Stack Overflow bug propagation example

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2 pointsChuckMcM2 comments

Sorry for the twitter unroll but that was what was available. This is an example of how a bad answer on Stack Overflow propagated into a bug in two different code bases.

It is an oddly 21st century problem that engineers are not developing expertise in house, instead they are using the web to make things work. And engineers that use solutions that work but they don't understand why they work are putting their entire codebase at risk.

PSA: Please don't do this. Use the web for learning new things but take the time to learn the thing and verify your learning of it. Don't just cut, paste, and ship.

No amount of preaching will change the world that works by law of least resistance. There will be more of such cases if those code snippets aren't reviewed somehow while results of the review prioritized over invalid code. It can be done semi-automatically or manually but this needs architectural changes on the platform side. Because majority won't suddenly grow conscious or will to acheive better expertise just because the popular application failed this way.

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