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I thoroughly disagree that SO is hostile to "everyone". I've been there for nearly nine years and find that the only people who complain about such things, as l

I thoroughly disagree that SO is hostile to "everyone". I've been there for nearly nine years and find that the only people who complain about such things, as listed here, are those who never took "The Tour" and aren't aware of the rules for asking and answering questions as out lined in the Help Center. I rarely ask questions anymore but, when I did, they have never been downvoted or questioned because ... I follow the rules ... but too many people come their and treat it like a forum (it's not) or like (shudder) reddit. That's when they get themselves into trouble. I'm a high rep user and visit every day. I don't answer many questions anymore because, nowadays, they are mostly about canned software (CMS, frameworks, etc.) and not real programming. So I help clean things up and I'm one of those guys who lets you know when you've violated the rules. "Can someone give me teh codez?" is my favorite. Believe it or not, it gets asked every day and I help close at least three every day. And I get irritated.

nottorp 8y ago
The fact that SO isn't a forum any more is a problem because it has stopped encouraging learning. If you can't discuss the problem, all you'll get is canned answers for copy/paste monkeys. And then you'll wonder why you can't hire a competent programmer any more...
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  SO has NEVER been a forum. That's where most people are confused. It has NEVER been a platform for open discussion.
  - nottorp 8y ago
    Perhaps, but it was more useful when they didn't enforce that. My recent experience with SO is: i reach it via googling a problem or feature, I find a question describing my problem that is closed because of being a duplicate of... ... except the other question isn't a duplicate in subtle ways and has nothing to do with my problem. I've also seen moderators encouraging people to post answers as code ready to copy paste instead of answers helping the recipient to learn something. How is that useful?
    - wool_gather 8y ago
      > moderators encouraging people to post answers as code ready to copy paste instead of answers helping the recipient to learn something. Yeah, this is a slow-motion disaster that's been going on for a while now. I don't know why so many people have gotten it into their heads that a bespoke code snippet is unconditionally the right way to answer a Stack question. Explanations are so much more valuable in the long term.
    - sureaboutthis 8y ago
      I'm not aware of any moderators encouraging that and I specifically target such answers for deletion. I have complained that there are some new users who ask for such things and I will be the first to jump on them for doing so.

nottorp 8y ago

The fact that SO isn't a forum any more is a problem because it has stopped encouraging learning. If you can't discuss the problem, all you'll get is canned answers for copy/paste monkeys. And then you'll wonder why you can't hire a competent programmer any more...

sureaboutthis 8y ago
SO has NEVER been a forum. That's where most people are confused. It has NEVER been a platform for open discussion.
- nottorp 8y ago
  Perhaps, but it was more useful when they didn't enforce that. My recent experience with SO is: i reach it via googling a problem or feature, I find a question describing my problem that is closed because of being a duplicate of... ... except the other question isn't a duplicate in subtle ways and has nothing to do with my problem. I've also seen moderators encouraging people to post answers as code ready to copy paste instead of answers helping the recipient to learn something. How is that useful?
  - wool_gather 8y ago
    > moderators encouraging people to post answers as code ready to copy paste instead of answers helping the recipient to learn something. Yeah, this is a slow-motion disaster that's been going on for a while now. I don't know why so many people have gotten it into their heads that a bespoke code snippet is unconditionally the right way to answer a Stack question. Explanations are so much more valuable in the long term.
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
    I'm not aware of any moderators encouraging that and I specifically target such answers for deletion. I have complained that there are some new users who ask for such things and I will be the first to jump on them for doing so.