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. noduerme · 1790488167 · focus · HN ↗

      You touched on what made it great, along with other forums where devs helped each other: It was a pleasure to read and try to answer other people's questions. NOT for the points! Because you found out so much about the problems other people were trying to solve, parallel to your own. The good questions forced you think what would I do in that situation and become a better coder yourself.

      I may have asked 20 questions on Stack Overflow in 20 years. But I probably answered several thousand. Whatever I was deeply interested in at the moment, there was no better way to learn more than to try to answer those tough questions. It was like a hobby, during a few minutes of downtime, to just cruise around looking for database optimization problems... the way some people might pick up a Sudoku puzzle. It would keep me in the zone.

      A lot of the mods sucked, and they had to deal with deluges of spam from kids asking for answers to CS exam questions... but hunting for the really juicy questions that couldn't be answered with a search was part of the fun.

      I mourn for the generations that will never get to use their brains.

      1. fartfeatures · 1790488580 · focus · HN ↗

         > I mourn for the generations that will never get to use their brains.

         If you aren't using the incredible technology we have around us right now to accelerate your learning then it is us that should be mourning your loss of imagination.

         1. noduerme · 1790494369 · focus · HN ↗

            Can you name anything you've learned from an LLM? Start your essay with what you've learned from AI as your opening paragraph. Write by hand as if you had been educated to do so. List one or more specific instances in which an LLM gave you knowledge which you would take forward and use productively, as your own integrated knowledge, in such a way that you would be consistently able to apply it to novel problems and circumstances on your own.

            I won't down vote you, because you simply misunderstood me. Of course I'm using this incredible technology to accelerate writing code.

            If you never learned the value of learning itself, for its own sake, you have everything to gain from a world in which skills like learning and thinking for yourself are useless. I can hardly blame you for that.

            But as someone who has learned by teaching others, people who in turn will learn by teaching others, I don't find your belief in someone else doing the work for you to be particularly sustainable. Or convincing. Regardless of whether I think it's contemptible, lazy, or damaging to your mind, which isn't my problem.

            1. fartfeatures · 1790530630 · focus · HN ↗

               Absolutely, this week I learnt about:

               - Kalman Filters

               - Bayesian Tracking

               - Hybrid Logical Clocks

               I was able to ask questions and understand the current state of the art.

               1. runarberg · 1790568298 · focus · HN ↗

                  How do you know the explanations were correct?

                  1. fartfeatures · 1790583172 · focus · HN ↗

                     How do you know any explanation is correct from any source? That is not unique to LLMs.

                     1. runarberg · 1790603178 · focus · HN ↗

                        You find sources written by experts and vetted by peers.

                        This is not very hard, and we all used to know how to do this not 3 years ago.

                        1. fartfeatures · 1790641996 · focus · HN ↗

                           The LLM is citing it's sources and I follow up on them. Your attempt at a gotcha is interesting in that I think it says more about your relationship with AI than mine.

                           1. [deleted] · 1790642454 · focus · HN ↗

                              [deleted]

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