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Exactly. If you have complex question (the actual problem) it will be unanswered or downvoted to oblivion. That is logical because inexperienced engineers don't

by tlogan 13y ago

Exactly. If you have complex question (the actual problem) it will be unanswered or downvoted to oblivion. That is logical because inexperienced engineers don't know what they don't know and experienced ones will be wisely silent. And the worst thing is that some answers are wrong but since they are upvoted so they seem "right" (the joke is that all javascript questions are answered with "use jQuery"). So in short: if you are novice engineer (or novice in certain field) then StackOverflow might help. If you are experienced engineer, stackoverflow is useless.

i_s 13y ago
Does John Carmack count as experienced? Because he is the guy who made the claim we're talking about.
- billmalarky 13y ago
  tlogan was not saying SO was not valuable, he specifically said that it did not provide much value for experienced programmers. SO can still provide value to the masses of less experienced programmers out there and be extremely valuable. In my experience I have found this to be true. When first starting out stackoverflow was crucial to my learning process, now it seems I've answered all of my own questions the last year or so. And I wouldn't even claim to be extremely experienced. Thus, SO has certainly become significantly less valuable to me, but I would have never gotten this far without SO.
  - i_s 13y ago
    I know. My point was that the fact that John Carmack was the one who said this suggests that he still finds it useful for himself, even though he is an experienced programmer. That is not conclusive proof, of course, just something to think about. My take is that experience only lowers the value of SO for the particular platform(s) you have experience in. I've found SO very valuable in the last couple of years even though I'm (in general) not a newbie anymore, because I've had to build software for many different platforms like ruby, mac cocoa, ios cocoa, and windows (C#/WPF and C++).
d0mine 13y ago
Nobody is expert in all fields. A more constructive way to think about StackOverflow is you give in those areas where you know more and take where you know less.

by tlogan 13y ago

i_s 13y ago

Does John Carmack count as experienced? Because he is the guy who made the claim we're talking about.

billmalarky 13y ago
tlogan was not saying SO was not valuable, he specifically said that it did not provide much value for experienced programmers. SO can still provide value to the masses of less experienced programmers out there and be extremely valuable. In my experience I have found this to be true. When first starting out stackoverflow was crucial to my learning process, now it seems I've answered all of my own questions the last year or so. And I wouldn't even claim to be extremely experienced. Thus, SO has certainly become significantly less valuable to me, but I would have never gotten this far without SO.
- i_s 13y ago
  I know. My point was that the fact that John Carmack was the one who said this suggests that he still finds it useful for himself, even though he is an experienced programmer. That is not conclusive proof, of course, just something to think about. My take is that experience only lowers the value of SO for the particular platform(s) you have experience in. I've found SO very valuable in the last couple of years even though I'm (in general) not a newbie anymore, because I've had to build software for many different platforms like ruby, mac cocoa, ios cocoa, and windows (C#/WPF and C++).

d0mine 13y ago

Nobody is expert in all fields. A more constructive way to think about StackOverflow is you give in those areas where you know more and take where you know less.