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IMO its not even that we're copying people's logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming
by arduinomancer 5y ago
IMO its not even that we're copying people's logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages.
For example if I forget the name of a function for something in a particular language I don't even go to the docs, I just google something like "python reverse list" and click the first SO link.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoIt's a shame that most manuals have evolved to web pages that you can't download as PDFs or eBooks. Now you usually have to go online to find that keyword, and as you're online already, might as well google for the whole answer. One of the most productive times in my career was programming for the IBM i in the 90s. There were manuals online, but you could also download indexed PDFs versions. IBM did a superb job with their documentation, there was hardly any need to look up anything in the Internet, whatever you needed was in the manuals, examples included. Of course you still used the Internet at work, but mostly for mingling with your peers and having technical discussions, although too many people still blindly copied/pasted from the forums.
- ralusek 5y agoThat's interesting that you say that because I actually have the opposite reaction. When I go to look for documentation and find that it's a PDF, I want to die.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoPDFs are horrible as eBooks, but in a manual I prefer the fidelity of a PDF than the reflowing of an ePUB, or the fickleness, slowness, and potential unavailability of a web page. A well structured and correctly indexed PDF is a godsend, because you just open the table of contents, quickly locate what you're looking for, click and there is your answer. As I said, IBM excels at writing documentation. Every language has a Language Reference manual, and a Programmer's Guide manual. The first is for reference, the second is to learn how to use it, including examples. Don't take my word for it, you can check out, for example, the COBOL manuals here: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.1?topic=languages-cobol https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.1?topic=languages-cobol
- ghaff 5y agoI think it depends. For something well-structured like a cookbook I'd prefer PDF in most cases. But it really varies. For example I find most guidebooks do a decent job of Kindle these days and have actually switched over to a significant degree because it's really useful to have everything on my phone.
- afiori 5y agofor this specific use case a single html file that you open in the browser might be the best option (at least php offer that option and I appreciated it).
- bluedino 5y agoThe first PDF I had was a 'bonus' book that came on a CD included with a programming book. There was a compiler along with sample code from the book, and then something like SAMS Teach Yourself Visual C++ in 21 Days. I absolutely hated it. My screen was only 640x480, so I could barely see a whole page, much less see my IDE at the same time. These were the days of single 14 or 15 inch monitors, not dual or triple 24" widescreens. It was also a little on the slow side. Early Pentium, 8MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM... These days I'm delighted to see a PDF. There's a table of contents and index, they're searchable...copy and paste usually stinks, though. PDF's are forever. They print nicely. They don't get lost when the project upgrades a major version, you can still use them when there's a DNS issue with your ISP, you can use them when you don't have internet...
- agallant 5y agoYou may be interested in https://devdocs.io https://devdocs.io (offline-friendly documentation tool). And if you prefer a straight up desktop app - https://zealdocs.org https://zealdocs.org
- milkytron 5y agoI also really enjoyed Dash when it was free to use: https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash
- jabo 5y agoWhy not pay for it or get your employer to pay for it, especially if you enjoyed it?
- ASalazarMX 5y agoThank you. I've used it, although it adds a lot of complexity for the same features than a folder full of manuals would give. I'm probably too set in my ways, but I prefer references that are always available offline. Devdocs.io once in a blue moon would forget about my choices, and I would hate to redownload them.
- sammorrowdrums 5y agoI once downloaded Python docs as an iPad app and a small Python IDE - I was working on a cruise ship and so offline documentation really helped. It taught me to get better at reading the Python docs, but more importantly to cope better without being able to just search every issue I was having online.
- airstrike 5y agoMy first programming experience was with mIRC scripting and it was ridiculously convenient to have everything in a nicely written a local, offline .hlp file https://www.mirc.com/help/html/index.html?mirc_scripts.html https://www.mirc.com/help/html/index.html?mirc_scripts.html I remember spending the afternoon tinkering with it until late at night when dial-up "logic" meant I could finally go online without it costing an arm and a leg
- henrikeh 5y agoIs it just me or is this also a symptom of Python's documentation being really strange to navigate and generally having a massive impedance mismatch with Google? When I search on Google for "python reverse list", not a single link is to the official Python documentation. Not even if I search for "python reverse" does the documentation page show up. Searching for "python reverse documentation" leads to the second link to the Build-in Functions page (https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html), which is what I "need". Excuse the comparison, but "matlab reverse list" has the top three to the official documentation (all of them relevant, but slightly different semantics). Why can't Python be better than that?
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- klmadfejno 5y ago> When I search on Google for "python reverse list", not a single link is to the official Python documentation. Not even if I search for "python reverse" does the documentation page show up. Searching for "python reverse documentation" leads to the second link to the Build-in Functions page (https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html), which is what I "need". But what you want is probably ls[::-1]
- nurpax 5y agoIt’s not just you. Python seems to suffer from Python-specific ”tutorial sites” being SEO’d above Python’s official docs. I don’t know what it is about the Python documentation that lowers its rank on Google search results. In general, not a big fan of Python docs.
- spion 5y agoJS has / had the same problem, which is why a common tip is to add "MDN" to the keywords to get a higher quality reference style result from MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/ https://developer.mozilla.org/
- jbverschoor 5y ago“Back in the good old days”, you’d get detailed documentation with for example DirectX. The whole visual c++ experience was so good. I never needed to look up anything. Browsing for documentation is such a zone-exiter... Rails, Some gens, and some Java projects are the few properly documented projects out there.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rualca 5y ago> (...) acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages. I see it more as an expert system where problems and their solutions are documented in a queriable way. What stack overflow offers is more than your run of the mill documentation. It leaves a paper trail of weird corner cases and their workarounds.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- simonsarris 5y agoI do this for <canvas> sometimes and get... myself in 2013 answering somebody
- QuesnayJr 5y agoThis happens to me too. It freaks me out, because it means that not only I forgot the answer, but that I forgot that I ever knew the answer.
- glitchcrab 5y agoAlso been there, however mine was me answering my own question. Several years later I helped myself out again with it.
- hannofcart 5y agoI have a hunch that this tendency to look up SO rather than actual language/API docs is prevalent more in some ecosystems than in others. For eg, with Rust and Go projects I would invariably read the actual docs (which I find are very accessible to read) as compared to when I write Python or C++ where I'm happy to SO my way through my task. However, what I've found is that reading the actual docs is better for multiple reasons: 1) it reinforces your learning / memory via spaced repitition 2) you tend to glean some extra, related useful info from the docs. These days I try and put myself in a no SO straitjacket as far as possible, forcing myself to read the actual docs instead.
- cerved 5y agoI would definitely agree that it depends on the strength/weakness of the docs/SO for that ecosystem. For example. MDN had terrific docs for JavaScript and web apis. Things are discreetly segmented and this easy to navigate. Terrific, up to date information about how to things, why as well as great information on the caveats of the API (what works where and what fails where). The SO answers are often a hack on how to implement it in an outdated framework. And ten variations that are "faster". But you might still end up there because you're not sure how to look it up directly in the docs. Maybe you do an SO layover. .Net is similar, although the official documentation suffers from marketing speak pollution, where it's hard to find answers because Microsoft names their APIs by randomly permutating ASP, Entity, Core and Framework when making things. Add to that all the trashy noob doc sites, codeproject, csharpcorner... that pollute search. Both ecosystems suffer on SO because of SOs inability to stay up to date with a changing API. A great example is all the Python 2 answers. Then you have ecosystems like Scala, which has terrific documentation in source code. As well as official docs that are reasonably easy to navigate. But it's not a huge ecosystem, so sometimes it's hard to find answers to questions that haven't been asked. Then SO provides a valuable platform to get those answers. Sometimes from the maintainers themselves. All in all, SO often offers a good complement to official docs, ranging from excellent to subpar. Personally I wished it was better at providing up to date information.
- number6 5y agolist.reverse()
- anitil 5y agoOr is it reversed(list)? checks Stack Overflow
- arduinomancer 5y agoThat’s exactly the thought process lol
- fomine3 5y agoSearch it to find whether destructive operation or return new list
- davnicwil 5y agoJust in case this idea needed any more validation, a few years ago Stackoverflow themselves launched a 'Stackoverflow for Documentation' product [0], and eventually shut it down because, as was probably obvious to many going in and certainly in retrospect, this product was of course.. just Stackoverflow. [0] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-documentation https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-d...
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y agoIt’s a shame, I really liked where that product was going. I work best with concrete examples.
- onion2k 5y agoI just google something like "python reverse list" and click the first SO link. If that's your workflow it might be worthwhile adding a custom search to your browser so you can just do "SO python reverse list" and only get results from SO. Chrome https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/article/pro-tip-add-custom-search-engines-in-chrome-for-more-efficient-searching/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techrepublic.com/google-amp... Firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/assign-shortcuts-search-engines https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/assign-shortcuts-search...
- stinos 5y agoOr use duckduckgo: it basically has this builtin, so it works the same way without configuration across browsers. Enter !so <query>. No configuration is always nice, plus this really helps when working on other machines than your own.