Is Stack OverFlow Evil? | Prime Reacts

[@HannesSchmiderer]

I usually end up finally not asking at least 1/3 of my questions on SO because while doing research to make the questions SO-proof I end up figuring out the solution by myself. What I hate is when questions get marked as duplicate but the original questions do not really provide an answer or are heavily outdated.

[@b_delta9725]

Exactly, we can always expect/want feedback of the person who asked the question, so if a question is a duplicate, someone links the original question and you don't answer back, then mods are justified to delete your question, after a few hours I guess. But deleting duplicates or downvoting them to oblivion, in the spot, without anyone actually solving their problem, is a waste of time for everyone.

[@hannessteffenhagen61]

A question gets "marked" as a potential duplicate as soon as someone flags it as such, but it only gets closed as a duplicate if 3 people agree it's a duplicate of that question. If you don't agree, edit the question to make it more clear that it's a different problem, because clearly this wasn't obvious to several people who took a look.

[@Manas-co8wl]

Make that 999/1000.. and now that chatgpt exists... It's not so much I didn't get help from SO. It's just that the most obvious questions were already asked and I can just look it up (lest I get flagged for dupes) Or my questions are so niche and specific that no matter how well I format it, I get a couple of edits, at best silence, always some downvotes (1~2), and then at worst some unhelpful "why are you doing it this way" replies... without having any idea of the specific situation I'm in. I swear, despite all its current setbacks, chatgpt solved most of my niche problems than SO ever will..

[@daleryanaldover6545]

true

[@anders3460]

@@hannessteffenhagen61 I come across this problem a lot for more in-depth questions. The question is closed as duplicate of another question which is blatantly obviously not the same. The person asking the question has edited it and has protested, but the question remains closed. Since it takes considerable amount of reputation points to even be allowed to vote for re-opening the question, there is nothing you can do to either help the original poster or call attention to the question not being an actual duplicate. To make things even worse, Stack Overflow has enough reach to be highly likely to get the top spot in any specific search result. Which means it leads anyone with the problem on a side track which goes nowhere and never will. Probably happens 60-80% of the times I have a question where I would seriously consider posting it on SO.

[@snookandrew]

Stack Overflow is read only.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

this

[@xc6013]

@@ThePrimeTimeagen yup

[@SanjaySinghaniaIN]

I've found books to be a better source of information that I'm looking for; and often more complete. SO is just a cesspool of (mostly) smug individuals with over-blown sense of superiority based on a niche of pointless specializations.

[@nik6823]

i just scrolled down to write this, after 12 years of coding i came up to this conclusion after this video lol

[@potato9832]

Same for Wikipedia.

[@bestjesse59]

I have never experienced bullying and trauma until I went onto Stack overflow and posted a question

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

hah this is great i have had some rude ones myself

[@CallousCoder]

I’m sorry please forgive me, I never meant to cause lasting damage 😂 I’ve seen the errors of my ways 😂

[@bestjesse59]

@@CallousCoder You know what you've done

[@CallousCoder]

@@bestjesse59 well I hope you berating me whilst being open and vulnerable with you, helps you - nothing like a revenge to get the heart pumping 🤣🤪😂😉

[@vladimirkraus1438]

OK. Can we see that question?

[@gosnooky]

My favorite was when I asked a question about an certain API, and I got chastised because the question was already answered - EIGHT years ago and six versions ago... and the particular part of the API germane to my question was deprecated and removed three versions ago. That was truly a WTF moment.

[@davewaterworth8846]

I've seen that a bit because people are trying to follow a tutorial that's not been updated and isn't relevant anymore. Its to be expected if the tutorials are third-party but it's annoying if they're part of the product documentation but not updated despite major refactors...

[@ChungusTheLarge]

​@@davewaterworth8846Developers: Documentation is important! Also Developers: Ain't nobody got time for that!

[@ZedMuGen]

Such a valid reason. And other suggestions of better implementations could always be possible since then. Or the team has suggestions of how they intend for their API changes to be used.

[@Sauvva_]

that is me googling question, all i find is outdated anwers even in official documentation the example code simply doenst work

[@TranscenGopher]

They were right - instead of having a separate question for every version of a library, its better and easier to have one question per problem, which then contains all the answers, including both old and new.

[@surferriness]

I once asked a super specific, super niche question about a topic no one else really cares about. Months later I got an answer. The right answer. But it was by myself. To this day I don't think that anyone else ever saw this question.

[@pairofrooks]

this happens a lot. I sometimes put questions on SO that I know won't get an answer just so when I finally find the answer I have somewhere to write it down for my future self.

[@cat-.-]

That’s a very roundabout way to say that SO was utterly useless in that case

[@KeldonA]

Your training was complete 😉

[@michipeka9973]

THIS! this is what my journey on stack overflow was about 😂

[@Rugg-qk4pl]

thank you for going back and answering your question. Come a few months I bet someone has come across your question, and they would have been stranded if you just commented "nvm fixed it" or didnt comment at all.

[@ChungusTheLarge]

"All of the questions have already been answered, go away" - Stack Overflow

[@potato9832]

My experience: "These two very different questions are the same because they share many of the same words! Marked as a duplicate."

[@D3ss3rtTV]

This is it, stack overflow is filled with stop asking stupid questions.

[@aarona3144]

I can relate to the question he's asking here. I liked the way this sign up form looked on eBay with how the fields were justified and arranged in a particular and wanted something similar for a project I was doing. I took a screen shot of the form as the example of how I wanted my fields and labels laid out and was down voted into oblivion and then accused of trying to scam people. I had a ton of rep as well so it wasn't like I had a new account where everyone could just dump on for being new. They took an innocent question about CSS layout and turned it into "This guy wants to steal user data from eBay customers".

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

hah, that is terrible

[@nerdError0XF]

I myself asked a question on stackoverflow exactly once when i was a newbie dev, and as you can guess, it was much more than enough for me to never ask anything again 😂

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

haha

[@DelusionalDev64]

I feel you 😂 i asked i simple question a few weeks into my first cs class and got wrecked

[@jim0_o]

Same, every time I go there to read other's QnA I see that - 1, I think its been 15 years, my question was about PHP and CodeIgniter if I remember correctly.

[@ziadmoghazy6689]

ngl the only question i've asked there i've got some pretty good comments but i've certianly seen this type of people on other questions

[@Whatthetrash]

Exactly. stackoverflow is excellent at letting you know that you asked a dumb question and you're not welcome (whether the question is dumb or not -- which is super-crushing for any beginner trying to figure something out). Thus, you figure out other ways to solve the issue: Google it, read documentation, ask somewhere else, etc. It reinforces the truth that stackoverflow is just *a* way of solving a problem, not *the* way of solving a problem. Screw them if they don't want to help. There are nice communities who would love to help -- you just have to find them. ~_^

[@lukesweeney3396]

I agree that StackOverflow is super toxic and a terrible place for people trying to learn and ask questions, but I did hear a hot take that makes it make a lot more sense. Someone told me that the purpose of StackOverflow is not to be a forum where people can ask questions, but a database of questions that you can search through. Imagine the end goal is to have a place that contains all possible unique questions with a single accepted answer. The reason questions get removed as duplicates is that they're trying to have a single source of truth to a certain question. A lot of times though, they get removed as duplicates even though they aren't really. I've probably asked less than 10 questions on SO, and maybe 3 of them got actual answers. It sucks to ask questions, but it's great when you find a question that's already been asked. Quite frequently, I'll find a SO answer that actually does answer my question, or at least help me find an answer. If you start treating SO like a read-only help guide, it makes it a lot more bearable to use.

[@TealJosh]

This is how I treat it. A knowledge bank. It rarely fails and when it does, it's with outdated info 99% of the time. Been using it for years and still don't have an account on it.

[@bittersweet4074]

Then it fails as QA website as a whole. A website that discourage interaction and promotes passive engagement sounds like a very bad business model.

[@TealJosh]

@@bittersweet4074 wait, that's a good point. Does stack overflow have a business model at all or is it like wikipedia? Or something in between.

[@DevTechSpectrum]

This falls apart when you remember people need to ask questions in the first place for this work out in the long run especially with new technologies.

[@forbiddenera]

​@@bittersweet4074they promote high quality content..that's a better business model than promoting any and all content

[@user-lz2oh9zz4y]

I always chuckle when I search something and land on a Stackoverflow unanswered question and in the comments they tell you to google that question 😂😂.

[@1982pwr]

There's two different issues: 1. There's the issue of users often being slightly mean. Even if a question is bad, there's no real reason to do that, but it still happens. Close the question, answer comments respectfully, but keep your tone normal, respectful. This is a real issue. 2. It's a site that's intended to have clear, well organized questions and answers, and this seems be misunderstood. Imagine what's useful to you as a person who's not asking questions, but only browsing around and looking for answers to your questions. Do you like it how when you're searching for info on some problem, you will often have no idea whether a question even concerns your topic based on the name, so you end up opening 50 tabs? Or how you think "oh I remember, this was mentioned in some question about topic X, I've got in saves, only to spend 5 minutes looking for it? I think these are the sort of issues that stack overflow wants to avoid, at the cost of potentially interesting, but vague topics and discussions being skipped. It wants to be some sort of clear, wikipedia like database of question-answer pairs. I'm not really sure that's a good thing, but I can imagine that at the scale the site is at, it becomes difficult to keep the site clean. It's also not what it always was - there's plenty of super high voted questions that are either broad, basic, or there's some great, 10 page article-answer that goes off-topic from what the question is about... but right now, that's not what it is, and such answers are discouraged these days. That's what it is. It's not a place where you go ask a question and get an answer, so that things get cleared up for you. It's a site where your question is supposed to be neat and improve their encyclopedia of what question-answer in the direction of what they consider to be a good encyclopedia.

[@TranscenGopher]

Question being basic is not a problem, at all. The problem with NEW basic questions though, is unless this is for a technology that's hust came out - there's a 99.(9)% it's already been asked and answered, and keeping duplicates around means that answers will now become aplit between two questions based on a whims of a search engine algorithm.

[@somniad]

Regarding the initial badly-asked question, I think part of the hard part of answering peoples' questions is the fact that when you're inexperienced with something, you ask bad questions, so a necessary skill for answering questions well is helping to iterate on the question itself; this is part of SO's problem - frequently people asking questions don't know precisely what the right question is, so immediately having a high bar for questions actively sabotages the experience. This is especially bad since, as software developers, we all spend a great deal of time being inexperienced with things - learning is a huge part of the job.

[@dragonproductions236]

The guy who said "Everyone would lose their passwords" could have just as easily added a "Because XYZ" but didn't. Stackoverflow is just the manifestation of turbo autism in its purest form.

[@alexandertownsend5079]

Exactly, Stack Overflow does not encourage learner empathy.

[@TranscenGopher]

Try answering questions on there for a couple of months, see how you end up. Pick a popular tag for better experience.

[@matheusqc5405]

"Beginners ask dumb questions but they're only *currently* dumb, while those who prevent others from learning new topics are *perpetually stupid* ." - Me

[@alexandertownsend5079]

I like your quote.

[@TranscenGopher]

There are no dumb beginners - only dumb questions. And ten years down the line, when that former beginner is a CTO of Google, the same question would still be dumb, and closed as a duplicate.

[@SpaceChicken]

I’m surprised Copilot doesn’t just insult me around every corner. The true power of AI.

[@incremental_failure]

Yeah, send more money to M$FT.

[@mollthecoder]

In my experience ChatGPT and others are more helpful because Microsoft puts an intense amount of safety features on Copilot to the point that it stops being helpful.

[@alexanderlea2293]

I don't think I've ever asked a question on SO, but I've learned so so much from googling and being redirected to the site. I think the beauty of Stack OverFlow is that a well-formatted question and answer can live on the internet forever, helping anyone down the line who hits the same issues.

[@7heMech]

I've actually had experience with StackOverflow asking and answering questions, so I've noticed in closed communities people are generally nice. Like when I asked questions about some topics (at the time I was making discord bots) I got answers really quickly, but when I asked my fourth question which was about react I got banned for 8 months from as asking questions.

[@TranscenGopher]

People who answer in popular tags do need to touch grass more. At the same time, if they did that, the questions would pile up even more, and the site would receive even more accusations that "no one answers my quesion!".

[@oldcastor-]

so to be fair, most of that low quality questions meant to be googled (as prime mentioned). answers for 99,99% of all new questions can be found in a) docs; b) docs; c) stackoverflow; d) nasty google i've never asked a single question on SO, but many times found SO useful. At some point last year i've tried to go into answering questions (had some time and just wanted to try myself in) and got some new knowledge while researching for answers (its good for me). BUT, i didn't use some super-expertise to answer, just docs and google - if i can then someone who can spend time and make question on SO can do it and i've just dropped this. about how someone sitting and waiting new questions and answering on (for example) react questions: at some point you unlock special tools that shows you first questions\answers to old questions\first answers etc and gives the ability to make common actions, so fix/downvote/comment etc is just 2 clicks

[@benboruff]

I've had more good experiences with SO than bad. I have always considered asking questions on SO as a last resort. When I first started doing web development, I quickly learned to read SO rather than post to SO. I only posted when I was certain I had an issue than had no clear answer. Asking questions is initially, as has been stated, for search engines. I don't have a huge number of points or badges, but I do have a mildly positive view of SO; it has helped me, and I have used it to help a few others. My main issue with SO today is that it contains a lot of dated info.

[@incremental_failure]

I often plan my questions ahead, I have to be sure I've exhausted all avenues. Quite often when I'm done finishing my question, I already know the answer. Others seem to just spend 2 minutes on a problem and go to SO with the expectation that others spend their day teaching you for free.

[@awtodor]

Yeah same that's how I've used SO. I hardly ever post. I just use it to research if Google fails. And it has helped more than not.

[@koftespiess]

I could be wrong on how I perceive this but it seems like people are just being lazy and want the solution in front of them. This mostly applies to question where the answer could've been found by looking at the documentation.

[@RoyBrush]

I've seen the featured video here before, and I completely agree, stack overflow is often extremely hostile, to the point of near uselessness for beginners (at least from the perspective of asking questions). I've been a professor of CS before, and I've seen just how easily people can easily become discouraged from learning altogether, especially when presented with repeated harsh feedback and roadblocks like that.

[@incremental_failure]

You as a CS professor were paid to teach. You were rewarded for it. Teaching anonymously online for no reward isn't the same.

[@RoyBrush]

​@@incremental_failure I think you've misunderstood me here - the only reason I brought up being a professor is just that I have experience with students and their attitudes - I'm not saying that people online should be held to the same standards that educators are, and I completely agree with you on that. My only point is that outward hostility to newcomers is unnecessary. Moreover, it is harmful to learners - at least, that has been what I've observed in my experience. Since the point of sites like stack overflow is to share knowledge, this seems at least in part to be antithetical to their purpose, and is therefore a non-optimal practice, which should not be encouraged. Yet this behavior is highly prevalent on the site, even on questions with lots of upvotes (which is indicative that many people find them to be good / useful questions). There are other communities out there that do a better job of welcoming newcomers to the field, and I think that's important, because we want people who are just learning to be encouraged and keep going, rather than to be discouraged early and give up. At least, that's how I feel about the situation. If I've misunderstood your comment, I do apologize as well. I hope you have a great day. :)

[@oventree]

@@incremental_failure this doesn't excuse needless harsh responses though. it takes more effort to respond unhelpfully to a question than it does to just ignore it. and for moderators, they signed up for the job so i don't really think they get to bitch about having to do it that much. they should be well aware of the fact that SO is highly used by beginners and experienced programmers alike, and make it friendly for both types of people instead of just pushing people away from programming because they didn't get something that seems obvious to you after so much experience. the only thing i understand is being a little annoyed because sometimes an answer is just a google search away, but even then sometimes beginners don't know *what* to search or what keywords will get the info they need.

[@incremental_failure]

@@oventree I've been a beginner, I've asked dumb questions and it's fair that I was shut down early. This generation has a problem with criticism and swallowing one's ego. I appreciate the harsh responses as well if they had constructive parts. There's just an absurd number of lazy people who will not bother to make any effort to be concise. They will learn or end up here complaining about it.

[@incremental_failure]

@@RoyBrush It's because most newcomers are hit and run. If you help others and get points for answers or questions, you are taken much more seriously. You are aware that on SO there's thousands asking others to do their homework? Others just don't bother with any example code, just ask stuff and expect people to code it up. I mean, who doesn't have hours to spend to help a random stranger for free? For me, SO has been amazing and it's my number one resource. Nothing else comes close.

[@gabrom5047]

"The question is just too broad." His commenter knew how to help him, yet he linked him the rules page. That is scummy...

[@nonamepetko]

I will forever remember the time when I asked a question there and this dude came in straight up called me stupid and said the question was a duplicate of a thread that had absolutely nothing in common with my question 💀. I later found out that I didn't even do anything wrong it was just a bug with a library I was using lmao.

[@sk-sm9sh]

Can you share the question link?

[@nonamepetko]

@@sk-sm9sh I posted it through an account I no longer have access to.

[@Knowbody42]

When I was learning to use regex, it was for an ad blocking script on my router. The specific thing I was trying to do never worked no matter how many different ways of writing the regex I tried. I found out later that the version of sed that was used on the router didn't support the regex features I was trying to use, and would have worked if it did. At least now I'm a lot better at writing regex.

[@koftespiess]

@@Knowbody42 Did you mean to reply to this comment?

[@Knowbody42]

@@koftespiess Yes. I realize it's only related to the last part.

[@AZisk]

I loved that video.

[@AZisk]

I can't believe I just spent 40 minutes watching my own video.

[@SpikeTaunt]

I feel like stack overflow should have a special beginner section for the first question a profile asks since 95% of the time it will be a google question, it will be easy points to the people who cares about them

[@IvanKravarscan]

SO has triage system where 500+ rep users can review new user questions and it would be great place to address the problem but the system is undercooked. Actions you can take don't facilitate improving the question that well.

[@TealJosh]

The beginner section shouldn't be on SO. It should be on a discord, or irc if you feel fancy.

[@TranscenGopher]

​@@IvanKravarscan that's because most beginner questions are actually improved by pointing them to an already answered questions. Or telling a person to at least read and understand what the damn exception message says before popping open an SO asking tab. Yes, that same exception mesaage that's on the barely readable blurry screenshot from an IDE screen. People who call SO a toxic space clearly never tried to put themselves into shoes of people who honestly try to answer the "what's this red NullPointer text and why is my program doesn't work?" for the 499th time.

[@jdudbdjxb7687]

​@TranscenGopher Throwing an online tantrum doesn't usually help though 😂 But I agree, some people just act like you're supposed to know their problem or entire setup

[@TranscenGopher]

@@jdudbdjxb7687 funnily, I only ever see the people from the "SO is a toxic dump" crowd having tantrums and celebrating every bit of hardship SE company or community has. Closing questions as duplicate isn't a tantrum, and neither is leaving a slightly abrasive comment.

[@rakibulhasan8654]

Stack Overflow is not for newbies. Period. At least not for asking questions. They should ADVERTISE this.

[@happyfase]

The problem with stack overflow is that the "experts" who spend their time on the website don't see it as a place where people can come to ask questions, they see it as a place where they can go to answer questions. They don't see it as someone looking for a solution to their problem, they see it as someone bringing bad content into their hobby space.

[@gosnooky]

@@kidmosey "Karma Farmer".... I'm gonna steal this

[@khatdubell]

Or maybe the people going to the site to ask questions misunderstand its purpose.

[@DevTechSpectrum]

This is probably the best perspective answer.

[@henriquebecker2713]

I agree with you said except I do not think it is a problem. There people ARE hobbyists. Nobody is paying them. They have the right to set their own bar.

[@Impatient_Ape]

(24:46) BRAVO Prime!!! : "The hard part about "easy" is that you also give the illusion that you know things". Speaking as a former educator -- this is absolutely correct. It's why most online courses that make learning "easy" are not worth the money/time.

[@godeketime]

I ended up with a decent amount of rep in the early days of Stack Overflow and have access to the moderation queues. The problem with these kinds of sites is that they eventually have answers for most of the common cases and so virtually any new user question is a duplicate. That combined with questions like the one at the start of this video (which are asking for a code-writing service or a full blown tutorial) creates a negative experience for most new users. If you ask an esoteric question about an edge case of some tech after actually putting in the work of doing tutorials, creating your own code and identifying a pain point you don't understand, the answers are generally very good. But as the common question is the common case, Google really is the correct tool as pointed out in the video. The negativity that is meted out is the immune response of the system, but is necessary not to endlessly repeat the same content. Which doesn't make it good. I quit asking or answering questions there to focus my efforts in more positive outcomes for people. But it doesn't make it *wrong*.

[@TrippLilley]

^this. The system is working as designed. If it's not working for you, there's a good chance it wasn't designed for you. (Not trying to put words in your mouth - that's my view of it).

[@IvanKravarscan]

Exactly. The real problem with SO it that it has not adopted to new reality of no low hanging fruits fast enough.

[@jfolz]

IMO esoteric edge cases is where Stack Overflow should be. It should solve things that can't simply be googled. What's the point of keeping a separate, lightly condensed copy of some documentation or tutorial? Those primary sources already quickly become outdated, so what chance does Stack Overflow have at keeping up to date? Recently Stack Overflow has become simply way too noisy to find anything useful. Basic questions that sound similar enough to show up in search results drown out anything of value.

[@smort123]

Theres really two sort of people on SO.. I once asked a quastion why my code is performing badly. Someone wrote me a 7 paragraph thesis about the problem and the algorithm, with benchmarks, graphs and shit. He then reversed the code of the library I used and found out that the Microsoft Compiler uses a different assembly command in one function than the clang compiler for linux. Thats why my code sucks on Windows but not on Linux :D

[@cericat]

What's truly frustrating is it's always been like that, like even in 2009 it had the reputation from notably bad experiences with dogpiling, but then you'll have a few decent people that understand the systems and go out of their way.

[@yannick5099]

Stack Overflow has helped me tremendously in the past. That legendary thread about trying to parse HTML with Regex is the first thing I reference when someone wants to parse everything with Regex. Tony the pony is watching you…

[@viinisaari]

I've never asked a single question on Stack overflow, and I love the site. Most questions you could ask about programming have already been asked and answered

[@khatdubell]

I used to be one of those people who answered questions on SO. I stopped because of all the low quality questions, honestly. The reason why i would answer questions was because I like solving problems. Its a good path to learn more. Bonus points if it would actually help someone out.

[@putonghua73]

I never really perused SO, however I have seen this very issue - badly phrased questions and/or minimal to no time spent to find out - on Reddit and other sites The same goddamn question posted 10 million times without the poster stopping to think whether the question has been answered in the FAQs / sidebar, or a quick Google. I more and more understand why SO is the way it is, and why certain forums / sub-Reddits have a high bar for posting

[@kwastek]

Pro tip: you don't have to answer all questions. If you feel a question is low quality, you can just move along. I really don't understand why this concept is so foreign to the SO divas.

[@khatdubell]

​@@kwastek Just like how you could have just moved along, but you felt the need to comment. ironic, isn't it? Well, here's your earned reply: And here we have the typical low quality question asker of SO. I didn't say i have to answer all the questions, DuMas. But *_SOMEBODY_* has to moderate the site. Questions that have already been asked need to be closed. Questions without enough detail need to be triaged. Questions that are off-topic have to be closed. Questions that are mainly opinion based need to be closed. I could go on and on. I really don't understand why this concept is so foreign to the SO script kiddies. Wait, actually i do, i was just saying that a rhetorical device.

[@James-uw4it]

​@@kwastekI don't understand why so many people don't realize that SO is not a forum. Too many people use it like reddit.

[@ferinzz]

Yup. This is a 'tutorial please' request. This is not a 'I have gotten stuck and need more clarity on this part' question.

[@sstorholm]

As a moderator on a couple SE sites (not Stack Overflow though, please don’t hurt me 😂), the thing I don’t think people get is the general idea behind Stack Exchange, and thus get downvoted to oblivion. SE sites are not a forum, it’s a Q and A repository. The idea is that every question should be a very narrow issue, that can be answered definitely. Hence why they are so obsessed with not allowing too broad questions. Personally I’ve never had a problem asking questions on Stack Overflow myself, but they’ve been very narrow (what does this error with my shell script mean, what’s this python error etc).

[@sstorholm]

Another thing people don’t get is the sheer amount of bad questions these sites get, and how many of those end users never even see. The smaller SE sites get hundreds per hour, which I think is probably why some mods are quite harsh in their responses.

[@pseudocoder78]

A couple points I think are missed in this video: * The real goal of Stack Overflow is to create Q&As that will be useful for future website viewers and searchers. It is not to solve your question, and it is DEFINITELY not to turn bad programmers into good ones or teach them. Understanding this intent I think is the key to adjusting your expectations as a question poster. Nobody cares that you "just need help". Ask a good question. * Gamification is good to keep track of your progress and reward yourself for doing something you already want to do. If you don't enjoy gamification, it's probably because you're using it to try to motivate yourself to do something you actually don't want to do. It's the task you don't like, not the gamification.

[@NotAFanMan88]

I can see how Stack Overflow got to be the way it is, because of the need to curate things pretty heavily to not fill it with absolute BS Questions / Answers that dilute the search results, and the users are pretty damn jaded. Places like Stack Overflow really need a rule of "lurk moar" where you should observe the place a while before participating, so that you learn by example a lot more. Honestly, for most places on the internet, just lurking a while before trying to participate goes a long way to not be actin' a fool. Hell in that time you might learn that Stack Overflow sucks. Even now, I feel like a SO type of person when devs (even ones supposedly more experienced than me) are asking me questions at work about "why doesn't this work" and don't bother giving me a stack trace of what the error is to give me an idea of what I'm supposed to be helping with.

[@morganlancer]

I think that they should (if they haven't already), put a LLM chatbot on their site like bing chat. Imagine you as a newb writing your question in the form, and when pressing submit, instead of the answer getting posted immediately, they would get a ChatGPT-style answer based on all the questions & answers posted on stack overflow. If the user still feels that chatgpt didn't answer the question, he can press submit a 2nd time, but then the AIs answer will get added to the SO thread. As it is right now, stack overflow is becoming more and more of a giant FAQ and you are appearently supposed to look through ALL the questions to make sure that yours isn't a duplicate. Honestly I think most users should first turn to an LLM rather than searching on Google. Sure it does mistakes, but if you are trying to learn something and don't know how to google the answer, then a chat with an LLM can surely at least give you a hint and improve your search phrases. This LLM in theory should be even able to auto-generate the users question based on the conversation.

[@NeilHaskins]

I've asked ChatGPT "Hey, there's this thing that's like this and this and this. What's that called?" and got the right answer. Seems like a great tool when you're really not sure what you should be asking.

[@Houshalter]

LLMs will hallucinate answers to hard questions. But it should at least be able to tell you if your question is likely to get an answer or get closed, and how to rewrite it to be better. Should also help with similarity search to similar questions better than a keyword search engine.

[@anushgopalakrishnan]

The problem is not that they have a ruleset or guidelines for questions, its the way they're enforced. When I first began learning to code, I googled a question and found a few answers, but some of the specifics were different and I didn't understand how to apply it to my code specifically (probably because it was written like trash). So I asked exactly 1 question on SO, and because I was a beginner I didn't know that having the code example in the question would make it easier to understand, I assumed that expert devs would get what I meant. I didn't understand the type of questions that were not allowed either. And the question got downvoted to all hell, got some rude and. unhelpful comments and eventually got closed. That was my first experience with SO. I didn't use the website for 4-5 years after that until I was a much better programmer and was able to ask better questions. How does the website expect users to continue using the website when it can feel so alienating for someone who is new to it? IMO, knowing the kind of questions that are good to ask on SO requires you to be familiar with the thought process behind code debugging, something that only becomes instinct to a dev after a couple of years. It is extremely beginner unfriendly.

[@dancom6030]

Basically my experience too. It's like the community specifically wants to alienate anyone who is new to programming and only interact people who are already experienced to begin with.

[@TrippLilley]

​@@dancom6030 yes, in fact, that is exactly what and whom it's designed for. There's an excerpt of a panel with Jeff Atwood (SO co-founder) somewhere on the tube where he says, explicitly, that they were building a place for professional developers to get work done effectively.

[@dancom6030]

@Tripp Lilley still don't understand how that objective necessitates alienating new people. It's obviously not in any of their rules that new people shouldn't ask questions because they know how elitist that would be, yet the community essentially behaves this way anyway.

[@casusbelli9225]

@@dancom6030 >objective necessitates alienating new people. For the same reason you won't be allowed into doctorate studies if you only have high school diploma.

[@lkaszm]

@@TrippLilleyThey did a really bad job then lol

I usually don't look at the queues (But those are likely the reason why the same person commented on several new user questions in a row, SO encourages you to do so). I do however bookmark poorly answered or unanswered questions as I come across them when trying to fix something, and once I find the solution, I do my best to answer or improve the answer. I have, on many occasions found myself answering the question, just forgetting that I answered it. I also think that this is how you get the most valuable response, because I was in the exact same situation as the asker, and I went through a ton of documentation and 20 year old forum posts, which I can then boil down to a paragraph or two, and copy an example from the project I was working on. Also if you're not going to even bother skimming the rules, I'm also not going to bother answering you. His example questions would have been a million times better even if he only read the text in bold: "Make sure your question is on-topic and suitable for this site." "Search, and research" "Write a title that summarizes the specific problem" "Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague" "Introduce the problem before you post any code" "Help others reproduce the problem" (Specifically this one, which I don't understand why they don't put at the top) I don't think that is too much to ask. I agree that some people are toxic on SO (And this is largely due to the way it works, but some people are also just dicks), but the better the question, usually the better the answer. Also the guy who coached out a good question is a true hero. I wouldn't have done that, I would probably just have skipped the question entirely.

[@hardcorecode]

It's easy to recommend social interactions when you have had a normal-lish upbringing. I bet most social awkward people were denied social interactions in school and their neighbourhood because they are different from others. This is the root cause! I pretty much went through this myself. However, once I started working clients/employees started to talk to me about really personal stuff and slowly I learned how to socialize. I am still terrible at socializing but I am lucky to have found clients/employees that talk me. Avoiding social interactions and being left out are two totally different things. Nevertheless Great video!

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

i don't think this is the root cause perhaps a cause in general i don't subscribe to "i am the victim in my own story," belief. I was ruthlessly bullied throughout middleschool & highschool. it was choices i had to make to manage how i communicate and almost everyone else has the same power to do so in their book (some it comes significantly easier)

[@hardcorecode]

​@@ThePrimeTimeagen fair enough, being bullied in-person/ face-to-face can be managed ! psychological bullying on the other is more devious and you don't even know when it's happening. In fact I only figured it out when I left the neighbourhood I grew up in! Anywheres, I am splitting hairs.

[@free_software_channel]

​@@ThePrimeTimeagen I was also bullied in school. I am on the autism spectrum. I ended up joining the Marine corps for infantry and now I have PTSD but at least now I take no shit and no prisoners. That being said your comment seems somewhat callous. I agree everyone should keep putting in effort but saying you did something so somebody else can too is unrealistic and doesn't take much into account people's personal situation(lacks empathy) I think this video in general strikes on something deeper - the elitist mentality, which in my opinion is behavior you exhibit. I'm aware of this as I was a squad leader in the Marine corps. I'll always have a little bit of that in me. Just understand that the only audience that respects that mentality is other elitists. So the masses it makes people look like an ass hole. Sorry if I've offended, I promise I'm not a troll I'm just blunt and I would have rather pulled you aside and told you this in private but thats obviously not an option. I'm a big fan of the channel and relate to you in more ways than you can know. I kind of want to make a channel someday too (hence the name)

[@ruukinen]

@@free_software_channel The problem is, having social interaction is pretty much the only way to become better at having social interactions. You can read all the programming books that exist in the world but nobody is going to think you're a good engineer unless you've actually sat down and developed some software/s. Someone might have had the easy path in life and gotten that social interaction in when they were young. That doesn't change the fact that to get on that level you also need to get that social interaction done. You can argue it's way harder now that you are an adult or whatever but crying about it isn't going to do anything to change it. If you want to improve at something 9/10 the best way to do that is to go out and do the thing you are bad at, fail and then repeat until you get good.

[@free_software_channel]

@@ruukinen who's crying? Also take your picture down you're ugly as sin

[@Korvanick]

As someone inexperienced, there is nothing I love more than googling my question only to find a Stack Overflow post of someone being told to google their question.

[@rzr1191]

honestly had a great time on SO when I was new. Those people answering your questions are volunteers not customer support - some folk don't get that. Same story on github issues A lot of people simply ask questions that warrant a full howto blog which isn't what SO is about. It's understandable that people managing those boards get frustrated If you're new I recommend going through tutorials first and at least present what you've tried or ask on forums that are more general

[@brighamwhite]

Wasn't the premise of the first question he asked that it was supposed to be from a total newb? The implication there was that a newb is too new to be able to know what a good or a bad question is, how broad is too broad, and what they should and should not already know. The total newb doesn't know enough to know what is a shitty question and what is not a shitty question. That's the point he was trying to make.

[@thekwoka4707]

Then being told to stop asking questions is a good thing, no? They can spend some time reading questions and researching. And the second comment was a link explaining how to ask better questions. I don't feel this showed much toxicity at all.

[@DavidMadrigalHernandez]

⁠​⁠@@thekwoka4707that’s still missing the point. Given the scenario the video presented: how is a new user supposed to know what to research, if they can’t even phrase their problem in the form of a question? A better solution would have been to say something along the lines of “Hey, maybe this question can point you in the right direction…” with a relevant link to a question/article/etc. Another option would have been, as Prime mentioned, a LMGTFY link with a relevant question. Something to actually help the newb hit the ground running rather than being essentially condescending through the “How to write a good question link” or the temp ban.

[@casusbelli9225]

@@DavidMadrigalHernandez >new user supposed to know what to research, if they can’t even phrase their problem in the form of a question? By hitting the book and self-educating. KZbin is free. MIT courses are free. Auditing courses on coursera is free too. If you can't even phrase your question, you already are jumping over your head. Instead of bothering others, be so kind and lurk more.

[@koftespiess]

@@casusbelli9225 Well said.

[@ddomingo]

Even though it was hard and torturous I am glad I went to college for computer engineering. They teach you to think like an engineer, learn like an engineer and solve problems on your own. But just like you, I also regret not taking the Operating Systems class. Now I am too lazy to go back into it.

[@arxci9402]

The problem with stack overflow is that it's the step after you've tried googling, but when you're a beginner you don't know terminology and what to look up half the time so googling doesn't end up getting you anywhere and people that have been coding for years see your question and instantly look down on it because to them its a simple lookup but to me it's hours of looking up the wrong thing because idk what words to use

[@casusbelli9225]

>you don't know terminology Then hit a library instead of a SO? You, like, straight up have free courses on programming basics, even videos here on youtube. How the fuck you even get into something intermediate level without knowing the basics? I didn't even write a single line of code without hitting the book first and learning the basics about language (syntax), general lingo, and how computer, more or less, operates, the hell you are doing?

[@TranscenGopher]

All of that still doesn't mean those bad underresearced questions should remain on the site.

[@arxci9402]

@@TranscenGopher don't think I said that once, but it also doesn't mean there aren't nicer responses and ways to help people. Like pointing someone in a useful direction before closing a question.

[@TankorSmash]

I spent a lot of time answering questions on StackOverflow. The points are fun, and I wish someone was able to help me that way when I started programming. When the person closes and downvotes your answer, it feels awful, but unfortuntely without it, SO would be more like Quora or TomsHardware. It's sorta like wondering why you need a janitor if the place is so clean all the time anyway. There's probably a nicer middleground, but SO gets a lot of traffic, and you get used to seeing low-effort questions so it's easy to assume the worst after seeing it 10 times in a row.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

I could totally understand that.

[@ingframin]

It doesn't give people the right to be condescending bastards replying with evil sarcasm nor give them the right to perform the amount of cyberbullying they do. You see a low effort question? Ignore it. You see a question you do not find interesting? Don't answer it. Do you feel the person asking could find the solution by themselves with just a little hint? Provide a little hint. Moderating a website against possible malicious actors is one thing. Collective organised cyberbullying is just stupid. I do not even look at StackOverflow anymore when I have a problem.

[@casusbelli9225]

@@ingframin >Collective organised cyberbullying is just stupid. It does better work at filtering. Itš like why Gordon Ramsay screams at his chefs - where normal language won't deliver the message, abrasive shouting littered with f-bombs not only will, but will also remain.

[@TranscenGopher]

10 times? - more like 500 times.

[@bigd8122]

I joined SO over 10 years ago and about 5 years ago wanted to start actively answering questions to contribute. I gave up after 30 minutes because the new questions were the kind of crap you ask a teacher's assistant about your cs101 homework because you don't know how to read error messages.

[@informedcitizenry874]

Not really actively on SO but I'm sympathetic to that community largely. There are so many bad questions on there--many either that completely miss important context like steps taken to troubleshoot, what stack they are using, etc. and the "I want you to finish my CS homework for me" variety. I could see being a contributor it takes discipline just to take a question as earnest and good faith.

[@DanCojocaru2000]

The contributors get no sympathy from me. Nobody forces them to answer. Or to do anything, in fact. It's not a task they must do. There is zero reason for it to cause frustration. But, even if those bad questions would cause frustration, it is absolutely no justification. The blame is 100% on the contributors for being shit people, writing mean comments, and clicking the button when the right thing would be to just do nothing.

[@informedcitizenry874]

@@DanCojocaru2000 While it's true that no one forces them to answer, no one PAYS them to answer either. So there's certainly that :) Definitely not wanting to defend the more anti-social behavior because I've been on the other side of that treatment myself. I used to post questions to a dev community (not SO, a slack group more specific to my work), and mostly people were friendly, but there was the inevitable person who insisted I needed to know my solution was terrible and "By the way, why are you even doing X? If you read the documentation you would know that's a terrible idea". (Me: "Look, brother, I'm just trying to complete this user story, alright. Just cut me some slack over here") So yeah, I get it.

[@DanCojocaru2000]

@Nate Burnett The issue is that they still have the option of just not doing anything at all, which takes way less effort. Just ignore the question and move on. As such, any bad action is 100% on then, with absolutely zero excuses. They had the option to do nothing, and have instead actively chosen to be bad people.

[@TrippLilley]

​@@DanCojocaru2000 but you sem to be treating "doing nothing" as a zero-cost choice. If that person is on SO because they want to contribute to making it a place to come to find thoughtful questions and useful answers, then "doing nothing" carries a cost that gets passed on to someone else. Now, it is fair to say that "doing something" could be executed better, but I also have tremendous empathy for the person seeing the same half-assed question posted for the 1000th time and reaching for the extra-bristly broom instead of the comfy feather duster.

[@DanCojocaru2000]

@@TrippLilley Doing nothing **is** a zero cost choice.

[@asmrddict]

"This is something that could be Googled." Google result: Stack Overflow. And of course, the "why would you want to do that?". To which the answer is usually that the person is new or has to use someone elses code or a library. Presumably the answerer doesn't know the answer, they're not required to post, so why did they?

[@Xemptuous]

I don't get the hate. I have not yet had to post a question to find answers, and every SO question I find that answers my questions doesn't have rude answers. The only rude ones are when someone asks a stupid question that they could have found faster by googling it and not wasting other people's time with "i'm too lazy to figure it out myself, gimme the answer." SO is meant to be a reference for finding good answers to questions, not a chatroom or reddit board for stupid questions.

[@felixw841]

I answer or comment on questions on SO from time to time It could definitely be more friendly there, but also there's TONS of questions coming in which lack any amount of prior self-driven research/effort. That's no excuse to the unfriendliness of course, but if a questions clearly lacks any kind of research or details, one should not wonder if it gets closed. I've had multiple instances where I was browsing newest questions, clicked on one of which I was neither familiar with the language nor the library they were using and was able to provide an answer by taking 2 minutes to browse to documentation of the relevant library or language.

[@binglemcbawb]

90% of the time when you google your SO question, there's an ALREADY EXISTING question wherein the people back then told them to google it too. not realizing that stackoverflow is also a website in which google results are sourced from. effectively perpetuating a vicious cycle.

[@WilsontheWolf]

I've never actually made a stackoverflow account, mostly because I can usually find my question on google (often times already asked on stackoverflow). Usually when I do have questions, I'll ask in discord severs, where there's often people who know about the packages. Often times I'll contribute back to theses severs for helping support other people need help.

[@LukeBeenJammin]

Gamification is one of the best ways to learn. You can always opt to not play. Children play to learn, and the lucky ones realize they should never stop playing. Instead, find a game you like that someone will pay you to play.

[@dzisonline]

Did he just ask AI to write a response in a more human way? We're doomed.

[@casraf]

I got my first dev job through Stack Overflow. My old CTO didn't wanna pay for their job listings so he basically scraped their users and did his own filtering. I had some contact information there. I don't really answer a lot these days, but I still try to. It's good practice, sometimes you learn from it; at worst it's some nice brain teasers for when you're bored.

[@manjuu000]

Mmmmmm

[@Leonardo-nf5jc]

To me it seems to work the same way arch Linux and other forums work, but I've never experienced toxicity there, it's not easy going out of your way to answer others questions and it's even harder if they don't ask it in an useful and informative way. I can understand why they might get angry and frustrated but at least don't show it, try to help them understand what's wrong with their questions and they might even get the answer themselves.

[@sk-sm9sh]

There is a problem of scale here. Linux arch forums are small in comparison to SO and people who gonna go out of their way to ask a question about linux to arch linux forum already fall to certain geeky spectrum thus there is a sense of actual community being there. SO is not really a community - it's just too big - you get people by numbers of tens of thousands who have no idea what they are doing and dumping either their homework assignments or random code snippets asking to debug them or what not.

[@Leonardo-nf5jc]

@@sk-sm9sh Ye, you're right, didn't though about that

[@gabrom5047]

"The question that he typed would make a better Google search than a Stack Overflow question." Where do you think Google takes you for those answers? If there is a forum for answering questions, and I have the same question... If somebody is legitimately involved in their own project, they have the drive. Surely they tried Google and came to an impasse. These websites are meant to answer these questions...

[@adambickford8720]

I post on SO because if you've got a thick skin, you'll level up quick via Cunningham's Law ("the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer")

[@echobucket]

I think stackoverflow should have a section for noobs.... they can ask their bad questions and friendly people would help them learn how to write their question better. Once your question gets upvoted enough as a good question, then it gets released to the general public. But that will never happen.

[@thekwoka4707]

Feel like this always becomes a place that nobody answers any questions, or other people who have no idea also answer it.

[@IvanKravarscan]

There is a triage system and it would be perfect place for what you say but it's not developed enough.

[@Enjgine]

6:50 it is not unfair. Teach, don't criticize. They could be nice, but they choose not to.

[@brainsniffer]

I did use to use it quite a lot 10 years ago, and the related sites, like the dba one is great. I do wonder how the “closed as duplicates” and stuff goes when the frameworks and tools can go thru large changes between versions, and if previous answers remain relevant.

[@nomadshiba]

answer gets updated or edited

[@MrAntice]

@@nomadshiba Err.. rarely. Still a metric crapton of jquery answers being touted as the correct one because editing the answers rarely happens on old questions. I've been down some pretty deep duplicate question rabbit holes. If you are lucky, you might find the modern solution hidden somewhere down in the bottom of a comment thread. but the accepted answer remains because the user asking never came back. I skip SO search results nowadays unless it's a very basic command line thing I've forgotten or something. but chatgpt has more or less taken over the "wth was the correct syntax for mongorestore again" issue, so SO is even less desirable now.

[@estranhokonsta]

As i said in another place for the same situation, Stackoverflow is not a site for beginners. People that use stackoverflow as if it was just a google search are just abusing the time and patience of others. Is the time of others less valued than the one from someone who can't even take the time to read a little about how the site works?

[@bananas_5856]

Bruh youre acting like every question should be answered or youre penalized to death, you could choose to answer it or not lol

[@hannessteffenhagen61]

99% of issues with new users are people just asking really bad questions. You might get bad answers too, but those will more often than not get down voted into oblivion and I've yet to see someone complain about that. The other issue is that when you point out to someone they're bad at asking questions their immediate response is to get defensive, rather than actually trying to fix this deficiency. And the "goodness" metric for questions isn't something stackoverflow specific, it's the exact same procedure you should take anywhere before asking a question if you wish to avoid embarrassing yourself. Get your thoughts in order, collect the relevant facts pertaining to your problem, check the manual, roughly in that order, though you might have to cycle through it a couple times. And when actually asking the question, include all the relevant parts and leave out the parts that aren't. You know those funny memes about tech illiterate people calling IT about their computer not working, and after 15 mins of back&forth it turns out the power isn't plugged in (bonus points if that was the first thing they were asked to check and they just asserted it is without actually checking, even more points if followed by "I'm not stupid you know")? Try not to be that person and you'll be fine. I regularly use SO. We get questions from people who are at skill levels from anywhere between "just discovered computers existed last week" and "worked in IT since before you were born". Both tend to get answers if they spend some effort on the question. --- Also you don't get any points on so for comments or for voting. If someone is doing so it's because they think it's the right thing to do, SO does nothing to encourage this behaviour. --- FWIW, SO does _not_ work as a teaching tool. It works as a "I have diagnosed my problem, don't know how to proceed, some volunteer expert advice would be really helpful - oh hey this thing already has an answer, I don't even need to ask" tool. I think people tend to go in with the wrong expectations, but I don't know what else SO is supposed to do beyond the help articles that are already there. Maybe some gpt-based clippy tool that tells you if your question could use more details, or that you should just post your code instead of screenshots of it or some artistic pseudocode interpretation of your code? --- Fwiw I think this video (the one prime is reacting to, not primes commentary) is awful. Pretty much the entire thing is in bad faith, and the galls to call someone "smug" and ranting about communication skills and not making assumptions is pretty impressive coming from someone who feels like judging a person's entire character and background based on a few one-liner comments that he's deliberately reading in the least charitable way possible is a reasonable thing to do.

[@TrippLilley]

Yeah I'm really not impressed with OP as a critic. He's saying to treat people with empathy without extending that empathy to the people who are attempting to maintain a resource and community they care about. (OP being the blue shirt guy, not Prime)

[@warumich7201]

That's something I noticed in almost all of these SO videos. They basically assume that SO is purely populated by socal outcasts, that need to touch grass. Noone mentions how rude it is to ask some inappropiate questions without caring to even look at the faq (which is specifically pointed out for new accounts, that want to ask their first questions).

[@supertrooper6011]

As far as im concerned there is only 1 rule for stack overflow: write a clear, concise and original question. If pasting the title into google gives you the answer then why write the question? I think the system works... 90% of the time i abandon my half written questions after 5 minutes of research because i found the answer. The alternative is hosting 20000 posts asking how to get out of vim.

[@complexity5545]

Thank god Stackoverflow came about. Back in the day you could not use your college or google for any serious questions without getting disney or p0rn or a professor that was out of date. Google is even worse now. Stackoverflow is a forum of professionals to fix the horrible documentation of the boomers. Stackoverflow was like a godsend for undocumented stuff.

[@ericmyrs]

If I ask a question, I go and answer one. Helping out people is cool.

[@darkdudironaji]

I've always found stackoverflow to be very helpful. All you need to do is provide a code snippet show them you have actually tried to do something yourself. And then they're happy to show you where you went wrong. They don't meet noobs, they hate people that don't try things on their own.

[@misterogers9423]

I liked the ending comment about the neckbeard about evil. Most would fall into jerk. Evil is reserved for truly morally repulsive acts beyond being a smug jerk. A lot of those truly evil acts also require action and effort.

[@Socsob]

I love stack overflow, but I've only ever used it for answers to others with similar issues. Never asked a question. If I don't find it on google, I generally assume I'm going down the wrong avenue as I generally work with languages that have been out for long enough for most questions to have been asked

[@ITR]

The problem with "google this" is that the post usually ends up as the top result as google. It also doesn't really help people learn _how_ to google something, sometimes the top results aren't the right results or have the result hidden somewhere in them, and sometimes you don't know _what_ to google when you're new.

[@Brunoenribeiro]

Downvotes could be more semantic: something like Facebook's reactions, where you don't just like a thing, you can react to it in different ways. A downvote could become "downvoting because this is googleable", "downvoting because it lacks context", stuff like that

[@TranscenGopher]

It already exists, but people still take all down votes personally, as if someone downvoting your question is somehow judging you as a person.

[@VivBrodock]

hmm from a bit of an outside perspective. I use MathOverflow a lot. It's absolutely possible to ask bad questions, and bad questions are bad for the health of the forum. expecting every precious baby to be swaddled and given a personal guru just because they are new is so unrealistic. and it's absolutely not "toxic" to downvote a question that's not worth answering because it's gonna get closed for violating the posting rules anyways. SO is absolutely allowed to moderate however they see fit and if you can't manage reading documentation for how to ask a question properly how are you gonna make it as someone who has to read documentation for your job? idk maybe it's a boomer take to say "it's the internet people aren't gonna be kind, follow the rules and suck it up or go somewhere else", but I find it so weird that he's harping on the idea that just because someone is a noob they deserve to be treated with kiddie gloves.

[@arijanj]

I've personally never asked anything on SO, but I'm noticing that it's very similar to how forums used to be. I'm also not a part of that older generation, but going on tech/software forums you often see answers much ruder than this.

[@juanandrade2998]

SO has forced me to double check my question for so long that I end up actually finding the response while writing the question. Ofc a usual SO question takes about 30 minutes to write, including adding citations, etc.. What's the worst thing? Almost all doubts in programming are always a mismatch between the abstract architecture you make up in your mind, and the actual architecture. When this happens, almost always (70% of the time) the fault is the non-intuitive way in which the actual architecture works. Simultaneously the culprit may or may not be the fault of the original designer: A) It may be a limitation of the underlying tech that forced the functionality in some non-intuitive way. B) Some legacy structure that suffers from "A)" which forces a non-intuitive superA (or B lol). C) It was just a very bad idea to do it like that... but what can we do. All of this "knowledge" is what Kant defines as "a-posteriori" and all of that knowledge is ultimately POINTLESS and you are neither "smarter" for knowing them, NOR dumber for not knowing them... its just an exercise of the memory, that's all. It's like If I rank your IQ by asking *What is "SumilyFoschi"? (a word I invented yesterday while drunk)* Of course you won't know what that means... because it doesn't make any sense... and of course you'll immediately forget it If I told you what it is, since it shares NO connections to other knowledge in the "neural network" of your brain, because the word contains no information about it's meaning, it is easy to forget...

[@CallousCoder]

I guess that is why I loathe all frameworks. It does some thinking for you and you have to know how that was done. What was the rational and when you are trapped in a framework you are stuck! Because often you can’t breakout. I just like to write things myself (albeit with libraries to safe time) so that I know how each part works. I once was so stuck in a Microsoft identity Manager (MIM) framework that I had no idea how to implement what the architect wanted. And insane the merit of his request. And I knew how I could implement this in J2EE or C++ with relative ease (just a lot of work). So we called Microsoft over and I explained what the vision was and why, but I had now idea how to make several instances of a person object based on the different sources that we would orchestrate in to a digital identity based in different weights of attributes from different sources and send back ownership to an attribute when it no longer was provided by a more leading source. Microsoft guys say there and looked at each other…. “Well the honest answer js, that this is advanced IdM and it’s not what MIM is or will ever be. You need NovellIDM or SailPoint for that or you canids our ETL SSIS.” -“Thank you for your honesty, because I though indeed that it was limited but I wasn’t sure and now we are.” So we rebuild it in J2EE over the course of a year. And it was faster, more flexible as well. Frameworks are not my friend.

[@sumnerevans]

The reason that I have as much reputation as I do is because there was one summer where I had a horrible internship where they didn't have anything for me to do, so I just spent all my time answering questions on StackOverflow.

[@incremental_failure]

I both ask and answer on SO. It's a great place. They filter nonsense like he's asking out to keep SO clean. If every newbie spammer asks ridiculous questions then you'll have a site not worth visiting. It's also good to show what you've tried. I often get criticised for my questions as well and half the time the criticisms are valid. You need to grow a thicker skin and deal with criticism when it's constructive. When it's personal and off-topic then it's a different story.

[@casusbelli9225]

Nah, there is a problem with their answers either pointing out to something outdated, the long-ass discussions that are, at best, tangenial to the question asked, or bunch of people trying to shoehorn their baby duck technology/method instead of answering the question. Which makes SO abysmal as a knowledge base. And yeah, most of the time itš not valid criticism. It's just useless self-wanking. But such is the industry, most of the programmers are bitter that they are considered code monkeys, so they try to scratch their ego this way.

[@aminelahlou1272]

Last time I used stackoverflow: 1. Asked a question about d3 2. Someone closed my question 3. Six months later I had the same problem and googled the question (i forgot I asked that question six months before) 4. Guess what link I got first on google: mine. 5. Never use stackoverflow, only lsp and documentation 6. Main value of stackoverflow is you get human answer, but why ask narrow answer that can be answered by an ai or documentation? Hence this thing about broad question is UTTERLY stupid

[@br3nto]

14:41 but they aren’t mean answers. They’re blunt, not mean. I think SO moderators suffer the same problems as call center operators. You can burn out, and get annoyed at the same bad questions over and over. At that point, the SO mod should probably hand the reins to someone less jaded who still has the capacity to be friendly.

[@Elzilcho1000]

I’ve answered more questions than I’ve asked because, if all I can find on Stack overflow are unanswered questions for my problem, I’ll go back and answer them once I’ve figured it out.

[@joaooliveirarocha]

In my first SO account a moderator / editor / idk stole my answer, edited mine so that it looked wrong. I messaged / commented why the guy did that and got banned lol. This was like 5 years ago. I eventually created other account 2 years ago and I've been doing Ok (maybe bc I'm one of the few answering "how to setup React Native" questions)

[@thegreenxeno9430]

Step 1: google it Step 2: ask reddit Step 3: read the documentation Step 4: ask gpt Step 5: give up and comment on SO questions for the rest of the day

[@fakevc211]

SO is toxic upto a certain extent. In 2020 I asked "How does JS manage its dynamically sized arrays? Does it occupy empty consecutive blocks? Does it resize or does it have a linked list to link all blocks?" The question got 6 downvotes & I got banned from posting. No comments, no answers, just downvotes. A friend of mine upvoted my other QnA and my acc became active. Now if I see a benginner question, even if its a google search away, I tell them google it. Little kind words don't hurt, they help.

[@chrisallanson9902]

I honestly believe stack overflow will be one of the first places to die with the release of A.I like ChatGPT. You can ask it anything and no matter how bad your question it answers immediately, politely and coherently. Even if what you asked is totally stupid it will suggest what you should really be asking and even give sources. Why would you post into that Cesspit going forward?

[@SamOween]

A fair comment

[@MirkoVukusic]

Nope, absolutely nothing will change with AI. for 99% of those downvoted questions we already have a tool, for years, Google. And it's not being used. AI wont either.

[@chrisallanson9902]

@@MirkoVukusic I don't understand your response, sorry. Please elaborate as I do want to understand. Google uses meta data to try to match up your query with suitable web pages and most results will lead you to stack overflow. But if your choice is to ask a question there, get down voted, have your question closed and hidden then prevent you from asking other question OR to ask ChatGpt people will start to do the latter. It's a better user experience and offers better results. I might have misunderstood your point though

[@MirkoVukusic]

@@chrisallanson9902, sorry, english is my 2nd language. I'm not saying AI or ChatGPT is not better tool to search for answers (for certain questions) than Google search or even SO. What I'm saying is that it's not going to be used. To use Google, or ChatGPT, you have to make an effort to find an answer. Problem with bad questions on SO is that effort is (very very often) nonexistant. So many questions can be answered equaly fast with ChatGPT as with Google, but guess what... they're being asked on SO anyway. So that will not change with AI. People will still be lazy and think SO is "tutorial" site or free Fiver. I'm not saying SO can get ugly... I'm saying it's far more rare thing than this video suggests.

[@chrisallanson9902]

@@MirkoVukusic ah I see! Yes, if the user puts no effort into the question they will not get the results they need. AI is not a mind reader so there would be no difference there. I fully understand SO must clear duplicate or poor questions or we would be drowning in them! Perhaps AI will simply supplement SO

[@br3nto]

Yeah, that question deserves a downvote and to be deleted. No googling done. Just writing the question, SO would have suggested sooo many answers at multiple points in the question flow. Did they read the docs? Downvotes here isn’t toxic. It’s ensuring the quality of SO Qs and As.

[@ravenecho2410]

i tried to answer a stack overflow question once b/c i now have more experience and while looking for another item - i was like "oh! i know exactly how to do this one, and i hit a very similar error and it really sucked", but then stack overflow was like nahhhh format 20 questions and responses and we'll allow you to answer. so not only should you not ask a question on stack overflow (first mistake) i feel like one shouldn't even engage with stack overflow in any capacity :) except using google to find the correct post on SO

[@cericat]

Right... now I remember why I've never used my SO account, I only created it to answer a question and got told nah FO.

[@equivocator7727]

SO is a valuable resource for obscure questions when you're not sure what terms to search for or what concepts might make sense to apply to your problem. It's best used to find a new perspective on your problem in my experience as someone who's never posted a question. Definitely some useless comments and answers, but I find those are generally easy to ignore (privilege of not asking the questions myself I guess).

[@ugotisa]

I only go to Stack Overflow if I am stuck on some weird error. Nothing else, it's really good for that. Other than that, like others I have also been clapped back and never asked anything again.

[@marshallsweatherhiking1820]

Yea. Its very good for specific errors that still don’t get good google results for whatever reason. I feel like the “too broad” criteria can discourage curiosity though. Sometimes all the tutorials you can find on a topic are simplistic and leave out important details, and reading documentation is also little use because it has no examples and uses terminology you are unfamiliar with. I wanted to understand how make files work and eventually got a good answer, but there were a ton of obnoxious snotty comments along the way that made me want to punch the screen. Does anybody actually learn anything by “reading the docs” or is that just what they say? Do their brains all function like a computer program? It’s annoying to hear “read the docs” when you did read but it didn’t make sense.

[@sp3cterproductions]

7:32 - StackOverflow in a professional manner: "Stop asking so many stupid questions."

[@CaffeineForCode]

I think the problem is that people don’t understand that stack overflow isn’t designed for beginners. It’s designed to get after some of the most difficult questions out there. It’s something like a meritocracy where terrible questions get downvoted into oblivion. I got flamed on stack overflow the first time I asked a question but instead of taking it personally, I took it as “I should stop being lazy and read the documentation before posting.”

[@incremental_failure]

Exactly the same experience here. People need a thicker skin, you learn the best when slapped a little for being silly. If that deters you from learning then you're not hungry enough to learn anyway.

[@airkami]

The thing with stack overflow is you have to be in the weeds using a pitchfork as a hammer in a way that no one ever has done it before that is also considered reasonable and then your question is worthy of an answer. It is like they thought “what is in my pocket?” Is a good riddle because the person asking has a clear understanding of the deepest level of pockets in knowing that things can go in them even if most women’s clothing don’t have functional pockets. That understanding is something we should all have given the superiority of pockets over purses unless you are asking the riddle about pockets in a purse, then you’re just a noob because those don’t count as a riddle because everyone know purses are bags which are accessories, not clothing. -3 learn to ask a real riddle, you know like “what’s in my pocket?” If your question isn’t on-topic it will make the forum worse.

[@griof]

The fact that so many developers google their questions and they actually find the answer in stackoverflow kind of proofs that the extreme cleaning process (even toxic) does make the site higher quality. Interesting paradox

[@jorionedwards]

For FAQ , StackOverflow + a search engine is about peak performance. Soon as you need something more obscure it's time to look elsewhere.

[@VividCoding]

That sounds cherry picked. Often, I have to scroll through multiple questions, and maybe somewhere deep in the comments is the answer I was looking for

[@rya1701]

more often you google a question and it's either marked as duplicate with unhelpful links or the comments saying to google it

[@MrAntice]

@@rya1701 Or you find questions about x, without framework y specifically stated, and the top answer is use framework y when it's no longer a relevant framework in the first place because it's outdated. case in point vanilla JS questions answered with JQuery.... Seriously. most questions tagged as duplicate always send you to the JQuery answers that aren't relevant at all anymore, because everything has changed since then.

[@mollthecoder]

@@MrAntice JQuery isn't that hard to translate to vanilla - but I do agree

[@coldfire6869]

Lets be grateful to all these brave people asking questions

[@kejtos5]

While I have found resources related to programming to be somewhat hostile to noobies in general (e. g. so many "How to start with X" skip steps and assume apriori knowledge for some reason), I find this "SO is toxic" notion absurdly overblown. If I didn't get the OP video recommended (and few reddit posts), I wouldn't even know anyone thinks that. From what I have seen on SO (and other SE sites) there are like 10s of stupid or lazy questions for each unnessesarily hostile answer.

[@Verssales]

One of the reasons I don't ask many things is because most of the time you can just google it and due to some bad experiences now I just am very good at googling to a point where ask a question is not necessary anymore.

[@dipanjanghosal1662]

StackOverflow is definitely toxic, but they have saved my a$$ so many times that I cannot remain pissed at them. Some answers literally made want to kiss them on the cheek for helping me.

[@robertfox4114]

Basically: 1. If you are too broad - you are flamed for that. 2. If you are very specific - you are flamed for not reading the documentation.

[@qy9MC]

This is so true! Technically all problems can be solved by: spending more time and reading documentation. I don't understand why people complain when the point of a question is to avoid that in the first place! They're completely missing the point.

On a real answer, Mr. Tom Selleck, after seeing “berating a temporary coworker on an svn commit message that reverted changes that had actual reason to be there” (bc I asked the committer to do the commit for me, it was a hard-to-see edge case), the closing comments in SO all seem pretty neutral in tone, and every people I’ve read complaining about SO toxicity are misrepresenting that neutral tone as adversarial because the closing of their question hurt their ego or something around the ballpark. Lemme mod SO and you’ll see what toxicity REALLY means, bunch of… meh idonow, it’s late in my TZ, I’m tired and grumpy, and probably biased because I never asked a question on SO (I find an answer before having to ask), and because I saw the birth and growth of SO “live as it happened”, I guess having a PhD in SO history before asking a question is too much to ask nowadays. Who’d’ve guessed 🤷‍♂️

[@CallousCoder]

I do wonder if many of the React/JavaScript reactors on StackOverflow actually know what a StackOverflow is and how to cause one? Is that a dick attitude towards them from my part? I simply don’t hold React/JS developers in high regard 😂They are sort of the burger flippers in the restaurant world. You need them but I don’t expect gourmet meals and deep fundamental understandings about the chemistry of cooking form them 😂

[@aakarshan4644]

you got no shit understanding ui engineering but i wouldn't blame you, classic backend behaviour lmao

[@rusi6219]

Being a JS dev is having an unnecessary amount of useless and unnecessary knowledge that cannot be transferred anywhere else

[@CallousCoder]

@@rusi6219 so true!

[@jonathan-._.-]

if your first thing you do on stackoverflow is ask a question youve already misunderstood the intent of the site , its not a question->answer site , its a site that already has the answers for 99.9% of all questions. and its main purpose is to bring the existing answers to peoples attention , if ur a programming noob i can guarantee every question you could possibly come up with (that isnt so specific that its more like youre trying to get a dev for free ) has already been asked and answered before