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When you define "great developer" as "top contributors on StackOverflow" (or the ones responsible for founding it), of course the overlap will be 100%. I unders

When you define "great developer" as "top contributors on StackOverflow" (or the ones responsible for founding it), of course the overlap will be 100%. I understand that StackOverflow actively requires people to work on their platform for no compensation so they want to encourage the idea that contributing makes you a better developer, but this is even more of a puff piece than I expected.

agustif 6y ago
I haven't read the post. You could share like in open source code contributions or in a blogpost in your own blog / domain
superpermutat0r 6y ago
All of the great developers (or at least magnitudes more competent/experienced than me) I met spend very little time on the internet writing comments/answers.
- m00x 6y ago
  This has been my experience as well. There are good developers that are out there helping others, but that usually doesn't require tremendous skill as most of the questions are simple and can mostly be resolved by looking at the documentation. The hard stuff usually comes from doing things that were never done before or going deep inside a system. This usually doesn't apply to many people and is hard to share.
diehunde 6y ago
That wasn't the point of the article at all. That was just an example of how some of these devs share knowledge.
Tehchops 6y ago
I feel like we read different articles. They do make mention of being actively engaged on SO, but this didn't at all read like a marketing piece for getting more SO users. The key point seemed to be one I've seen echoed repeatedly elsewhere: a lot of good developers write and share a lot. It doesn't have to be Stack Overflow. "Good" in this context I take to mean holistically good. Not just good on purely technical skills, but soft skills(particularly effective communication), organizationally dynamic, etc...
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  I read the article prior to seeing it shared here. My conclusion was that it's just sampling bias. Of course you will hear proportionally more of "great" developers if they share more about themselves. And of course those are the ones you'll invite to a podcast. I don't even know what kind of statistical basis they want to put their claims on. A better title would be "the great developers that you hear from a lot share a lot". They make an effort not to promote "share your knowledge on SO" strongly, but it's one of the two actionable thoughts any developer reading this would have. "I should write blog posts" or "I should answer questions on SO".

agustif 6y ago

I haven't read the post. You could share like in open source code contributions or in a blogpost in your own blog / domain

superpermutat0r 6y ago

All of the great developers (or at least magnitudes more competent/experienced than me) I met spend very little time on the internet writing comments/answers.

m00x 6y ago
This has been my experience as well. There are good developers that are out there helping others, but that usually doesn't require tremendous skill as most of the questions are simple and can mostly be resolved by looking at the documentation. The hard stuff usually comes from doing things that were never done before or going deep inside a system. This usually doesn't apply to many people and is hard to share.

diehunde 6y ago

That wasn't the point of the article at all. That was just an example of how some of these devs share knowledge.

Tehchops 6y ago

I feel like we read different articles. They do make mention of being actively engaged on SO, but this didn't at all read like a marketing piece for getting more SO users. The key point seemed to be one I've seen echoed repeatedly elsewhere: a lot of good developers write and share a lot. It doesn't have to be Stack Overflow. "Good" in this context I take to mean holistically good. Not just good on purely technical skills, but soft skills(particularly effective communication), organizationally dynamic, etc...

MauranKilom 6y ago
I read the article prior to seeing it shared here. My conclusion was that it's just sampling bias. Of course you will hear proportionally more of "great" developers if they share more about themselves. And of course those are the ones you'll invite to a podcast. I don't even know what kind of statistical basis they want to put their claims on. A better title would be "the great developers that you hear from a lot share a lot". They make an effort not to promote "share your knowledge on SO" strongly, but it's one of the two actionable thoughts any developer reading this would have. "I should write blog posts" or "I should answer questions on SO".