I went to undergrad with a guy who wrote a book called A-Z life lessons. Random, but I still remember that there was a chapter about how “Copy and Paste”, (famous with lazy students) could work in real life too.
I generally agree with the sentiment - sometimes if you want similar results, there really isn’t any need to reinvent the wheel. Just find what works and redo or reuse it. That’s how I built this blog you’re reading this on. And this isn’t even limited to the digital world, even the physical.
But here’s my addendum - sometimes copy and paste does not work. The trick is knowing when.
When I learned to code using “learn python the hard way” by Zed A Shaw - one of the warnings was never to copy any code but always to type it out in order to really know what you were doing.
I typically stick to this and type out most things as I’m comfortable with the command line and have been using it since the MS-DOS days of the late 90’s when all I wanted to do was load up a video game from it’s not-so-obvious location.
Today i didn't. After copying some code from the API docs, I spent over an hour at work trying to update a database via an endpoint for a client UAT, until I'd tried everything I could think of and finally asked a young engineer for help.
In minutes, my problem was solved. Lessons were definitely learned.
Lesson 1: Copy and paste works in real life, but not every time. Like when copying code from a rich text box or a word processor
Lesson 2: Experience is the best teacher so when in doubt, ask someone experienced at solving similar problems.
Lesson 3: Knowing how to state your problem concisely gets you help faster. Busy people generally respond faster when you know enough about your issue and can say your piece in one go.
Lesson 4: I like to think I could be a developer in another life but I with enough days like this I’d probably pull all my hair out before putting in my 10,000 hours.
