SO can be great for general problems, but in all truth you can usually find the answers you're looking for with those on "learn to program" sites or even the do

SO can be great for general problems, but in all truth you can usually find the answers you're looking for with those on "learn to program" sites or even the documentation (especially in regard to Python). I think where SO shines is when you encounter stuff that the documentation or general programming guides don't answer very well. Usually when I encounter a problem like this I google it and lo-and-behold there's an SO post with the same question, with a detailed answer. I think SO is the best for really specific issues that you encounter where a collective of people can look at the question and one of them goes "oh yea! I had this time problem 2 years ago, here's how you get around that..." The reward system on SO, however, is structured to answer the easy questions quickly or point out that a question is a duplicate from something answered 5+ years ago (which may only be tangentially related). This isn't helpful. Either let someone else answer the question or provide a useful answer. One of the best models I've seen for question/answer stuff so far is on Reddit, surprisingly, on the /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians sub-reddits. They actively encourage duplicate questions because sometimes the facts and interpretations change. Much better and more friendly than SO where it quickly digresses into "have you used the search bar?"