I recall using Google daily to search for solutions to dev issues using Stack Overflow. I think it's been a year plus since I visited the site. What about you?
I always thought it was crap and that the social mechanisms for sorting good answers to the top "just didn't work". First you have to work your way through the question which is usually poorly posed and rambling and has confusing comments, then the right answer is frequently the #7 or #24 answer, sometimes the accepted answer at the top is wrong and has a long thread of comments begging the original posted to unaccept it. You can't cut and paste Python answers because they are written in Python 2 and say
print "something"
instead of the Python 3 equivalent
print("something")
and in general the mechanisms of the site don't allow for correcting things like that, as the system prevents the question from being re-asked and getting a better answer. Even worse you're just not allowed to have discussions about many of the most consequential topics for which other people's experience is crucial such as "What framework should I use for X?"
But if you need 10 wrong answers for "How to center a <div>?" it's your place.
Back when they published a public data dump I thought about making some automated system that cleans it up, deletes all but the best answers, etc. It would be much easier in the age of AI, but that dump is long gone and the world has moved on now that AI can operationalize that kind of knowledge. Had Stack Overflow realized that it sucked 10 years ago it might still be relevant, but the logic of two-sided markets kept it alive long after heat death.
> But if you need 10 wrong answers for "How to center a <div>?" it's your place.
Ain't that the truth! That's why I avoid SO if I can - it's like looking for a needle in a shit pile: even if you find what you're looking for you still need to clean up; and if you don't find what you're looking for...
in general the mechanisms of the site don't allow for correcting things like that
It has been awhile since I used stackoverflow,
So I don’t know if it’s still this way but it used to be that anyone could edit almost anything except comments.
With some points, you were able to propose edits for review.
With more points you could make edits without any review.
With enough points you could review edits that people had proposed.
And when you didn’t have many points, making edits earned points. And finding things that needed fixing was how I started earning points.
Of course, most people don’t care about earning points and there’s nothing wrong with that. And different tags have different cultural norms…I avoided Python for that reason (your broken code Print example is an example of what turned me off of Python culture).
Today. I was getting a TLS certificate resolution error making an internal call from a Java application that did not exist outside that application. Stack Overflow had the answer.
This morning. Wanted to refresh my memory abiut MultiBinding in WPF. But only because the site was the first hit on Kagi. Haven't interacted with it for quite a while.
Been almost a year -- the last time I found it useful was trying to work out a capricious error that an API threw that gave virtually no information. Now that I think of it, today I would probably ask an LLM to search the internet for answer if it didn't know and then it would visit stackoverflow on my behalf.
Yesterday! For a question about sockets. I have started asking AI to provide sources for its answers so that I can make sure its not hallucinating. A lot of the time it points me to stackoverflow. AI has been incredibly useful but I also firmly believe that other people will always be our best resource.
How much of the earth shattering, employee-replacing transformational productivity gains attributed to AI are in fact things that were earlier accomplished with copy&paste from SO?
Quite a bit, if this thread is anything to go by...
I have almost stopped using Google Search for my programming queries. Its either ChatGPT (Text and C# related questions), AIStudio (AWS and DevOps), or Claude (UI-UX) that has become default search engines for me.
couple of hours ago. I still use it from time to time, after I used ai assistants to help me narrow down what is it that im specifically tryin to solve. Sure claude/deepseek/chatgpt/grok/whatever assistant you use can do that for you, but I enjoy reading the discussion part of stackoverflow when it's not just a bunch of stupid debate of semantics / people being too pissy about their "rules" and whatnot
PaulHoule|5 months ago
I always thought it was crap and that the social mechanisms for sorting good answers to the top "just didn't work". First you have to work your way through the question which is usually poorly posed and rambling and has confusing comments, then the right answer is frequently the #7 or #24 answer, sometimes the accepted answer at the top is wrong and has a long thread of comments begging the original posted to unaccept it. You can't cut and paste Python answers because they are written in Python 2 and say
instead of the Python 3 equivalent and in general the mechanisms of the site don't allow for correcting things like that, as the system prevents the question from being re-asked and getting a better answer. Even worse you're just not allowed to have discussions about many of the most consequential topics for which other people's experience is crucial such as "What framework should I use for X?"But if you need 10 wrong answers for "How to center a <div>?" it's your place.
Back when they published a public data dump I thought about making some automated system that cleans it up, deletes all but the best answers, etc. It would be much easier in the age of AI, but that dump is long gone and the world has moved on now that AI can operationalize that kind of knowledge. Had Stack Overflow realized that it sucked 10 years ago it might still be relevant, but the logic of two-sided markets kept it alive long after heat death.
taylodl|5 months ago
Ain't that the truth! That's why I avoid SO if I can - it's like looking for a needle in a shit pile: even if you find what you're looking for you still need to clean up; and if you don't find what you're looking for...
brudgers|5 months ago
It has been awhile since I used stackoverflow, So I don’t know if it’s still this way but it used to be that anyone could edit almost anything except comments.
With some points, you were able to propose edits for review.
With more points you could make edits without any review.
With enough points you could review edits that people had proposed.
And when you didn’t have many points, making edits earned points. And finding things that needed fixing was how I started earning points.
Of course, most people don’t care about earning points and there’s nothing wrong with that. And different tags have different cultural norms…I avoided Python for that reason (your broken code Print example is an example of what turned me off of Python culture).
tkiolp4|5 months ago
khedoros1|5 months ago
austin-cheney|5 months ago
andyjohnson0|5 months ago
ertok|5 months ago
bencornia|5 months ago
codingclaws|5 months ago
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16683121/git-diff-betwee...
tacostakohashi|5 months ago
Quite a bit, if this thread is anything to go by...
milanspeaks|5 months ago
walpurginacht|5 months ago
mkbkn|5 months ago
Never opened the website again. F*ck the SOF.
walpurginacht|5 months ago
https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-ve...
solardev|5 months ago
3vidence|5 months ago
methusala8|5 months ago
brudgers|5 months ago
My Q/A participation was 2018.
But I am not a programmer, though I can program my way into a paper bag…sometimes.
Bender|5 months ago
markus_zhang|5 months ago
pavel_lishin|6 months ago
JohnFen|5 months ago