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Comment by steve_adams_86 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t want to seem like a jerk saying this, because I’ve put effort into supporting the site and helping with moderation, I know it’s all very challenging and difficult, but: I think stack overflow has been dead for a while.

Maybe you and I wanted different things from it and you still find it useful, but I haven’t really enjoyed it for many years. I loved it over a decade ago, these days I generally avoid it.

I was surprised by this purchase for that reason alone. I must be missing something. Stack must be way more useful and active than I realize, for reasons I’m unaware of.

I find the community pretty abrasive mostly.

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I found it incredibly useful as a beginner. As long as you could put together a decent question and were a little patient you would usually get your answer.

The more experienced I got, the less useful I found it. These days, if I’m stuck, most of the time so is everybody else reading my question.

Quite often it’s actually because I’ve encountered a bug with whatever framework I’m using, or a mistake in the documentation.

I find raising an GitHub issue more useful than asking on SO.

It’s still great as a knowledge bank thought, as others have pointed out most of the time when you Google an issue the answer will be on SO. The only issue there is when the top rated/accepted question is actually no longer correct, or best practice, as the language/framework has changed or evolved.

That's a great point. I haven't really noticed it but over the last few years, the first place is rarely Stack Overflow unless it's basic things (like how to use a git or tar feature). Checking Github issues or even just reading the code. Maybe the Google algorithm or Github SEO was improved to bring it up in the results but it has helped so I'm not complaining.

The StackOverflow community has always been extremely abrasive. People will constantly be rewriting or deleting your questions or leaving unhelpful comments complaining about something silly like the formatting.

With that said, it's still extremely useful. It makes my job easier and saves me a ton of time.

Jeff Atwood explained this behavior as stemming from the fact that when you work with a computer all day, you kind of become one.

Source: https://youtu.be/KZkYSSE8HHI

Formatting doesn't seem like a silly consideration when we are talking about programming.

> People will constantly be rewriting or deleting your questions or leaving unhelpful comments complaining about something silly like the formatting.

I will mercilessly soft-rewrite and spelling/formatting correct every question and answer into oblivion if I can be bothered, and find the issue annoying enough.

I treat SO like a Wikipedia of sorts, so presentation is important. Each topic will inevitably be read by a thousand other people in the future, so I might as well leave it looking presentable. It's a commons thing. "Don't leave trash behind and clean up if others didn't", basically.

I mostly build apps and services, so SO (lol) continues to be very useful for me. For instance, there are a myriad of bugs and glitches that come up in mobile app dev, or when using any popular programming language or framework. SO continues to have relevant, up-to-date information for the types of questions I'm seeking to answer. For example, I recently found out an issue I was pulling my hair out over was happening only on a particular version of a simulator...

Personally, I have never heard anyone say SO is not that good anymore, and certainly not that it is dead/dying.

Yes, people have gotten so mean. Even well researched questions are often downvoted within minutes. The whole moderation fiasko is just mirroring Wikipedia's decline.

Wikipedia's decline? It still has no viable competitor whatsoever, and certainly not one that's open for reading to all. It's not going away for a long time, and maybe not ever.

Decline in being an inclusive community where a wide range of people contribute rather than a semi-professionell league of gate-keeping white old men.

The internet just leads to new monopolies of the mind where "The winner takes it all". Wikipedia would deserve a competitor but there is 0% chance for one any time soon.

Same holds for SO.

> stack overflow has been dead for a while

Yep. SO has been read-only for me for years.

When I need help with something it's usually advanced enough to merit a Github issue otherwise I seek Slack/IRC/Discord/Gitter comunities of the technology I'm having trouble with.

I feel like it is read-only for the vast majority of users. The whole internet is.

Realistically, does it have to be read-write? I'm at the knowledge level where I can navigate my way around most things I need to without having to ask questions that haven't been asked already. RTFM has been drilled into me by online communities since my teens, and SO is to me exactly that "TFM".

To me, SO is the very opposite of TFM.

A manual contains all the possible answers to all the possible questions in a single document. To get an answer to your question, you just have to read, re-read, assemble, interpret and then you have your answer. It could take you 5 or 10 minutes depending on the quality of the manual and the complexity of the question.

With SO, you bypass all that and simply get an answer. You don't gain any understanding of the bigger picture, but then again, maybe you don't need to. Maybe you're diving into say esp32 to build your smart doorbell. Your don't want to become an esp32 expert, you just want your question answered.

Horses for courses

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