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by __exit__ 1585 days ago
Exactly, that is my personal feeling as well. I'd rather prefer to spend the extra time understanding the solution instead of just copy-pasting and adapting the first Stack Overflow answer.

In fact, one of the most striking things I encountered in Github issues, Stack Overflow, etc... is the amount of people who simply try something, works for them and they share it like some sacred solution, but when asked why that works, they shrug and cannot provide an answer. And there is a sea of validated answers just like that in those platforms.

My fear is that we are slowly rolling down a hill in which IT ultimately becomes less of an empirical industry and everything comes down to trying until it works (without the proper understanding), because it is magic.

Yes, sometimes (if not most of the time) developers are in a rush and have no extra time to spend on understanding a solution, so it is much better to slam a copy-pasted code and move on. Still, this should not be the way to go...