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Alternately: > Developers are turning to Stack Overflow to fill in gaps in their training There's a lot of garbage channels on YouTube, but there's no shortag

Alternately: > Developers are turning to Stack Overflow to fill in gaps in their training There's a lot of garbage channels on YouTube, but there's no shortage of knowledgeable people too. Nobody knows everything, and it turns out there are people on the internet who know things we don't.

toomanybeersies 7y ago
I've seen some terrible code in codebases that I just know has come from Stack Overflow (often I can trace back and find it). Some of it's for security related code, so it's fairly critical to get it right. Doctors aren't magically smarter than developers.
- GauntletWizard 7y ago
  There's no magic to it - There's a lot more gatekeeping, training, board certification, etc. It's not perfect, but it's a darn sight better than the complete lack of professional standards that we developers are held to (myself included - I'm shipping code today that I wish I weren't, that I believe is unsafe at any speed, but thankfully I don't believe it'll be getting above .1MPH) You can hire a developer off the street who just happened to be the CEO's nephew. You can't do that with doctors.
  - g_langenderfer 7y ago
    Would you prefer we had to get a license like a barber? There's a growing shortage of developers. What would that look like with more barriers to entry?
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      It would look pretty good for the developers.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Putting gates around something as basic as medicine has only resulted in the price going up. You can hire the CEO's nephew for any role. Doesn't mean you are getting anything done. That nephew can buy a medical degree abroad or locally at Harvard.
    - irjustin 7y ago
      In this case, I welcome putting gates around medical hiring practices. Lives are at stake. Twitter/FB going down, realistically, is not going to kill anyone. Risk management is very real with people's very lives. The price going up is expected because of the filtering needed, but it shouldn't go up as fast as it does in America.
      - concordDance 7y ago
        > In this case, I welcome putting gates around medical hiring practices. Lives are at stake. Note that lives are also lost (and much suffering is caused) by the extremely restricted and expensive medical environment. I actually expect that we'd be better off (utilons wise) if we relaxed some of the restrictions.
        irjustin 7y ago
        100% agreed on the suffering caused. Separating the rising cost and the restrictions can be done. Socialized, single payer, gov mandated caps, etc etc. There are lots of options. Each come with their own poisons, but far more effective in terms of overall coverage than what we have available in America without material change to the restrictions.
      - wolco 7y ago
        The gates begin before the hiring level at the college level.
    - jmcqk6 7y ago
      >Putting gates around something as basic as medicine has only resulted in the price going up. Citation required. This is pure bullshit. Those gates aren't there just because someone said 'hey there should be a gate there.' Those gates are there to solve problems, and while they also create their own problems, that doesn't change the fact that the underlying problems are still there.
- paggle 7y ago
  Doctors are “magically” smarter than developers. They have to clear a huge amount of training before they get to call themselves “doctors.” It’s like if someone had to reach L7 at Google before they could call themselves “developers.”
SpaceManNabs 7y ago
Don't know about doctors, but for statistics, optimization, and ML, a lot of stack/quora answers are just flat out wrong. Even experienced person could easily fall trap to this.
- iagovar 7y ago
  I learned this lesson the hard way. But now I resort back to books and obscure sources for my stats training. It's slow and painful, specially when you're alone and there's nobody to answer questions about this weird aggregation function you're learning.
- aledalgrande 7y ago
  I so don't like when DDG presents me with SO links and previews at the top, instead of Github issues and official library docs. 95% is garbage.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  Or perhaps less insidiously, a lot of answers are out of date. I remember that when I did AI game programming, I wanted to build a behavior tree, so in a recent project I Google for that. I get tons of great resources for behavior trees, libraries, examples, etc. Except there's a lot more on the cutting edge I should be considering. Maybe GOAP is the right fit. Maybe HTN. Maybe something else. Sometimes these searches turn up results that are too specific to the old way of doing things and don't lead me to the latest and greatest.
  - wolco 7y ago
    The latest and greatest? If that matters put in whatever subject and a year like 2019. Be warned the latest is rarely the greatest.
  - SpaceManNabs 7y ago
    True, but this isn't really case for optimization problems and results about theorems or lemmas.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
anon1m0us 7y ago
Alternatively, patients are turning to youtube to fill in the gaps in their doctors' training.

toomanybeersies 7y ago

I've seen some terrible code in codebases that I just know has come from Stack Overflow (often I can trace back and find it). Some of it's for security related code, so it's fairly critical to get it right. Doctors aren't magically smarter than developers.

GauntletWizard 7y ago
There's no magic to it - There's a lot more gatekeeping, training, board certification, etc. It's not perfect, but it's a darn sight better than the complete lack of professional standards that we developers are held to (myself included - I'm shipping code today that I wish I weren't, that I believe is unsafe at any speed, but thankfully I don't believe it'll be getting above .1MPH) You can hire a developer off the street who just happened to be the CEO's nephew. You can't do that with doctors.
- g_langenderfer 7y ago
  Would you prefer we had to get a license like a barber? There's a growing shortage of developers. What would that look like with more barriers to entry?
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    It would look pretty good for the developers.
- wolco 7y ago
  Putting gates around something as basic as medicine has only resulted in the price going up. You can hire the CEO's nephew for any role. Doesn't mean you are getting anything done. That nephew can buy a medical degree abroad or locally at Harvard.
  - irjustin 7y ago
    In this case, I welcome putting gates around medical hiring practices. Lives are at stake. Twitter/FB going down, realistically, is not going to kill anyone. Risk management is very real with people's very lives. The price going up is expected because of the filtering needed, but it shouldn't go up as fast as it does in America.
    - concordDance 7y ago
      > In this case, I welcome putting gates around medical hiring practices. Lives are at stake. Note that lives are also lost (and much suffering is caused) by the extremely restricted and expensive medical environment. I actually expect that we'd be better off (utilons wise) if we relaxed some of the restrictions.
      - irjustin 7y ago
        100% agreed on the suffering caused. Separating the rising cost and the restrictions can be done. Socialized, single payer, gov mandated caps, etc etc. There are lots of options. Each come with their own poisons, but far more effective in terms of overall coverage than what we have available in America without material change to the restrictions.
    - wolco 7y ago
      The gates begin before the hiring level at the college level.
  - jmcqk6 7y ago
    >Putting gates around something as basic as medicine has only resulted in the price going up. Citation required. This is pure bullshit. Those gates aren't there just because someone said 'hey there should be a gate there.' Those gates are there to solve problems, and while they also create their own problems, that doesn't change the fact that the underlying problems are still there.
paggle 7y ago
Doctors are “magically” smarter than developers. They have to clear a huge amount of training before they get to call themselves “doctors.” It’s like if someone had to reach L7 at Google before they could call themselves “developers.”

SpaceManNabs 7y ago

Don't know about doctors, but for statistics, optimization, and ML, a lot of stack/quora answers are just flat out wrong. Even experienced person could easily fall trap to this.

iagovar 7y ago
I learned this lesson the hard way. But now I resort back to books and obscure sources for my stats training. It's slow and painful, specially when you're alone and there's nobody to answer questions about this weird aggregation function you're learning.
aledalgrande 7y ago
I so don't like when DDG presents me with SO links and previews at the top, instead of Github issues and official library docs. 95% is garbage.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Or perhaps less insidiously, a lot of answers are out of date. I remember that when I did AI game programming, I wanted to build a behavior tree, so in a recent project I Google for that. I get tons of great resources for behavior trees, libraries, examples, etc. Except there's a lot more on the cutting edge I should be considering. Maybe GOAP is the right fit. Maybe HTN. Maybe something else. Sometimes these searches turn up results that are too specific to the old way of doing things and don't lead me to the latest and greatest.
- wolco 7y ago
  The latest and greatest? If that matters put in whatever subject and a year like 2019. Be warned the latest is rarely the greatest.
- SpaceManNabs 7y ago
  True, but this isn't really case for optimization problems and results about theorems or lemmas.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

anon1m0us 7y ago

Alternatively, patients are turning to youtube to fill in the gaps in their doctors' training.