NeverDon’t just copy-paste code.

You are learning code, you are stuck. You can be either hasty, frustraded or both. I understand and absolve you from all this, but please, don’t “just” copy-paste code.

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I’ve seen questions on the Internet (forums, IRC, Slack, StackOverflow…) that were obviously exercice for school or program.

There’s no shame in asking questions, but in the short attention-span world that is Internet, what you will likely get are answers that are each ugly in a way:

• magic tricks
• convoluted code
• ill-fit habits from other languages
• library or gem your teacher will disapprove
• …

And so your call for help will bite you in the back: lose you right now, teach you bad code habits, and give the illusion that the problem is solved, when your understanding clearly isn’t.

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Plus, these exercises are likely easy to find all over the web, so why ask it?

I want you as a junior dev to be an excellent searcher. This will give you the basic words, which you will find in the doc/ref.

Over years, this habit will give you awesome “problem solver” skills, strong basics, and a coworker I’d love to be with.

Looking for recipes is fine as long as you cross-check and make sure that every line you copy (which is not a sin) is well understood.

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Oh, and take the time to read the whole page, but here’s short excerpt: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#homework

(sorry, ESR wrote it, it’s kind of offensive and dated, but still a good reference)

Go now! I get that you have no time and plenty of fun to have elsewhere.

I hope that wasn’t too patronizing, really not the intent, but I’ve seen too many juniors “broken by StackOverflow/Slacks”.