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git-workflow-practice-b-chen00 created by GitHub Classroom

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Programmers and Stack Overflow

I found this article interesting because Stack Overflow is a resource often encountered and used when I am debugging. Regardless of what my question or problem is, there will always be someone who encountered a similar issue before with an appropriate response or solution to it. It makes sense given the large user-base of Stack Overflow with 98% of engineers using Stack Overflow in some capacity every month. Going beyond my life as a student, it seems that Stack overflow continues to be useful even as a working software engineer. Even though less than 4% of software engineers contribute to the website, Stack Overflow remains to be a big and reliable source of information. To me, it almost feels like cheat when I am using it. On the other hand, the article brings up a good point on how Stack Overflow should be used. Developers will definitely continue to use Stack Overflow but it is important to use it "as a resource and not blindly rely on it."

Be savvy when using other people’s code and try to use it as an opportunity to learn, rather than to just steal.

-Kavindu Dodanduwa

Even though it is very easy to copy and paste what you need, Stack Overflow provides a good opportunity to learn from others.

Brandon Chen

Comment from Tim Chen

This is indeed an interesting article. I think StackOverflow is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can improve our work efficiency, save our debugging time, and let us learn new things; but on the other hand, we can easily be “addicted” by it - - so that as soon as we have any problems, we go to StackOverflow to search for solutions, which will weaken our ability to think independently about our future issues. So I think we need to use StackOverflow reasonably and moderately; in addition, when we answer questions on StackOverflow, we also need to help the questioner understand What and Why the problem is rather than simply provide a solution.