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Stack overflow, like a lot of the forums out there, suffers from the same pathology: it is very easy to stumble upon an answer which answers the question, and
by Annatar 10y ago
Stack overflow, like a lot of the forums out there, suffers from the same pathology:
it is very easy to stumble upon an answer which answers the question, and is correct in a very wide context, but is actually bad advice (low quality correct answer, which without experience is bad practice).
And now comes the catch-22: if I do not have enough experience to recognize the correct-correct answer, the answer presented will actually propagate some solution, implementation, or practice, which is bad in the long term.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: new user asking a system administration / configuration management question
"how do I change DNS settings on my system?"
"oh, just edit /etc/resolv.conf by hand."
(When the correct-correct answer would be "learn how to create an OS package which delivers the correct /etc/resolv.conf, or create an OS package which configures the system to be a DHCP client, and then keep that under revision control.")
Example 2: a developer asking how to link properly
"I compiled abc and linked with def only to find that abc cannot find the def shared library. How do I fix this?"
"Use ldconfig or set LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/shared/library." (When the correct-correct answer would be "when compiling abc, set -R'$ORIGIN:$ORIGIN/../lib:/path/to/lib' or -R'$ORIGIN:$ORIGIN/../lib64:/path/to/lib64', depending on whether you're compiling 32- or 64-bit, and always use the compiler's front end to link as well.")
- ap22213 10y agoPlus, for specialized topics, a good portion (10-15%?) of the top-voted answers are just wrong or misleading. About once every few weeks in reviewing one of my team's code, I see something strange. I ask them about it, and they say they did it that way because of SO. Then, I have to explain why it's not a good idea to do in our code. Then, I have to spend a couple hours showing them why, because clearly 'everything on the Internet is correct.' Overall though, SO has saved me a TON of time over the years. But, lately I have been more often reading user mailing lists or looking at the source code.
- Annatar 10y agoStack overflow can save a lot of time, but only if perused by someone with experience who is just looking for their next clue, and will know how to turn a low quality but correct answer into a clean solution. In such a case, stack overflow can be very useful, but then the same goes for any random Linux forum.
- pjc50 10y ago"learn how to create an OS package to ... " is also the wrong answer, firstly because it will take a tremendously long time, and secondly because there should already be an OS/distro mechanism for handling resolv.conf.
- Annatar 10y agoSo what if it will take a tremendously long time? Computers are hard and complex systems; that's their most basic property.
- pjc50 10y agoMost users are trying to get something specific done, and know that they could spend their entire lives learning about bits of the hard and complex system that would not move them towards the immediate goal. (I do understand where you're coming from, but I'm now firmly in the other camp. There are several small easy home computing projects that have been on my round-tuit list for months because I don't have time for that. I used debian for ages but never quite got round to building debs for things, because make-installing into /opt or /usr/local is good enough)