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Isn't it good, though, to prevent people from trying in vain to learn things by copy-paste?


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on purpose to stop unwary copy pasting?

Why is copying and pasting to be discouraged?

Agreed. If one wants to stop oneself copy-pasting, one should have a little willpower.

If one wants to stop someone else copy-pasting, like for a student's test in a school environment, there might be some utility here — though I would say a system-wide utility might be more useful.


Copying and pasting seriously inhibits learning and tends to directly cause mistakes.

And that is a good reason to stop copy, rather than paste.

I get the point but I've seen some sites even block copy/paste :p

there _is_ something to be said for not allowing copy&paste, but I'd be more worried of poor read&type-rs :)

Do you agree with how terrible it is to straight out copy and paste other peoples' work?

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/30-php-best-practices-...


I was hoping this was legit. If people were forced to type, rather than copy/paste, maybe they'd learn or remember a few more things

I agree with don't copy paste. because i hate with copy paste

People will only copy and paste. You're just making it inconvenient

I love copy & paste! I also defended it in this scholarly article: http://harmonia.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/toomim-linked-editing... with a video: http://youtu.be/1wo_7MTdWWI

I’ll defend this practice. It’s the only way of knowing for sure that you’re transmitting exactly the information you intend to send. Even copy/paste often picks up other stuff you don’t intend.

"copy and paste is the root of all evil."

> No pesky + or - at line-stars, making for easier copy-paste.

I wonder if easing copypasting is a good or bad thing..


Copy and paste is legal in a gigantic number of usecases. It's called Fair Use.

He's probably referring to stuff like this:

> Do Not Copy-Paste

> You must type each of these exercises in, manually. If you copy and paste, you might as well not even do them. The point of these exercises is to train your hands, your brain, and your mind in how to read, write, and see code. If you copy-paste, you are cheating yourself out of the effectiveness of the lessons.

(from the intro of "Learn Python The Hard Way" ( http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/intro.html#do-not-copy... ))


Doesn’t that stop a user from using copy and paste?

>>and break everyone's experience

Come on. Appending a URL to the copied text doesn't break anyone's experience. It's a very tiny inconvenience at best.

As for them pre-judging any copy and paste as inherently unfair, most people on the Internet copy and steal things without giving credit. Appending a URL to a chunk of copied text is a way of nudging them to cite the material. As for fair-use folks, I see it as helpful. I always cite material I copy from elsewhere manually, but now the script does it for me. In either case, it's a win.

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