3 ms·

I don't think you are missing anything. I also have never asked anything on SO, and never used SO as a reference. SO only seems to work for factual simple answ

by 4ad 10y ago

I don't think you are missing anything. I also have never asked anything on SO, and never used SO as a reference. SO only seems to work for factual simple answers that are found in the documentation or manual pages. For higher level discussion SO is not appropriate; mailing lists and IRC work best for that. I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them

debaserab2 10y ago
I think there is definitely something to what you're saying. Reading API documentation is in itself a skill - when you're starting out, a lot of times you don't even know the right question to ask that would be covered in API documentation. Instead, you ask the wrong question on SO and end up getting the right answer because you have other humans that are able to interpret it. As you get better, you begin to understand what the right question is and how to use the actual reference material provided to you.
ci5er 10y ago
> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them This is probably true. I'm not a Windows developer and on a recent project I had to use their IDE (which turns out to quite nice, if you are an IDE person) and a set of their APIs. I read, but did not understand, some pretty fundamental/basic MS-authored documentation. I found a few answers to questions related to other people not understanding it either, and was on my way again. To be fair to MS, it was documented, completely and accurately. I just wasn't accustomed to some of their calling conventions and was getting yelled at by the linker. EDIT: Outside of embedded systems, where there are a lot fewer moving parts than on your typical MS OS box, it's been a while (20 years?) since I was thrown at an environment where everything changed from what I am accustomed to. OS. Language. CPU architecture target. IDE. IDE configuration for project build. Build process. SDKs. Calling convention. Oh, and the 2M line code-base that I had just been introduced to (and where none of the MS Visual Studio project files had been checked into version control - so I'm fumbling in the dark there). Googling for the error message and landing on SO at least gets you to the point that you know you have a configuration problem vs a calling convention problem. That tells you where you need to start looking in the documentation.
- pjc50 10y ago
  One of the weird things about MS documentation is how slow MSDN is. It's often faster to find the answer through Google->Stackoverflow than it is starting at the top and drilling down MSDN.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    Now that you mention it, I've noticed that. The pages seem to load quickly enough, but take a while to appear. I might be some funky client-side JS rendering "stuff". It reminds me of how a lot of material design web-component/apps take forever to change after you "load" or "click" (for example).
ryanbrunner 10y ago
> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them That's a dismissive way of framing it. There's nothing anti-intellectual or lazy about using the tool that will most efficiently retrieve the information you're looking for. If I'm faced with a non-esoteric problem that I don't immediately know the solution for, I'd much rather spend 5 seconds Googling it and being brought to a highly relevant Stack Overflow answer that addresses my specific problem than having to find my way through a poorly-searchable manual.

by 4ad 10y ago

debaserab2 10y ago

I think there is definitely something to what you're saying. Reading API documentation is in itself a skill - when you're starting out, a lot of times you don't even know the right question to ask that would be covered in API documentation. Instead, you ask the wrong question on SO and end up getting the right answer because you have other humans that are able to interpret it. As you get better, you begin to understand what the right question is and how to use the actual reference material provided to you.

ci5er 10y ago

> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them This is probably true. I'm not a Windows developer and on a recent project I had to use their IDE (which turns out to quite nice, if you are an IDE person) and a set of their APIs. I read, but did not understand, some pretty fundamental/basic MS-authored documentation. I found a few answers to questions related to other people not understanding it either, and was on my way again. To be fair to MS, it was documented, completely and accurately. I just wasn't accustomed to some of their calling conventions and was getting yelled at by the linker. EDIT: Outside of embedded systems, where there are a lot fewer moving parts than on your typical MS OS box, it's been a while (20 years?) since I was thrown at an environment where everything changed from what I am accustomed to. OS. Language. CPU architecture target. IDE. IDE configuration for project build. Build process. SDKs. Calling convention. Oh, and the 2M line code-base that I had just been introduced to (and where none of the MS Visual Studio project files had been checked into version control - so I'm fumbling in the dark there). Googling for the error message and landing on SO at least gets you to the point that you know you have a configuration problem vs a calling convention problem. That tells you where you need to start looking in the documentation.

pjc50 10y ago
One of the weird things about MS documentation is how slow MSDN is. It's often faster to find the answer through Google->Stackoverflow than it is starting at the top and drilling down MSDN.
- ci5er 10y ago
  Now that you mention it, I've noticed that. The pages seem to load quickly enough, but take a while to appear. I might be some funky client-side JS rendering "stuff". It reminds me of how a lot of material design web-component/apps take forever to change after you "load" or "click" (for example).

ryanbrunner 10y ago

> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them That's a dismissive way of framing it. There's nothing anti-intellectual or lazy about using the tool that will most efficiently retrieve the information you're looking for. If I'm faced with a non-esoteric problem that I don't immediately know the solution for, I'd much rather spend 5 seconds Googling it and being brought to a highly relevant Stack Overflow answer that addresses my specific problem than having to find my way through a poorly-searchable manual.