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I have a question for frequent SO posters: what do you get out of it? I like more choices and I think the resource is fantastic for googling, kudos to Jeff&Joel

I have a question for frequent SO posters: what do you get out of it? I like more choices and I think the resource is fantastic for googling, kudos to Jeff&Joel, but in my case, when googling doesn't help and I need to ask someone, it just seems that IRC beats it hands down: why would I go to SO asking jQuery questions if there's #jquery on freenode where John often answers questions himself? With something like jRuby or Linux hosting the picture is even better: JRuby lead programmers always hang out in #jruby, bunch of smart folks helping each other in real time. Whereas I see people ask a question on SO and... what exactly do they do next? Sit for hours hitting 'refresh' every minute or so? SO is great for googling for similar questions answered in the past, but I just don't understand why people post questions there in the first place. Sometimes I think that if IRC hasn't existed and someone would have launched it now as a fresh idea, all tech blogs would be filled with "IRC changes everything" and "the game is over for slow HTML-based collaboration" Am I missing something?

daleharvey 18y ago
I think most people just havent realised that what they actually want to do is to chat, there is a technical and social stigma, people already have a web browser, just point it to google and getting the help is the same as doing whatever else. As for the technical, I remember the first time trying to get on irc and as a cs undergrad, wondering why the hell it was so complicated, I run an xmpp chatroom and that is only marginally easier, these arent inherent problems with the protocol, just the software around is entirely unusable. facebook / meebo and mibbit are helping overcome this, but it isnt there yet. I have wondered how to solve the problem chat knowledge being unable to persist, even with public chat logs, an answer on a forum etc is still much easier to comprehend for a 3rd party than an irc log, but havent come up with much
ijntybvrt 18y ago
You can search SO, you can see the dozens of other answers to similar questions and you can see other answers by the person answering you. Realtime works for some set of easy quick answers - if the answerers are in your time zone.
- daleharvey 18y ago
  I am pretty sure its the opposite, a complicated questions needs a feedback mechanism, you say X is wrong, I ask well what happens with Y, whats the output of Z. this really works better in realtime. I find a lot of application / language / library developers are in irc reasonably often, whereas the questions on forums are a bit more of run of the mill how do I do types
tow21 18y ago
I'm not a frequent SO poster, but I've asked and answered a couple of questions. Personally, it's a combination of: 1) I find IRC completely unusable - I've been on the net since 1994, I've tried IRC multiple times, and it just doesn't gel with my head, sorry. 2) I don't use SO when I need an immediate answer. At the very least I'll put a query in, then wander off and google some more in the hope of finding an answer, then come back in half an hour. More usually I'll leave it overnight while i get on with something I do know how to do. It feels like the same sort of dialogue timescale as a mailing list query, but for where there isn't an appropriate mailing list. But I may not be typical.

daleharvey 18y ago

I think most people just havent realised that what they actually want to do is to chat, there is a technical and social stigma, people already have a web browser, just point it to google and getting the help is the same as doing whatever else. As for the technical, I remember the first time trying to get on irc and as a cs undergrad, wondering why the hell it was so complicated, I run an xmpp chatroom and that is only marginally easier, these arent inherent problems with the protocol, just the software around is entirely unusable. facebook / meebo and mibbit are helping overcome this, but it isnt there yet. I have wondered how to solve the problem chat knowledge being unable to persist, even with public chat logs, an answer on a forum etc is still much easier to comprehend for a 3rd party than an irc log, but havent come up with much

ijntybvrt 18y ago

You can search SO, you can see the dozens of other answers to similar questions and you can see other answers by the person answering you. Realtime works for some set of easy quick answers - if the answerers are in your time zone.

daleharvey 18y ago
I am pretty sure its the opposite, a complicated questions needs a feedback mechanism, you say X is wrong, I ask well what happens with Y, whats the output of Z. this really works better in realtime. I find a lot of application / language / library developers are in irc reasonably often, whereas the questions on forums are a bit more of run of the mill how do I do types

tow21 18y ago

I'm not a frequent SO poster, but I've asked and answered a couple of questions. Personally, it's a combination of: 1) I find IRC completely unusable - I've been on the net since 1994, I've tried IRC multiple times, and it just doesn't gel with my head, sorry. 2) I don't use SO when I need an immediate answer. At the very least I'll put a query in, then wander off and google some more in the hope of finding an answer, then come back in half an hour. More usually I'll leave it overnight while i get on with something I do know how to do. It feels like the same sort of dialogue timescale as a mailing list query, but for where there isn't an appropriate mailing list. But I may not be typical.