I don't think I've ever copied code directly from any of the Stack* sites. I generally read all the answers (and comments) and then use what I learn to write my own (hopefully better) code specific to my needs.

Yeah my experience has always been "ohhh that solution makes sense" then I go write it myself

If nothing else this whole copilot thing is helping ease some chronic imposter syndrome

Ha! Well, I think a lot of people copy code from StackOverflow verbatim once at least - including me.

Of course it turned out the code I'd blindly inserted into my project contained a number of bugs. In one or two cases, quite serious ones. This, even though it was the accepted answer.

It was probably more effort to fix up the code I'd copy pasta'd than write it from scratch. Since then I've never copied and pasted from StackOverflow verbatim.

Yeah! I've uh, ... never copied a bit of code into my repo verbatim, right?

yeah right. I wish.

(Not saying every dev does this)

I've copied plenty of Microsoft sample code verbatim, because the Win32 API sucks and their samples usually get the error handling right.

But, I can't think of a single scenario where I've copied something from Stack Overflow. I'm searching for the idea of how to solve a problem, and typically the relevant code given is either too short to bother copying, or it's long and absolutely not consistent with how I want to write it.

"Too short to bother copying"? I copy single words of text to avoid typing and typos. I would never type out even a single line of code when I could paste and edit.

> "Too short to bother copying"? I copy single words of text to avoid typing and typos. I would never type out even a single line of code when I could paste and edit.

Very honest suggestion: learn how to touch type. You can still copy if needed, but your typed input will be much faster.

I'm somewhere between 45-75 wpm. But Ctrl+C Ctrl+V can type 300wpm!

Typing when you could paste is like having that Github Copilot put the right sentence right in front of you and you decide to type over it instead. Not only does it feel like wasted and robotic effort, typing everything leads to RSI.

I'm not sure why people disagree. Another symptom is that I insist on aliases for everything while others type out all the commands every time. Maybe I get distracted by the words when I type and lose my train of thought?

You need to highly the correct test first and move the curser to the correct location to paste text. I bet you can type 123123 several times faster than you can highlight that text in this comment and past it into a reply.

Double click to select a word is fast, and then you are in per word selection mode.

Sure, move mouse to text, double click, ctrl-c, ctrl-v it’s still slower than touch typing one word.

That's fair use.

Same here. I copy boilerplate code for new projects etc. regularly. But I don't remember copying anything verbatim from SO. Function, argument and variable names rarely fit the scheme used in the particular project I'm working on at that moment and usually I do a better job at adapting the code thinking what I'm doing rather than just copy and paste and then wonder what went wrong.

I think I did a few times, usually for languages that I wasn't going to spend to much time with (so no benefits in figuring how to do it from the answers) and for specific tasks.