This is a well reasoned post, so my first reaction is to agree with you. But, then I remember two things. First, I largely learned to program because of some (e

This is a well reasoned post, so my first reaction is to agree with you. But, then I remember two things. First, I largely learned to program because of some (extremely patient) people on IRC. IRC is similar to Slack in that it theoretically silos away questions and answers and prevents future discoverability. And second, despite all these years of conversations that were held on IRC, I can still find answers to any question imaginable on Google. In retrospect, I think that Slack (or IRC) might actually be a great way to disseminate information from developers to highly technical people. And, I think that many of these first generation learners blog about what they learned or go to answer questions on other services (ie - StackOverflow). But, I'm a sample of one and have absolutely no proof of any of this...:)