Interesting question actually - assume I have some code for some specific problem I need to write. Is actually thinking the problem through and writing the code on my own more beneficial, or is it more beneficial to just find code on stackoverflow instead? There are legitimate pros and cons to each way, and I don't know how you tell which is better in some cases.
While writing ConTeXt code (similar to LaTeX), I will reference the StackExchange network:
% @see http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/128858/2148
Brett Victor asks, "How do you get communication started between uncorrelated sentient beings?" to introduce the concept of automatic service discovery using a common language.[1]
Alan Kay had a similar idea: that objects should refer to other objects not by their memory space inside a single machine but by their URI.[2]
When programmers copy/paste StackOverflow snippets, in a way they are actually closer to realizing Alan Kay's vision of meta-programming than those who subscribe to the "tyranny of a single implementation" -- or "writing" code as some would mock, expressing a narrow view of what they think "programming" a computer must entail.
The StackExchange network provides a feature-rich interface to document source code snippets that perform a specific task. What's missing is a formal, structured description of these snippets and a mechanism to provide semantic interoperability that leads to a universal prototyping language for deep messaging interchange.[3]
How else are we going to go from Minecraft[4] to Holodeck[5]?
I had the opposite reaction actually. You posted that, so I went to find out how many developers there are in the US.
According to wikipedia, there are approximately 457,000 programmers in the US, which seems like a smaller number than I would have guessed. For contrast, there are ~1.2 million attorneys.
