some code based off of what’s in the doc, test the thing, read error message, read docs, ad new thing, but wall for obscure reason, spend thirty minutes looking through similar issues via Google-fu and then find an obscure comment from 6 years ago, That some how fixes this current issue. Implement it, get it working and then customize it.

          Now it just streamlines finding these solutions.

          • mac
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            8 months ago

            Yeah it’s definitely a lot quicker than searching through 15 articles and stack overflow posts sometimes. Except for with regex and the sed command, the bastard thing kept messing that up

        • @[email protected]
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          28 months ago

          But sometimes Copilot just uses too much words to present the answer, so I use ChatGPT which can be personalized.

          (Maybe it is possible with Copilot, too, maybe I have to ask how to do it)

          • mac
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            38 months ago

            I find the opposite, chatgpt (free version at least) gives all the explanation and stuff then a code block, copilot (not Microsoft the GitHub one) just prints the boilerplate directly in the editor then you press tab to accept.

    • @Feathercrown
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      278 months ago

      Copying and pasting: $1
      Knowing what to copy and where to paste it: $999

  • Pumpkin Escobar
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    148 months ago

    Real answer, learn how to paste several code snippets from stack overflow into a ChatGPT window and ask it to do what you need. Sprinkle in some copilot to tweak as needed. Congrats, Mr Programmer.

  • @Yaztromo
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    98 months ago

    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.

    • @blotz
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      48 months ago

      +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.

  • @force
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    Depends on the language. I’m not gonna find shit to copy-paste for what I’m doing in Scala 3 or F#, but in Rust or C++ I’ll frequently Google an issue I can’t figure out and someone will have some fancy black magic hacker solution with super-iterators and turbofishies and weird type inference that I couldn’t think of myself and just throw it in my code with some minor modifications :)

  • Lunya \ she/it
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    88 months ago

    read the code and pretend you understand it (real understanding will slowly come with that)

  • @dohpaz42
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    68 months ago

    I’ve been professionally programming for 18 years now. And honestly, I hate writing code from scratch. I copy/paste code from other parts of my codebase and just tweak as needed. Writing code from scratch feels like I’m doing something wrong.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      The feeling before writing a piece of code in an empty file isn’t unlike the feeling I get when I’m about to step into the hot tub. Once I’m in I’m good, but I really have to psyche myself up to get in

      Edit: Come to think of it, it’s the same with writing

      • @dohpaz42
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        18 months ago

        Funny you say that. I’m 18 days from having a 10-page paper due that will determine whether I graduate in May or not, and I have yet to start it. Like you, I just need to get past that initial hump, and then it’ll go smoother.