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Honestly, at this point I found reddit a much nicer place to go then stackoverflow for technical questions. SO users demand that your question be "correct". No

Honestly, at this point I found reddit a much nicer place to go then stackoverflow for technical questions. SO users demand that your question be "correct". Note, I didn't mean that it should be clear what your problem is, it's just that if you ask a "noob question", for an explanation, or if five people think it can't be done, you'll get down voted and closed in a second. It's sad because other (smaller) SE sites are quite nice.

HeavenBanned 10y ago
I used to think like you do re: SO. I used to hate it actually, I felt like it detracted from the learning environment prioritizing form over substance. But now I approach it differently: I just create a new dummy account for every new question I have and ask a question following the strict guidelines. I tend to get a response within seconds. And its usually correct. You may say I'm gaming the system, but SO is broken that way. I had a "permanent" account, but it said I had to wait SIX MONTHS before I could ask another question, because my questions were "bad." Interestingly, I have one dead dummy account that had 50 points on it. I had an amazing question about time in C++. I can't transfer those points onto my permanent account, so it was a worthless exercise. But I don't really care. A new dummy account will solve all my problems. Why should I invest in getting better and asking better questions if SO won't reward me for doing so? It just rewards God-tier enterprise code-junkies looking to pad their resumes. I'm just a chum in the ocean looking for my meal. I have no qualms in being a dick to the system. Stack Overflow is terrible because the gamification is terribly implemented. On the one hand you get instantaneous correct responses. On the other hand, if it doesn't have a cherry on top when you ask it, it gets downvoted to oblivion and closed because it's a duplicate (I mean...is it a duplicate if someone can't understand the duplicate?). I don't even know what I think about it anymore. I think Stack Overflow sucks, but I can't live without it.
aquabib 10y ago
This is incorrect. SO is polluted with "noob" questions and answers, which is why SO is so useless. Google and now even MSDN search results are also polluted with SO hits which are mostly just noise. If anything SO needs more strict moderation.
- digler999 10y ago
  > SO hits which are mostly just noise. I completely disagree. I'm an experienced dev from C++ learning Android/Java dev. Literally 90% of what I need is on SO (the rest usually from mkyong), thanks to google some of the answers even bubble up to the search page so I dont even have to click on them. I would be much worse off without SO.
  - aquabib 10y ago
    That says more about you as a developer than SO. In just about any SO answer I find numerous things that are either wrong or bad advice. The difference between me and a lot of SO users, especially novices, is that they don't know a good answer from a bad one. A lot of people on SO seem to be answering just for points, half the time, or more, they don't actually know what they are talking about all or have experience with what they are explaining; they have often literally just "researched" the question and now they condense a couple of sources into an answer. Without having a proper understanding of the subject. SO is bad for the whole industry. And there is not much that is worse than a "developer" copying an answer off SO and putting it into a production code base, without even understanding the answer they just copied.
    - ashark 10y ago
      Not going to argue the general case, but for Android in particular the documentation is also full of bad advice and half-explanations. Plus it's not uncommon to hit a long-outstanding SDK bug. SO is great for Android development to fill in those gaps, provided you can sort wheat from chaff.

HeavenBanned 10y ago

I used to think like you do re: SO. I used to hate it actually, I felt like it detracted from the learning environment prioritizing form over substance. But now I approach it differently: I just create a new dummy account for every new question I have and ask a question following the strict guidelines. I tend to get a response within seconds. And its usually correct. You may say I'm gaming the system, but SO is broken that way. I had a "permanent" account, but it said I had to wait SIX MONTHS before I could ask another question, because my questions were "bad." Interestingly, I have one dead dummy account that had 50 points on it. I had an amazing question about time in C++. I can't transfer those points onto my permanent account, so it was a worthless exercise. But I don't really care. A new dummy account will solve all my problems. Why should I invest in getting better and asking better questions if SO won't reward me for doing so? It just rewards God-tier enterprise code-junkies looking to pad their resumes. I'm just a chum in the ocean looking for my meal. I have no qualms in being a dick to the system. Stack Overflow is terrible because the gamification is terribly implemented. On the one hand you get instantaneous correct responses. On the other hand, if it doesn't have a cherry on top when you ask it, it gets downvoted to oblivion and closed because it's a duplicate (I mean...is it a duplicate if someone can't understand the duplicate?). I don't even know what I think about it anymore. I think Stack Overflow sucks, but I can't live without it.

aquabib 10y ago

This is incorrect. SO is polluted with "noob" questions and answers, which is why SO is so useless. Google and now even MSDN search results are also polluted with SO hits which are mostly just noise. If anything SO needs more strict moderation.

digler999 10y ago
> SO hits which are mostly just noise. I completely disagree. I'm an experienced dev from C++ learning Android/Java dev. Literally 90% of what I need is on SO (the rest usually from mkyong), thanks to google some of the answers even bubble up to the search page so I dont even have to click on them. I would be much worse off without SO.
- aquabib 10y ago
  That says more about you as a developer than SO. In just about any SO answer I find numerous things that are either wrong or bad advice. The difference between me and a lot of SO users, especially novices, is that they don't know a good answer from a bad one. A lot of people on SO seem to be answering just for points, half the time, or more, they don't actually know what they are talking about all or have experience with what they are explaining; they have often literally just "researched" the question and now they condense a couple of sources into an answer. Without having a proper understanding of the subject. SO is bad for the whole industry. And there is not much that is worse than a "developer" copying an answer off SO and putting it into a production code base, without even understanding the answer they just copied.
  - ashark 10y ago
    Not going to argue the general case, but for Android in particular the documentation is also full of bad advice and half-explanations. Plus it's not uncommon to hit a long-outstanding SDK bug. SO is great for Android development to fill in those gaps, provided you can sort wheat from chaff.