> Even if you just limit it to people largely taking solutions wholesale from SO, I still think that it’s a good [...]
I would respectfully disagree on this point. Anything that perpetuates doing this in any way will always have a negative impact on code quality. If an engineer is copying solutions wholesale, even if those solutions are robust and high-quality, that's an indicator of the approach they have to producing code on a daily basis, which is going to have a much larger overall impact than that 1 answer on SO.
SO is imo a net positive benefit to the community, but only by virtue of them doing other beneficial things that balance out with the harm of copypaste programming. But I don't buy that copypaste programming is benign.
> Also, it’s an opportunity for learning new patterns that you might not have come up with yourself.
Blind copypaste is by definition not an opportunity to learn, because you need to understand (hack/fork/adapt answers given) to learn from them.
> Why do everybody keep repeating "blind" everywhere?
"Blind copypaste" is just slightly more specific thing than just "copypaste". Copypasting code you fully understand and trust is fine (though in practice, is the rarer case). "Blind copypaste" implies you know it works(ish?) and don't care as much about the how.
> Also why all the anti-copilot seems to think their code is great, or even well understood by themself.
My code is certainly not great, but I like to think I understand what I've written pretty well (there are many contributors to poor quality code, not understanding what you're writing is just one potential one).
I also like to think that, while it's not great, it's on average going to be better than code put together by someone who doesn't fully understand what they've written.
> I have counterexamples everywhere around me all the time for these 3 points.
Do you? By what metric do you consider them counterexamples?
> But I don't buy that copypaste programming is benign.
Copypaste programming doesn't have to be benign in order to be better than the likely alternatives. The people who blind copy/paste are likely not producing high quality code in the first place. In which case, blind copy/paste is often an improvement.
I would respectfully disagree on this point. Anything that perpetuates doing this in any way will always have a negative impact on code quality. If an engineer is copying solutions wholesale, even if those solutions are robust and high-quality, that's an indicator of the approach they have to producing code on a daily basis, which is going to have a much larger overall impact than that 1 answer on SO.
SO is imo a net positive benefit to the community, but only by virtue of them doing other beneficial things that balance out with the harm of copypaste programming. But I don't buy that copypaste programming is benign.
> Also, it’s an opportunity for learning new patterns that you might not have come up with yourself.
Blind copypaste is by definition not an opportunity to learn, because you need to understand (hack/fork/adapt answers given) to learn from them.
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