[RealDinosaur]

I never suggested left-pad myself, but what I would do is copy and paste a function off stack-overflow, name it appropriately, and encapsulate it, maybe write a test that is the flavour of the month.

Then leave a link to the page I got it from in the comment above.

I'm about 5 years into my career, and have re-invented the wheel in the past myself. It's great fun to make these huge rude-goldberg-esque inventions but for making an MVP, it simply isn't worth it.

Specifically avoiding libraries like express, react, ORMs or crypto though... People love to do that, and far too often it ends up living for eternity.

I always advocate... don't bother. :)

[hluska]

I don't recall meeting a developer honest/confident enough to admit to copy/pasting off of Stack Overflow. That takes one heck of a lot of courage.

I don't actually know you, but I like you. That was really great to read!

[LandR]

I've been a professional developer for 15+ years, I don't think I've ever seen anything posted on stack overflow of high enough quality that I would happily paste it into a production system.

Great to use a guideline for a problem... but copy and pasting from stack overflow (even with a comment to that page, which i've seen!) just no!

[hluska]

I'm inclined to agree with you, though I still think that RealDinosaur deserves a lot of credit. He or she was still honest and forthcoming about that. It's impossible to start teaching better practices if people aren't honest about what they do!