So my friend who's learning to program didn't really feel like he accomplished much in a uni assignment since he googled most stuff, copy-pasted and tweaked the code a bit. When I told him that's actually the way we do things he found it the funniest thing ever.

We is a strong term 😋

But yeah, bolstering his confidence prolly won't hurt.

"We", I don't know about that.
Sure if I get really stuck I'll go find someone that's done something similar before, but 90% of the time it's just me and my devDuck.

@SortOfTested @C0D4 I don't copy-paste all my code either and anyone that does that shouldn't be called a programmer. However, are you gonna tell me you never google how to do something in some sort of API/framework/library/language and just copy a line or two and change the variables just out of laziness? After I get used to whatever I'm working with the frequency I do this decreases, but when I'm learning something new I copy-paste stuff all the time.

@neeno
The most I google for is docs and source code. If I sense something else is amiss, I'll query for issues. I will never ship code I don't understand, it's against my nature to just accept that something works and sign my name to it.

I've also been programming for 30 years, give or take.

@neeno very rare the example meets my needs, or I'm after something very specific (1 liner) or a function name or something.

But an actual implementation that I can copy/paste, it's been a long time since the business logic aligned with the api logic, or the api wasn't in-house or MITM'd to be shared across the broader company rather then a 1 off.

@SortOfTested this, I must be getting "senior" in my Dev years, although I'm only half way to you😅

@SortOfTested ooh neither do I. If I don't understand what I'm copy-pasting I won't do it, that's just asking for trouble.
We probably have different ways of finding answers to our problems, probably because of our difference in experience. I mean, as far as I know you both are way older than me and very knowledgeable, I don't even have a job yet.
I have noticed that the more I gather experience the more I tend to go for docs. Two or three years ago I watched YouTube videos for everything, now they're last resort and I just go for SO and docs. If I'm really struggling I go into source code, but that most often than not doesn't help me.

@C0D4 I do that mostly when learning something new, since I'm doing simple stuff (like in Rust, fucking hell I google everything for that). But for stuff I'm experienced in I just take a look at the docs and SO answers.

@neeno I guess it's an experience thing.

I hate learning via videos, I only jump into SO if I actually need to, or there's a known bug I need to get around, SO usually has the answer
- fuck Salesforce some days 😅

But yea most of the time it's the docs and I just extrapolate from there.
It's not the implementation I go digging for just the concept that's close to what I'm trying to achieve when I hit a brick wall and realise I must be doing something wrong.

I guess after the first 10 or so years you stop learning how to do things, and start just doing things and filling in the small holes you don't already know.

@SortOfTested I agree with you... With a single exception of Liferay.

Seriously, I doubt anyone understands how/why it works. After the tricks it's pulled on me - it's not worth the time and headaches [literally] to try and understand it. Just make it work and ship it with fingers crossed.

@netikras
To me, that's a black box. If something presents itself in an interminable fashion such that I can only perceive it's public interface and intuition becomes impossible, I will interact with it given an expectation and anything outside of that expectation is a defect in either documentation or implementation

Tl;Dr
The error code doth protesteth too much, methinks.

@SortOfTested yepp.
1. the apis are poorly docummented
2. They sometimes work and sometimes they don't
3. They might work at first and stop working after n-th restart of the app
4. They might work in one server and not work in another in a very similar env
5. The impl might decide to not read some properties from a file and read all the others from the same file [confirmed with a jdb], although it works in other envs
6. Db schema has no FKs at all and it's strongly adviced in the docs to not interact with it manually. Removing/changing some entries causes LR to recreate them with defaults, triggering a chain reaction and messing up the whole setup and the data as well
7. ....

At least the case for liferay 6.1 I had to maintain an extension of.

Yes, it's a fault in both docs and an impl. It doesn't make it hurt any less though :/

I maintain that a developers most core job description is “Does google good”, a lot of what we do really amount to logic, thinking and problem solving, while a lot of what we do we can do out of our head, there is just as much that we need help with.

A lot of the time you are even looking for confirmation, like checking how to use a method you have not used in years.

Try programming in your phone...
I literally copy pasted single lines of code yesterday :p