I expect it's a mixture, and that it's always been a mixture. I hope those who do just copy and paste right now eventually see that it's only a short-term benefit compared with the longer-term benefit of learning how things work. (Having said that, sometimes, if it's just "what command line argument do I need to do X" copy/paste is very effective, I've found.) I don't think the availability of Stack Overflow has made things significantly worse here - people who are focused on "just get the job done" have always been able to find shortcuts without investing the time in learning more, I suspect. It's also important not to demonize people with that approach; we may think they're not doing themselves any favours, but it doesn't mean they're evil or should be treated badly. This is a failing in myself - I suspect I've been too harsh with those who don't appear to want to learn, in the past. I hope to improve in the future.

I've recorded various Pluralsight videos, and some of my conference talks are online too. I think it's important that there are lots of different media available for teaching, because people learn in different ways. Personally I find reading (whether online or - less often these days - in book form) more useful than videos for most things, but I know it varies. I do think there's a lot of benefit in a structured approach to learning when you're a relative beginner in a topic, instead of learning piecemeal. I'd expect a good online course to do that in the same way that a book does, but there's less benefit in watching lots of different, uncoordinated videos, each on one different language feature, for example... each video may assume a different amount of knowledge beforehand, use different metaphors etc. With a structured, ordered approach you can build from one topic onto another.

I suspect that the only point at which I'll take down Noda Time is when Microsoft has embraced/reimplemented it and it's in the framework. I'd be absolutely fine with that. Until then, I at least need to keep producing updates when there are new versions of time zone data. Realistically, there haven't been many changes in the codebase since 2.0. I want to release a 3.0 which removes binary serialization and embraces Span<T> at some point (it may well only target netstandard2.0) but there aren't many extra features I really want to add. There's range-related stuff we might be able to do, and maybe there are some extra calendars we could add, but I'm pretty satisfied with the bulk of it. (There's a lot of work that could improve the docs and web site, but that's somewhat separate.)

One that someone else has implemented :) I don't doubt the value of learning underlying algorithms, but I don't pay very much attention to them these days, until I need to. In order to choose an algorithm here, I'd need to know: How important it is to make the right choice. (If it's only going to run once, without tight constraints, I don't really care.) Memory constraints Processor constraints Bounds of the problem - are these all 32-bit integers? 64-bit? 16-bit? Unbounded? The most efficient sort may well depend on those Whether I'm choosing an algorithm with an implementation, or whether I'm going to have to implement it. In many cases I'd trade peak performance for not having to do it myself (with the likelihood that I'd end up with bugs for at least a while)

I'm currently writing the 4th edition, and I'm nearly at the end of writing about C# 2... which I've done from scratch, mostly. I'm condensing C# 2, 3 and 4 into one chapter per version, which means cutting out a lot of the detail, unfortunately. (Fortunately the 4th edition comes with an ebook of the 3rd edition, so you can look there for more details.) As an example of this, I've barely mentioned anonymous methods - I'll go into all the detail of captured variables etc when I cover lambda expressions, because that's what I expect the vast majority of C# developers to use these days.

I'm struggling just to keep up with C# well enough to write about it in C# in Depth. I do think .NET Core is awesome, and I'm enjoying seeing it go from strength to strength. I think cloud computing in general is starting to reach a new level of maturity which is very welcome, too.

I suspect the book that would improve the software engineering world most if all software engineers read it and really took it in would be "Everyday Sexism" by Laura Bates. Understanding how shockingly sexist the world is in all kinds of different ways, and then thinking how that applies within the software industry, might help us to overcome it - both in terms of our own industry diversity, and building products which better serve all users. (There are plenty of other great feminist books of course; that's just one that I know is pretty accessible and has the kind of data/evidence that I suspect a lot of existing software engineers may find compelling.) That's a serious answer, but if you really pressed me for a programming book, I'm not sure what I'd recommend, other than C# in Depth of course. I have shelves and shelves of programming books, and I rarely use them. I do think books are a great way of learning a language or framework, mostly because they're structured knowledge, designed for the task - all the information is usually out there already, but you don't know the order in which to read it. Books provide that ordering, as well as a consistent narrative and approach - hopefully, anyway.

I think it depends on what you view as "paying dividends". One dividend is enjoyment: are you enjoying the time you're putting in? That's typically easier with a well-asked question. Another might be skills learned: are you picking up new techniques, new approaches by solving someone else's problem? Are you improving your communication skills? Another might be the dividend to the world: is your answer making the world a better place, not just for the person who asked the question but others who may be facing the same problem? And yes, there's rep. A number on a server somewhere. Don't pay that too much attention :) There are effective ways to rack up rep points that don't accomplish anything else nearly as worthwhile. My advice is not to go there. Focus on things that matter, and typically the rep will come as a side-effect, at least in many cases.

Ooh, RX. I haven't really used it much for quite a long time. When I did, I found it really, really interesting - but not terribly easy to use in reality. I just got confused a lot of the time. I still loved the ideas, but didn't quite see how to put them into practice. Now it looks like a lot of people are very successful with RX in its various forms, and I definitely don't want to dissuade them. I don't even want to dissuade anyone who isn't currently using RX from giving it a try. I just want to avoid anyone else who finds it hard from feeling bad about themselves. I don't feel guilty for not embracing it wholeheartedly.

Tomas Petricek did the vast majority of the work on "Real-World Functional Programming" (published by Manning) - I tagged along for the ride, but enjoyed doing so. There's a lot in there.