From Plagiarism Police To Copy-Paste Professionals

Education: "Plagiarism is unacceptable!"

Professional programmers: "Hey, I stole your code." "It's not my code."

The software industry runs on an elaborate honor system where we pretend we're all brilliant architects while frantically copy-pasting from Stack Overflow with one hand and GitHub with the other. The modern developer's workflow is essentially: Google the error, find someone who solved it 7 years ago, adapt their solution, and convince yourself you would've eventually figured it out anyway. Standing on the shoulders of giants? More like piggybacking on strangers' brilliance while muttering "I totally knew that" under your breath.