Edit: I assumed it was obvious from context that I’m referring to copy-pasting code from stack overflow or an LLM or whatever without knowing what it does but apparently that needs to be said explicitly.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I really like to build from zero, but some things are better copied, no matter if you fully understand them or fall short. :)

For example, I'm not qualified to check if Hamilton and Euler were correct - I only do as they explained, and later double-check the output against input.

[–] firelizzard 4 points 1 month ago

I didn't say never copy and paste. I'm saying when you push a commit you should understand what all the LOC in that commit do (not counting vendored dependencies). If you don't understand how something works, like crypto (not sure what Hamilton or Euler refers to in this context), ideally you would use a library. If you can't, you should still understand the code sufficiently well to be able to explain how it implements the underlying algorithm. For example if you're writing a CRC function you should be able to explain how your function implements the CRC operations, even if you don't have a clue why those operations work.

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