[nix0n]

The average answer writer on SO is not actually that toxic: really it's the voters.

The top answer will almost always be an explanation of why the asker is wrong to want to do the thing they want to do. But that's not most answers, or most answerers, just the top ones.

The bottom answer will almost always be an honest attempt to write code that answers the question. Sometimes the code doesn't work, or needs explanation: these problems will be solved a couple answers up from the bottom.

My technique for years has been to click the SO link in search results, then hit End on my keyboard to jump to the bottom of the page. This a little slower than reading a cached LLM answer, but faster than waiting for the LLMs to generate something.

[zahlman]

Please show an example of a question following this pattern. That is radically different from my experience.

[nix0n]

Sure, just look at the famous question about how to parse HTML with Regex[0].

Since this question has received so much attention, even the bottom answer has a positive score. Otherwise the pattern looks typical.

[0]https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open...