Comment by lolinder
7 months ago
To quote the original source that Wiki cites and is derived from:
> A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare {shotgun debugging}, {voodoo programming}).
This is categorically different than the kinds of copypasta that TFA is talking about, and it's different in that the copypasta in TFA does serve a purpose.
There's a world of difference between copying something whose implementation you don't understand but whose function you do understand versus copying something which you vaguely associate with a particular outcome.
I think this is where we're butting heads, because I think this is an ambiguous term.