'Before AI, 90% of code was copy-pasted from Stack Overflow' — and that's underrated
max_paperclips · x · 2026-11-01
maxpaperclips argues that AI-assisted coding didn't invent copy-paste programming: by the 2000s nobody was 'rawdogging' code in a plain editor. He recounts years of IDE snippets, templates, shorthand HTML plugins, and even attempting to scrape Stack Overflow into a template bank — plus colleagues with footpedals and insane Vim/Emacs keybinds churning out huge codebases in Spring. Coding was always tool-amplified; AI is a continuation, not a rupture.
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