3 ms·

This is possibly a move in the right direction. The problem, as I have learned, is that SO is 100% useless (not 99%, actually 100%) when trying to learn anythin

This is possibly a move in the right direction. The problem, as I have learned, is that SO is 100% useless (not 99%, actually 100%) when trying to learn anything related to the web. Any question I as a beginner have is already answered, and the answer is almost certainly wrong or suboptimal. Thankfully there are lots of other good resources, most notably MDN. The only solution I see is to give web questions a lifetime of something like two years.

Aulig 5y ago
I very much disagree with SO being useless. If you find an answer that is quite old, why don't you just scroll down to see if there's a more recent one? I usually find it quite easy to evaluate which of the two is the better answer then.
- bachmeier 5y ago
  > If you find an answer that is quite old, why don't you just scroll down to see if there's a more recent one? Why are you assuming I don't do that? Rather than spending my time doing that, why not go to an authoritative, updated source like MDN to begin with?
  - gardnr 5y ago
    Because most of HN users also make their bread and butter by copy pasting from SO. The Venn diagram is almost a circle.
- throwaway744678 5y ago
  In most case, you'll also find a highly upvoted comment just below the old answer pointing to the more accurate/recent one.
throwaway192874 5y ago
I see you're an economics professor with an interest in computation, and perhaps learning to program? Awesome! Ask any experienced programmer how often they use StackOverflow, and they'll tell you daily. It's an invaluable resource to our community and we often wonder how we got along without it before. In particular, it's great for highly specific questions about very niche things. Like, with this version of this library and in this stack, this very odd behavior is happening and I only see it in IE8, what could it be? That's not something you'll find and answer for on MDN. MDN is a fantastic reference resource when you know what you're looking for and need the details, but it's not a Q&A platform about anything. SO is not perfect, sometimes you have to dig for the right information (something this change is trying to improve), and perhaps it's not ideal for beginners, but I wouldn't want to live in a world without something like StackOverflow, and would be significantly less productive

Aulig 5y ago

I very much disagree with SO being useless. If you find an answer that is quite old, why don't you just scroll down to see if there's a more recent one? I usually find it quite easy to evaluate which of the two is the better answer then.

bachmeier 5y ago
> If you find an answer that is quite old, why don't you just scroll down to see if there's a more recent one? Why are you assuming I don't do that? Rather than spending my time doing that, why not go to an authoritative, updated source like MDN to begin with?
- gardnr 5y ago
  Because most of HN users also make their bread and butter by copy pasting from SO. The Venn diagram is almost a circle.
throwaway744678 5y ago
In most case, you'll also find a highly upvoted comment just below the old answer pointing to the more accurate/recent one.

throwaway192874 5y ago

I see you're an economics professor with an interest in computation, and perhaps learning to program? Awesome! Ask any experienced programmer how often they use StackOverflow, and they'll tell you daily. It's an invaluable resource to our community and we often wonder how we got along without it before. In particular, it's great for highly specific questions about very niche things. Like, with this version of this library and in this stack, this very odd behavior is happening and I only see it in IE8, what could it be? That's not something you'll find and answer for on MDN. MDN is a fantastic reference resource when you know what you're looking for and need the details, but it's not a Q&A platform about anything. SO is not perfect, sometimes you have to dig for the right information (something this change is trying to improve), and perhaps it's not ideal for beginners, but I wouldn't want to live in a world without something like StackOverflow, and would be significantly less productive