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Interesting read. Here's how I'd sum up my history with Stack Overflow: 1) SO launched a few years after I graduated college and was an immediate and invaluabl

Interesting read. Here's how I'd sum up my history with Stack Overflow: 1) SO launched a few years after I graduated college and was an immediate and invaluable resource to me. 2) I learned more, got in a position to be able to answer some questions, and started trying to answer questions. Realized there were people on the site that were much faster than I was at answering (and often more incomplete) and stopped. 3) Started asking more subjective questions. They got really useful, long, smart answers from experienced people. Example question: "How do I plan an enterprise level web application?" 4) Started contributing to SO less and less as the correct SO answer would often be a top Google hit. 5) Noticed that many of my subjective question posts were closed or moderated in some way. 6) Tried asking more subjective questions that were immediately closed by moderators as being too open ended. Got frustrated. Stopped thinking of Stack Overflow as a place to go to get an expert's opinion. 7) Noticed as I got more experienced that the quality of answers was extremely variable. Sometimes the most upvoted answer or the answer that was marked correct either lacked import context/caveat information or conflicted my firsthand experience with the problem. I don't use SO as a source of learning anymore other than when API documentation isn't available or sufficient. It's an invaluable tool for a junior developer but becomes less and less useful as a person grows into their career.

cvs268 10y ago
> "How do I plan an enterprise level web application?" I think the SO community will often vote to migrate such open-ended/broad questions to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ or a specific stackexchange site like http://webapps.stackexchange.com/ http://webapps.stackexchange.com/ in this case.
zamalek 10y ago
The programming SE is where you can ask questions like that, as far as I know.
majewsky 10y ago
> I don't use SO as a source of learning anymore other than when API documentation isn't available or sufficient. The latter point is really important. I use API documentation whenever it is actually reasonably complete and up-to-date. But with many abysmal documentations (cough Rails cough) I just go straight for SO because the thing I'm looking for is probably not even documented. Or if not, I won't find it in there because search is only by class/method name, not by task.
- hsmallbone 10y ago
  I often wish there was a site like SO with a great community around building task-oriented code-first samples to replace shoddy project documentation. Often with SO the accepted answer is too specific, outdated or not descriptive enough but its existence locks out better responses. I would prefer a canonical, up-to-date wiki answer than strict authorship most of the time. I've taken a few stabs at building a solution to this problem but I think finding the right mix is super important.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303865/warlords-of-documentation-a-proposed-expansion-of-stack-overflow/303981 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303865/warlords-of-d...
    - hsmallbone 10y ago
      Yes, I am in the beta. Does not seem like it provides much of the topic hierarchy (beyond 1-2 layers) or ability for long-form content that I would like. I built this https://srcbottle.com https://srcbottle.com that approximates what I would like but am still playing around with it.
dredmorbius 10y ago
NB, but your experience reflects mine. Though on a different system. I remember discovering Usenet and how amazing it was. Not only isn't it what it once was, but what it once was leaves some things to be desired. I remember discovering Slashdot and how amazing it was. ... I remember discovering Wikipedia and how amazing it was. It's actually still pretty good, but the manipulators, idiots, and politics are brain-numbing and/or blood-chilling. I remember discovering University and how amazing it was. It's actually still pretty good, but the manipulators, idiots, and politics are brain-chilling and/or blood-numbing. I remember discovering books and experts and scientific articles and documentary series and ... Lots of stuff. Some of it's still good. Some of it now strikes me as painfully stupid. Often it's not so much the answers that aren't known but the questions. Or we discover there are black swans and have to toss a bunch of priors. Or the words and moralities on which The Elders based everything on have changed beyond recognition. Or The Elders' message has been so distorted by a game of Telephone run a few millennia too long. Every generation or two, everyone seems to toss everything out (especially the good stuff I worked so hard on) and start making basic mistakes from scratch again. That other system is called life. SO is a lot like life. Understanding is hard, it doesn't transfer well, the Guardians of the Knowledge start seeing the primary goal as Guardianship rather than Knowldging. Then something comes along and grinds everything into the dust and it's built up again and a new generation of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young'uns comes along and discovers an invaluable resource. So it goes.

cvs268 10y ago

> "How do I plan an enterprise level web application?" I think the SO community will often vote to migrate such open-ended/broad questions to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ or a specific stackexchange site like http://webapps.stackexchange.com/ http://webapps.stackexchange.com/ in this case.

zamalek 10y ago

The programming SE is where you can ask questions like that, as far as I know.

majewsky 10y ago

> I don't use SO as a source of learning anymore other than when API documentation isn't available or sufficient. The latter point is really important. I use API documentation whenever it is actually reasonably complete and up-to-date. But with many abysmal documentations (cough Rails cough) I just go straight for SO because the thing I'm looking for is probably not even documented. Or if not, I won't find it in there because search is only by class/method name, not by task.

hsmallbone 10y ago
I often wish there was a site like SO with a great community around building task-oriented code-first samples to replace shoddy project documentation. Often with SO the accepted answer is too specific, outdated or not descriptive enough but its existence locks out better responses. I would prefer a canonical, up-to-date wiki answer than strict authorship most of the time. I've taken a few stabs at building a solution to this problem but I think finding the right mix is super important.
- majewsky 10y ago
  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303865/warlords-of-documentation-a-proposed-expansion-of-stack-overflow/303981 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303865/warlords-of-d...
  - hsmallbone 10y ago
    Yes, I am in the beta. Does not seem like it provides much of the topic hierarchy (beyond 1-2 layers) or ability for long-form content that I would like. I built this https://srcbottle.com https://srcbottle.com that approximates what I would like but am still playing around with it.

dredmorbius 10y ago

NB, but your experience reflects mine. Though on a different system. I remember discovering Usenet and how amazing it was. Not only isn't it what it once was, but what it once was leaves some things to be desired. I remember discovering Slashdot and how amazing it was. ... I remember discovering Wikipedia and how amazing it was. It's actually still pretty good, but the manipulators, idiots, and politics are brain-numbing and/or blood-chilling. I remember discovering University and how amazing it was. It's actually still pretty good, but the manipulators, idiots, and politics are brain-chilling and/or blood-numbing. I remember discovering books and experts and scientific articles and documentary series and ... Lots of stuff. Some of it's still good. Some of it now strikes me as painfully stupid. Often it's not so much the answers that aren't known but the questions. Or we discover there are black swans and have to toss a bunch of priors. Or the words and moralities on which The Elders based everything on have changed beyond recognition. Or The Elders' message has been so distorted by a game of Telephone run a few millennia too long. Every generation or two, everyone seems to toss everything out (especially the good stuff I worked so hard on) and start making basic mistakes from scratch again. That other system is called life. SO is a lot like life. Understanding is hard, it doesn't transfer well, the Guardians of the Knowledge start seeing the primary goal as Guardianship rather than Knowldging. Then something comes along and grinds everything into the dust and it's built up again and a new generation of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young'uns comes along and discovers an invaluable resource. So it goes.