Partially. I think, SO, for the most part was a genuinely well intentioned effort with really good outcomes. Spolsky's earlier talks describing his philosophi

Partially. I think, SO, for the most part was a genuinely well intentioned effort with really good outcomes. Spolsky's earlier talks describing his philosophies about a good QA site, I thought, were insightful. To their credit, they did organically reach the top of Google rankings and for a long time, the quality of answers and insights on the site were really good. I learned a lot of from reading answers to various questions by Alex Martelli and Raymond Hettinger (of Python fame). I'm sure they made some mistakes along the way and those contributed to the current downfall. My larger point, however, is that this and other tools and sites which make things "easy" have contributed to a decline in the quality of (especially new) programmers and that has indirectly taken a toll on the site. To extend your chef analogy, the rant would be "Here I am trying to create interesting dishes with modern ingredients but people these days haven't tasted really food and can't digest anything other than a quick burger, canned soda and frozen fries."