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I don't find SO so bad. What I do hate is everyone complaining about SO. Yes, it violates the "teach a man to fish principle"... but seriously? Are we all so st

I don't find SO so bad. What I do hate is everyone complaining about SO. Yes, it violates the "teach a man to fish principle"... but seriously? Are we all so stuck in "well, I had to learn it, so I'm not sharing it with you" syndrome land? The fear that someone is going to copy and paste an SO snippet into production code on a meaningful app should not even be a real thing. If some hack finds their way into an important job just by lying their way through the interview process, and gets by for years simply by asking questions on SO, I say, "that's incredible, I gotta see this". For the average hacker, just throwing together some web stuff and needs to know, "how do I open an accordion in jQuery", I think SO is perfect. I often use it when I feel like I'm totally not getting the "right way" to do something. (I've asked questions about jRuby gems, Sencha Touch, Dojo, CouchDB - things I really don't think I'd have gotten just by reading the docs) But I really don't care if someone else uses it as their private consultation service... I don't think it's ruining this industry.

catnaroek 11y ago
IMO, the main problem isn't that newbies ask to be given fish. That's okay. There's no shame in being a newbie. The problem is what the community, especially the more knowledgeable users, do when confronted with this situation. Either: 1. They just give them fish, as requested. Sometimes they argue with each other, over who gave the best fish. 2. They angrily say "somebody else has asked for this very same fish before", and downvote the question into oblivion. What they almost never do, however, is the right thing: teaching them how to fish.
- DanBC 11y ago
  It's a bit wierd to complain about people asking for fish when those people have walked into a fishshop that has a big sign over the door saying "get your fish here!" with thousands of examples of other people getting fish. Sure, people shouldn't just yell "fish!", they should ask for a specific fish and give details of the aquarium / meal, but that's not the same as saying we should teach them about lines and bait.

catnaroek 11y ago

IMO, the main problem isn't that newbies ask to be given fish. That's okay. There's no shame in being a newbie. The problem is what the community, especially the more knowledgeable users, do when confronted with this situation. Either: 1. They just give them fish, as requested. Sometimes they argue with each other, over who gave the best fish. 2. They angrily say "somebody else has asked for this very same fish before", and downvote the question into oblivion. What they almost never do, however, is the right thing: teaching them how to fish.

DanBC 11y ago
It's a bit wierd to complain about people asking for fish when those people have walked into a fishshop that has a big sign over the door saying "get your fish here!" with thousands of examples of other people getting fish. Sure, people shouldn't just yell "fish!", they should ask for a specific fish and give details of the aquarium / meal, but that's not the same as saying we should teach them about lines and bait.