You can talk about how we should act and be all high and mighty all you like, but it’s just burying your head in the sand about the reality of how code is written.
Also, technically, I never said this made it perfectly ok. It’s just that it’s the reality we live in and if we got rid of everyone doing it we’d have to fire 99% of programmers.
Look around. Do you see the majority of programmers getting fired for copying a line from stackoverflow or using AI?
You must either work in an ultra high security area or are so removed from the groundwork of most programming jobs that you don’t know how people do anything anymore. I’m not surprised you mentioned 30+ years, because that likely puts you squarely out of the trenches where the development is actually done.
Outside of like, the military or airplane software, companies really don’t care about provenance most of the time, their lack of processes to avoid looking into any of that are absolute PROOF of that. It’s don’t ask don’t tell out there.
You can be delusional all you like, it doesn’t change the reality of how most development is done.
Again, I didn’t say it’s a good thing, it’s just that it is reality.