Copying Stack Overflow answers verbatim taught me more than building from scratch ever did

I used to think copying code was cheating. My first mentor told me to always write everything from memory or I'd never learn. But after spending 3 hours debugging a loop in Python that literally 5 lines from an answer would have fixed, I started just pasting stuff in and then breaking it apart line by line. Now I learn way faster. But some people argue you need to struggle through the hard way to build real understanding. Which side are you on for beginners - copy and dissect or suffer through the original bug?

2 comments

2 Comments

john_johnson757d ago

Copy paste, dissect, move on.

quinns207d ago

Copy paste, dissect, move on." I get that approach for sure, but I think the interesting part people miss is how the copying and pasting itself creates a kind of echo chamber. @john_johnson75, you might find that when you copy a headline from a major news site, you're also copying the angle they want you to take. For example, if it says "Senator Scrambles After Gaffe" versus "Senator Answers Tough Question Honestly," the same event gets framed two totally different ways before you even start dissecting. The words we choose to copy already have a bias built in, and most people don't stop to think about that first step.