[alanctgardner2]

The problem is that SO is not for entertainment. It's not even really for education. They (the site's operators) want it to be an injective mapping of google queries to solutions. You don't need to become a better programmer. You need to keep coming back to SO to ask more questions. On the other side they need to supply a steady stream of middling difficulty questions, because everyone isn't John Skeet.

Nobody is going to be working on a project and say "My client requires the use of obscure data structures, better Google some!". You can bash the multitude of jQuery questions, but having worked in a variety of settings, some people need things spelled out for them. You need a lot of simple questions with alternate wordings, different permutations of libraries, etc. Even though you can generalize these answers, they're hard to find from Google, and a lot of people will read "Undefined variable foo? Nonsense, my undefined variable is baz. Better open a new ticket".