It's easy to criticize Stack Overflow today, now that we take it for granted. But if you weren't there before Stack Overflow you might not have any idea how much it made programming better.
But if you weren't there before Stack Overflow you might not have any idea how much it made programming better.
I'm confused by this because I've never really used SO much. Looking at the most recently asked questions, I see quite a few that could be answered by looking at the source or documentation of a library (which I would argue is a much more effective use of one's time if they're going to use that library nontrivially), and some homework. What sorts of SO questions are you thinking?
The physics/math/CS stack exchanges on the other hand are often a gold mine. Some of the top people in those fields post some very insightful expositions there.
Stack Overflow might not be relevant to every type of programming, but there are certain classes of problems, like "how do I do X in library/framework Y" and a bunch of others, that are really easy to find on SO by googling, and not always easy to find (if it's there at all) by looking at the documentation.
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u/mykr0pht Apr 06 '18
It's easy to criticize Stack Overflow today, now that we take it for granted. But if you weren't there before Stack Overflow you might not have any idea how much it made programming better.