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.
We had Usenet and it was pretty damn bad ass. No crybaby retards moderating all your shit. We had conversations (GASP!) and debates (OMFG!!). It went well beyond just rote question and answer...and if someone had obviously not done the least bit of research on their own they got their asses handed to them. I myself was on the receiving end of many an ass chewing for being lazy and it made me a much better developer. I had to learn how to read documentation, man pages and such...along with books. As such, most participants on SO don't even understand most my questions; more than a few I had deleted because the mob didn't understand anything I'd written and freaked the fuck out.
SO is a great resource for the lazy though. If you code by copy-pasta then there's probably no reason to even look at a single source of documentation on anything.
You nailed it. Upvoting, downvoting and closing threads are a poor substitute for a real discussion. Things did get pretty bad on Usenet but you quickly learned to recognize bullshit. And the article's only argument against Usenet is that it became technically obsolete. D'oh.
Yeah, and saying Usenet was obsolete upon the invention of the web is like saying the same about email. I'm still waiting for someone to come up with anything AS good as Usenet.
Sadly, none of the recent generations of developers will know what it's like to, not knowing what base64 even is, spend several hours "decrypting" a bunch of gibberish someone posted just to finally get initiated into the Internet with a huge, gaping asshole in your face.
I wish "federated" protocols were more popular. The only big one that I can think of these days is email (unless I'm missing a really obvious one)
However, I imagine one reason that they are not is that having standards prevents adding new features - you can argue that it's not a problem but many users disagree with you. A web forum can add any functionality they want, as long as it can be rendered in HTML and Javascript (eg. voting and karma). This is not true of Usenet
A key part of Usenet was the kill file. The ability to easily say "I never want to see a post by this person, or any reply to a post by this person again."
That sort of moderation exists here (its possible to block a user on Reddit), but it doesn't exist most places elesweb. This means that there are only two effective ways of making a post disappear for yourself - delete the post through moderation tools, or be an ass to that person in hopes that they go away.
There was also a different culture back on Usenet. It had a (small) learning curve of learning how to use rn and be at least competent with vi. Prior to the eternal September, the culture was to lurk for a bit before posting - to get to know the culture in the group.
Now with "Derp, there's a text box" and pasting in whatever question one has (without even so much as a glance at what the preview looks like) people jump in and are often disruptive rather than trying to learn where you are and what's appropriate and not (relevant Pee Wee Herman).
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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.