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About picking the "Best" tool for the job. One annoying thing about Stack Overflow is that they aggressively stop those types of questions with their mod system

About picking the "Best" tool for the job. One annoying thing about Stack Overflow is that they aggressively stop those types of questions with their mod system. Just understanding the Pros and Cons of the major options is very valuable, but not allowed.

nchelluri 11y ago
I could not agree more. I think they tried to promote other sites in their network for this sort of discussion but as far as I can tell none of them really caught on the same way. A number of my open-ended questions about picking tools/libraries have been [CLOSED]. It really bugs me. I think there's such a valuable need there; you pick a dev tool and it may have maintenance and development consequences (repercussions is perhaps a less gentle way of stating it) for years or perhaps decades. It really impacts everything. We need to find a way to evaluate tools in a dev-friendly manner, keeping in mind that no dev ever has full time to really read and digest the docs they come into contact with, at least in my experience. (Peter Norvig has some apt statements about the realities of dev time management in his Coders at Work interview, IMO, which could spawn another discussion).
aikah 11y ago
About SO, it's just that this isn't the goal of SO. The goal of SO is asking a precise question and getting a specific result, it's not a place for debate or opinion. Quora could have been that place, for some reason and because of some odd UX choices ( mandatory signup to browser the site ) , it isn't , which is too bad.
- briandear 11y ago
  So it would destroy SO if, in the context of programming, there was a best of question? Are they really that tight-assed? Do they not have the bandwidth? Really, I'm curious how those questions would hurt the site. And Quora? Why would SO prefer users to actually go somewhere else? Debate and opinion, despite what the moderators think, is a valuable part of coding. It isn't all "solve for x." Because the interesting thing about the 'ask a specific question' concept is that some questions are closed because they're too specific. I pretty much abandoned SO. The anal retentive pendants moderating things have turned me off to spending any time contributing.
  - whorleater 11y ago
    > So it would destroy SO if, in the context of programming, there was a best of question? Are they really that tight-assed? While I doubt it would destroy the site, it's extremely hard to moderate and clean up giant debate answers. StackOverflow was never advertised as a "programming/coding catchall" site, it's a very specific platform tuned to very specific needs, much like an equation, giving a tuned answer for the question. Open-ended questions are beyond the original scope of the site, and StackOverflow has grown to become the largest coding question platform as a result of it.
  - leohutson 11y ago
    It's just subjective and unproductive noise. The strict moderation and categorization is what makes stack exchange useful in general. Why not use a free-form forum like Reddit for that kind of question? Because you know the answers are going to bullshit opinions and holy wars, mostly by people that are trying to solve different problems than you, or are actually less knowledgeable than you. Given the fact that Reddit and similar forums suck for finding solutions to specific problems, why should a Q/A site that is good for finding solutions for specific problems try to emulate it? Quora and Yahoo answers also suck because the questions are almost entirely anecdote and opinion based, and it seems to be acceptable to cite "experience" as a source for bullshit opinions. "Being a pilot with 10 years of experience" is not an adequate reference for a response to a question about the safety of using a cellphone radio on a commercial flight, nor does "being a veteran" count as original research into Iraqi popular support for the 2003 invasion. Of the good "answers" from Quora that I've seen shared, all are basically long form blog posts that have found a "close enough" question to answer, rather than been motivated by the question, and I would have actually preferred to read them on medium or some other blog site. However interesting they are, they aren't answers. I think projects like Rosetta code are useful for comparisons of programming languages, because they keep it concrete. You can also look at big high-quality projects on github or whatever and directly judge the subjective qualities of a language for yourself, based on how readable the code looks to you.

nchelluri 11y ago

I could not agree more. I think they tried to promote other sites in their network for this sort of discussion but as far as I can tell none of them really caught on the same way. A number of my open-ended questions about picking tools/libraries have been [CLOSED]. It really bugs me. I think there's such a valuable need there; you pick a dev tool and it may have maintenance and development consequences (repercussions is perhaps a less gentle way of stating it) for years or perhaps decades. It really impacts everything. We need to find a way to evaluate tools in a dev-friendly manner, keeping in mind that no dev ever has full time to really read and digest the docs they come into contact with, at least in my experience. (Peter Norvig has some apt statements about the realities of dev time management in his Coders at Work interview, IMO, which could spawn another discussion).

aikah 11y ago

About SO, it's just that this isn't the goal of SO. The goal of SO is asking a precise question and getting a specific result, it's not a place for debate or opinion. Quora could have been that place, for some reason and because of some odd UX choices ( mandatory signup to browser the site ) , it isn't , which is too bad.

briandear 11y ago
So it would destroy SO if, in the context of programming, there was a best of question? Are they really that tight-assed? Do they not have the bandwidth? Really, I'm curious how those questions would hurt the site. And Quora? Why would SO prefer users to actually go somewhere else? Debate and opinion, despite what the moderators think, is a valuable part of coding. It isn't all "solve for x." Because the interesting thing about the 'ask a specific question' concept is that some questions are closed because they're too specific. I pretty much abandoned SO. The anal retentive pendants moderating things have turned me off to spending any time contributing.
- whorleater 11y ago
  > So it would destroy SO if, in the context of programming, there was a best of question? Are they really that tight-assed? While I doubt it would destroy the site, it's extremely hard to moderate and clean up giant debate answers. StackOverflow was never advertised as a "programming/coding catchall" site, it's a very specific platform tuned to very specific needs, much like an equation, giving a tuned answer for the question. Open-ended questions are beyond the original scope of the site, and StackOverflow has grown to become the largest coding question platform as a result of it.
- leohutson 11y ago
  It's just subjective and unproductive noise. The strict moderation and categorization is what makes stack exchange useful in general. Why not use a free-form forum like Reddit for that kind of question? Because you know the answers are going to bullshit opinions and holy wars, mostly by people that are trying to solve different problems than you, or are actually less knowledgeable than you. Given the fact that Reddit and similar forums suck for finding solutions to specific problems, why should a Q/A site that is good for finding solutions for specific problems try to emulate it? Quora and Yahoo answers also suck because the questions are almost entirely anecdote and opinion based, and it seems to be acceptable to cite "experience" as a source for bullshit opinions. "Being a pilot with 10 years of experience" is not an adequate reference for a response to a question about the safety of using a cellphone radio on a commercial flight, nor does "being a veteran" count as original research into Iraqi popular support for the 2003 invasion. Of the good "answers" from Quora that I've seen shared, all are basically long form blog posts that have found a "close enough" question to answer, rather than been motivated by the question, and I would have actually preferred to read them on medium or some other blog site. However interesting they are, they aren't answers. I think projects like Rosetta code are useful for comparisons of programming languages, because they keep it concrete. You can also look at big high-quality projects on github or whatever and directly judge the subjective qualities of a language for yourself, based on how readable the code looks to you.