I think the copy / paste revolution is a result of many new developers not really understanding how to utilize their resources and documentation. Many coding camps are starting with the Hello World, Hello World + something else. Building from there. There’s no history on why Hello World is formed the way it is. Why PHP structures its functions a certain way versus Ruby functions which read far differently. Very little history is offered on programming language and its design principles as a whole.

When we learn to speak, write and understand our native language. We are always taught the basics, then shown how to use a dictionary when we stumble. Then, we’re given a thesaurus if we need to add flavour, to finish, we have style guides for prose and grammar.

No one wants to sit through a boring mundane lecture on how to read documentation for programming. We should though. I would love have courses focused on how to problem solve using original source documentation only. I think this is the bridge that needs to be built to empower developers.