*generated by some LLM

Why does this code feel so familiar? It looks just like the code I helped some noob with on Stack overflow 40 minutes ago

My favorite is when the top-voted, accepted answer looks correct, but misses various edge-cases. And then there’s a second-most-voted answer which corrects the first.

Most questions about JavaScript are like that, for example, which was rather horrifying to realize. If you just leave a junior to their devices with that, they will absolutely copy all these correct-looking answers into your code base.

Plot twist: the senior dev is the one who copy and pasted it after the junior dev’s code didn’t work

Worst is C code where people don’t specify what version there useing or they use features or functions from third party libraries they don’t include in the awnser when they post code (they post code with custom functions without pointing out it’s from an obscure git repo that requires a 1:1 ide setup).

And sometimes people posts code that appears to fix the problem but will end up causing massive code refractoring later

Is he copying a working answer or the initial question?

SO is not a forum, it’s a knowledge repository. One of the sites biggest problems (aside from the company not listening to its users) is that confusion. It’s not a help desk, it’s not a code writing service, and most certainly not a forum.

Stack Overflow is dead

I feel like this is casually racist but I couldn’t tell you why