Rant: I keep seeing beginners copy and paste code without reading it

I was helping a friend learn Python last week and he just copied a 20-line function from a forum to fix his error. He had no idea what it did. I see this all the time in tutorial comments too. People paste blocks of code, it works, and they move on without learning. This matters because when the code breaks later, they have zero clue how to fix it. I know from my own start that reading each line, even if it's slow, builds real skill. How do you get someone to slow down and actually understand what they're typing?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomasm4121d ago

My first Python script was just copied Stack Overflow code. Took me three months to realize it was sorting a list.

susan_hart1721d ago

Wasn't that how everyone learned back then?

the_brooke10d ago

My first JavaScript function was just a copied block I didn't understand for a YEAR.