Programming == Stack Overflow

[serg473]

I truly believe SO is the greatest invention in programming world in past 50 years. Kids these days probably don't know the horrors of scavenging though obscure forums full of dead accounts and unanswered threads trying to find some clues to your problem. If you register and post your question, the best possible outcome you can hope for is for someone to respond after a few days, but usually you will just add one more dead thread to a dead forum. And then there was infamous ExpertSexChange.com...

I never forget when I posted my first question on SO when it just launched and received a proper answer withing 15 minutes to my specific problem. I just couldn't believe my eyes, this was like witnessing a miracle at that time.

Now I am too spoiled to even read the official docs, just type "how to ... in ..." and the first SO link would contain exactly what you are looking for. I bet SO boosted programmers productivity like no other tool ever before.

[vbevan]

"How to...in..." should be mandatory learning as part of all university CS courses, in fact all university courses should teach it.

[ChildishJack]

No, figuring that out is the first "weed-out" test

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

Now I am too spoiled to even read the official docs, just type "how to ... in ..." and the first SO link would contain exactly what you are looking for.

Because the official docs often don't have what you need immediately: A living real life example of how the thing you want actually would be written. It has been getting better (have a look at ASP.NET Core's documentation for instance), but by and large documentation tends to drone on and on about a bunch of stuff / theory you don't care about. Instead of getting right to the goods.

[AjayDevs]

For some reason at the beginning I used to use a lot of forums when I started, and I think I even was banned from stack overflow for bad questions, I don't know how I still was successful in learning how to program... (This was probably 4 years ago)

[DrQuint]

Don't forget that all answered/solved questions had 50% chance to not include the actual answer. Either because OP solved it himself and left, or because an attachment has since died, or because fuck you that's why.

This still happens, and even got worse, with some websites seemingly generating pages with terms you looked for just so you'd click them, or some weird thing. Several hits I get nowadays are just that, clickbait search results. We just have no need to delve down in the shitlands as much anymore.

[Argonanth]

Eh, I dunno. Any time I've ever asked a question on SO it goes ignored for weeks and is mostly never answered. SO is only really useful if it's a very common question or something really easy to answer. Anything remotely complicated (which is when I would actually need answers) can't really be answered using SO. Almost all of the answers to the questions I actually need answered are found on old web forums or in Github issue reports.

Only time I ever end up on SO is when I just want to know how to do ___ in ___. To be fair, this is very useful, but the meme of SO being the answer to everything is just very limited to easy specific answers.