Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Larry Martell]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 10:04 AM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> the code.
>
> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
> *everyone* involved:
>
> - for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a
> screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen
> they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an
> image hosting site;
>
> - for the receiver, you are reliant on a forum which doesn't strip
> attachments, or displays externally hosted images; the visually impaired
> are excluded from using a screen reader; and nobody can copy or edit the
> given text.
>
> It is as if people are deliberately inconveniencing themselves in order
> to inconvenience the people they are asking to help them.
>
> With the exception of one *exceedingly* overrated advantage, namely the
> ability to annotate the image with coloured lines and circles and
> squiggles or other graphics (which most people don't bother to do), this
> seems to me to be 100% counter-productive for everyone involved. Why has
> it spread and why do people keep doing it?
>
> I don't want to be the old man yelling "Get Of My Lawn!" to the cool
> kids, but is this just another sign of the downward spiral of programming
> talent? Convince me that there is *some* justification for this practice.
> Even a tiny one.
>
> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)

I work remotely and have for over 20 years. At first I communicated
with my colleagues via phone and email. Then it was skype for a while
but then it went back to email. Then IRC had a moment, then it was
slack for a while, then back to email. Now everyone seems to be
switching to google hangouts, both chat and video. Recently I have
seen that some people are sending screen shots of their code and/or
error messages instead of copy/pasting.  It's mostly with the younger
ones, and I do not care for it at all, but I did not want to be the
old fogy, so I did not say anything.