Thread

1. pech0rin · 1790486019 · focus · HN ↗

   Stack overflow was one of the best ways to learn and mature as an engineer “back in the day”. The meme is that devs would copy and paste and hope it worked. The reality was more like you had an obscure bug, you wrote a detailed and cohesive question, and you connected with people who were more knowledgable and would help you.

   It also sharpened your writing and thinking. By responding to questions you solidified your understanding of topics.

   It got a lot of hate for the moderation but I think that was mainly in huge communities where literally “dumb” questions got bombarded every minute. Smaller tech like Docker when it first arrived on the scene had communities that learned together.

   Spent a lot of time there when I was a few years out of school and still trying to figure out what it meant to be a software eng. It’s sad to see it become a ghost town and I think it’s a net negative for young engineers to have an all knowing entity spit out every answer.

   1. stackghost · 1790490798 · focus · HN ↗

      >The meme is that devs would copy and paste and hope it worked. The reality was more like you had an obscure bug, you wrote a detailed and cohesive question, and you connected with people who were more knowledgable and would help you.

      Au contraire, the reality was more like you had an obscure bug, you wrote a detailed and cohesive question, and it was immediately closed as a duplicate of something unrelated but with a superficially-similar name from 5 years prior, and then you were threatened with a ban.

      StackOverflow was easily one of the most toxic communities on the internet and I don't miss it.

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