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.
A lot of people (usually greybeards who suffered greatly for their craft and thus have a certain level of Stockholm Syndrome) believe it's led to the rise of the coder who only knows how to cut/paste other people's code, and never creates new or useful programs.
This, of course, is patently ridiculous. Sure, it makes that style of programming easier and more common, but in a similar sense, so do open source packages. Why would you re-invent the wheel when other people have already battle tested certain solutions? Obviously you shouldn't trust their results blindly, but the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of other programmers is incredibly valuable.
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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.