I came across a post from Sloth Bytes recently - "How to Stop Copy and Pasting and How To Actually Learn To Code" - and it hit close to home. If you haven't read it, go check out the original post first, it's a quick read.

The part that stuck with me

The core idea is simple but easy to forget: it's not about how fast you can find an answer, it's about how quickly you actually understand it. Pasting a fix from Stack Overflow that "just works" feels productive in the moment, but if you can't explain why it works, you haven't really learned anything - you've just delayed the next confusing bug.

A few takeaways I want to actually hold myself to:

• Search for explanations, not just fixes. Instead of pasting a raw error message into Google, ask why it's happening. "Why does X throw Y when Z happens" gets you closer to understanding than the error text alone.
• Docs first, not last. It's tempting to treat official documentation as a last resort after Stack Overflow and AI chat both fail. Flipping that order - docs as an early stop, not a final one - tends to save time later.
• Read more than one answer. On Stack Overflow (or an AI response), don't take the first thing that compiles. Compare a couple of approaches and understand the tradeoffs.
• The same applies to AI tools. The pattern doesn't change just because the source changed - understand the problem first, attempt it yourself, then ask "why" instead of just "how."

Why this matters for me right now

As I'm working through my final year project and picking up new tools along the way, it's easy to fall into copy-paste mode under deadline pressure. This is a good reminder to slow down just enough to actually understand what I'm shipping — not just because it's "good practice," but because it's the difference between being able to explain my own system in a review and just hoping nobody asks.

Full credit to Sloth Bytes for the original post - worth subscribing to if this resonated with you too.