Pro tip: Stop copying code from Stack Overflow line by line without understanding it first

I spent 3 months learning React and just copied snippets from Stack Overflow without really reading the docs. Then last week I tried to build a simple to-do app from scratch and my code broke in 6 different places. Comparing that to the 2 weeks I spent actually reading the React tutorial and typing things out myself? Night and day difference. The first approach made me feel smart but taught me nothing. The second one was slower but I can actually fix my own bugs now. Anyone else fall into the copy-paste trap when they started coding?

2 comments

2 Comments

ericb6614d ago

100% been there. Copy pasted my way through my first Django project and couldn't figure out why nothing worked when I tried to change anything.

blake_black4714d ago

Same here. Copy pasted a whole user auth system once and then spent two days trying to fix a login bug that was just a missing comma in the settings. @ericb66 you just described my whole early Django life.