For example, I learned programming before stack overflow. I have most of the standard library syntax in my head and mostly look at spec documents. Once in a great while I will go on stack overflow if I can’t debug a problem but I don’t post on there .
In the same way, I suspect some engineers like using video to learn things or debug things but it’s not for me.
[citation needed]
These kinds of comments just make those who agree be sure to upvote, they're part of this perceived in-crowd after all, and most of the time (here too) it's fairly obviously true so a lot of people will upvote. Of course a newb will copy more code than a veteran. They also have very different functions in organisations on average. It's neither an opinion nor unpopular.
Also, I think it is pretty controversial for one to claim that some people don’t really use Stack Overflow
Of course not, but at the same time there are not that many 15-year-old gurus. It's not really the same thing, but on average people will gain more experience as they do a job for longer, and to do a job longer you need to age. It's not causal, but definitely correlated.
This kind of information is almost never in standard documentation.
but you scroll down, and there's a different version that's exactly what you need! except it's for an older version of the library...
but there's a comment on that answer, from two years later, with a quick note on "if you're at version 7+, just do Y instead of X."
Absolutely wonderful.
There are times that I've not done this though, for example a couple of years ago I was struggling to comprehend how to convert some math from a paper into actual code (the symbols were more than a little odd and I swear a bit of the equation was missing) and yet searching Github revealed a repo where someone had produced snippets of different obscure algorithms. Not quite a cut and paste, but definitely a "read the answer".
For example, how do I use the Python requests library (bad example because it has great documentation) would lead me to searching "import requests".
Before StackOverflow was a "thing," I recall noticing that it was easier to google spec documents on an electronic component even though I had the manufacturer's databook and Application Notes just across the room.
The ease of searching the pdf on google outweighed the ease of getting up and paging through the physical book. The main difference was in Application Notes: I could sit down and read some of the better ones like a novel (I'm looking at you, Analog Devices :-) and that was easier with the dead tree copy than the online one.