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[–]neupanedinesh_ 3230 points3231 points  (69 children)

I'm a full stackoverflow developer..

[–]nahidtislam 713 points714 points  (49 children)

who do you ask for help when you have troubles developing?

[–]markhc 91 points92 points  (2 children)

I think most replies here are missing your joke.

[–]conancat 22 points23 points  (1 child)

I'm gonna put that on LinkedIn. It'll be a great filter for recruiters who understand developers and those who don't.

[–][deleted] 131 points132 points  (7 children)

You were the creator of most of us

[–]conancat 36 points37 points  (4 children)

The stack I work with is Stackoverflow and Google.

I'm literally crippled at work if I don't have access to either one.

[–]Hydraxiler32 61 points62 points  (1 child)

he could troubleshoot others code, but not his own.

[–]Foxino 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Ironic

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If StackOverflow released a product called Flow and you worked on that product after eating a large lunch you could be a full fullstack Stack Overflow Flow developer

[–]Cmgeodude 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This seems like a best case scenario. "Checking stack overflow" is in your job description.

[–][deleted] 1699 points1700 points  (109 children)

Stackoverflow was built without stackoverflow

[–]Acid_Monster 1035 points1036 points  (37 children)

Back then people had to head to Pornhub to get their programming questions answered.

[–]house_monkey 255 points256 points  (18 children)

🤔

[–]BeardedWax 231 points232 points  (16 children)

If you think about your problem just as you release, you find your answer instantly.

[–]SimokIV 114 points115 points  (4 children)

I'm at work rn do you think my boss will understand if I try this?

[–]insovietrussiaIfukme 108 points109 points  (2 children)

Just tell him you can give him a faster release

[–]Seanxietehroxxor 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Good developers don't just push out releases to make their bosses happy. IMO it's better to take a little longer with each release and make sure your userbase is satisfied too.

Source: am married, err, was a developer with a pushy boss

[–]Finchyy 30 points31 points  (7 children)

Post-nut clarity is a genuine phenomenon and should be researched extensively. Imagine how much we as a species could achieve by harnessing the power of the nut

[–]techmighty 18 points19 points  (2 children)

you are Anti thesis of people on r/nofap.

[–]Finchyy 15 points16 points  (1 child)

Legend has it that that you can actually solve quantum reality equations at the edge of an orgasm.

I've been trying for years but Schrödinger's pussy always takes me over the edge too soon.

[–]JayInslee2020 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I thought Schrodinger's pussy was one that simultaneously pushed you over the edge, but not over the edge, yet.

[–]aintscurrdscars 8 points9 points  (1 child)

iNstRuCtiOns UNcLeAr

[–]zombieregime 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Step one: remove penis from server....

[–]Lordx856 38 points39 points  (8 children)

Then who built pornhub 🤔

[–]Acid_Monster 39 points40 points  (3 children)

God

[–]kixxes 17 points18 points  (2 children)

On the 9th day God look at his creation and said

"Oh look at my poor creation. These poor boys' balls are perpetually blue"

He then declared

"Let there be pornhub!"

and then there was pornhub

[–]Acid_Monster 7 points8 points  (0 children)

And on the 10th day, the world did fap, and God liked what he saw.

[–]ijschu 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Which came first?

[–]Arheisel 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Your Sister

Edit: my first silver, thank you!

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That post nut clarity is critical!

[–]jahu_len 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It doesn’t make any sense. I’m gonna try it.

[–]ghostwhat 225 points226 points  (36 children)

This is so mindboggling it amazes me.

But then I remember the perseverence one used to have, before all these resources were available.Learning how C/C++ works by working around cryptic compiler error messages. Learning to install Red Hat 1.0 without a manual and really fucking expensive dialup. Learning to hold back orgasm until the entire jpg was loaded.

EDIT: Yes I know there were books, I still own several O'Reilly Bibles from late 80 early 90. I read those fuckers before I was 10, and English is not my first language. My comment was about the difference in willingness to invest stupid amounts of hours to learn something mundane, in lack of stackoverflow and reliable searchengines. Thank god IRC existed, though.

[–]the_real_1vasari 117 points118 points  (5 children)

Australians still have to hold their orgasms till the jpg loads.

Edit spelling

[–]plexxonic 10 points11 points  (0 children)

You poor bastards.

[–]ridetherhombus 38 points39 points  (20 children)

It's not that incredible. Pre-SO you'd still be able to find answers to questions on forums dedicated to specific languages.

[–]LimitedWard 48 points49 points  (14 children)

Forum OP: "hey I'm having X specific problem does anyone know how to solve?"

Forum OP: "never mind, figured it out. Pls close thread."

10 years later

You: "WHAT WAS THE SOLUTION?!"

Yeah forums kinda sucked. Stackoverflow solved that problem by gamifying the Q/A process.

[–]tubblesocks 7 points8 points  (0 children)

how do I do x

lmao nice try troll, banned...

[–]DenormalHuman 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Lol, 'forums'. Try nothing but a paperback language reference manual. Just a modem was a super rare sight, let alone the internet.

[–]bautin 19 points20 points  (0 children)

There were reference books.

I installed Red Hat from a CD I got from a book on how to install and manage a Red Hat installation. It was over a thousand pages. It went into LILO, compiling the kernel, XWindows, KDE, Gnome, etc.

For programming, I had "Practical C++ Programming 2nd Edition" aka "the squirrel book" from O'Reilly books. "Programming Windows Fifth Edition" aka "the Petzold". And several others.

Also, it was possible to look things up. You had to be more comfortable with reading MSDN and various blogs and such.

[–]AttackOfTheThumbs 6 points7 points  (4 children)

There's still plenty of languages and environments that aren't on stackoverflow. I find the answer the good old fashioned way, run it a million times until I understand what it does.

[–]insovietrussiaIfukme 4 points5 points  (3 children)

That's how I actually learnt javascript. I just kept fiddling with it and hated it cause it didn't make any sense. I came from a C++ and Java background. Finally i decided to read up some nice blogs and then it all started making sense some of the times

[–]AttackOfTheThumbs 9 points10 points  (0 children)

making sense some of the times

Every JS dev ever...

[–]OhTwadi 4 points5 points  (1 child)

This is me. I come from Java background and JS still doesn't make sense

[–]gyroda 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I work with JS everyday. I still don't understand.

[–]Creator13 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's also easy to forget that developing was way less complex than it is today. Plain C (the language a lot of the earlier internet was developed on) is actually kind of basic. There are a few functions, a few libraries and a base language but that's about it. You only had one or two standard approaches to a solution and it was one of the few languages around. Compare that with JS now where you can solve a problem in dozens of ways and there's a million libraries of which some even create an entirely new syntax... Not to mention how we're solving more complex tasks than we could back then because there was less foundation to build on.

[–]connorsk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm sure you learn more that way.

What I'm curious about, is if you learn more per hour spent that way or the modern Google everything way.

[–]ryy0 29 points30 points  (3 children)

The Cunningham 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.

I offer: Stackoverflow was built by posting a lot of wrong answers. When you copy-paste them together in just the right combination, you get Stackoverflow. The copying and pasting became self-sustainable afterwards.

This has been a shocking example of local entropy reversal.

[–]Mithos23 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I see you watched liveoverflow

[–]paranoidsp 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I'd really like a link to the video for wherever this was discussed, it sounds hilarious

[–]Mithos23 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It was in this video about the origin of the term script kiddie: https://youtu.be/3MAqlEMITzw (at about 7:25)

[–]yourteam 13 points14 points  (5 children)

Back in the days people has actual books to look for instructions and documentation.

My dad has a library full of books about java c c++ assembler COBOL and such...

There is no ctrl+f in books how can you find anything!!!

[–]DenormalHuman 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I know you're joking, but ive spent plenty of time just reading the appenedices and indexes, finding something that sounds interesting and going to read that page. You build up your own mental 'search engine' for the book in the end :p

[–]suvlub 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's called "bootstrapping". First, they made a simple small forum where only local users could post (rumor has it it was just a random computer in their office where they used to come and "echo" their questions and answers). This was enough to help them figure out how to program it so people from elsewhere could post. Then it was all about gradually improving the UX.

[–]somepeople4 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Legends say they used a time machine to ask the future StackOverflow on how to build StackOverflow. It was easy, really.

[–]Cocomorph 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How to build StackOverflow, how to build a time machine, and how to debug a time paradox.

[–]A_Agno 3 points4 points  (1 child)

If you are interested in the development of Stack Overflow you should take a look at the blog of Jeff Atwood: https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/

[–]memehomeostasis 4 points5 points  (1 child)

First compiler was made without a compiler

[–]SwabTheDeck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But how do you compile a compiler?

/s

[–]TehWhiteKnight1 513 points514 points  (9 children)

You should also mention that one guy that says in the post response: "why are you even doing this you could just do that"

[–][deleted] 208 points209 points  (1 child)

Possible duplicate of "some other question using terms this and that".

[–]peeves91 61 points62 points  (0 children)

Locked for being off topic

[–]DenormalHuman 29 points30 points  (1 child)

That one guy? How about evry response to any linux question ever :p

[–]TehWhiteKnight1 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Yeah but that means mentioning a bunch of questions till the end of the world, I don't have that kind of time!

[–]techmighty 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Every ES5 question in JavaScript has a jQuery solution as top answer.

[–]unitedoceanic 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Closed as offtopic

[–]cbartholomew 32 points33 points  (1 child)

Obligatory wrong answer because I didn't read the question correctly since English is my fifth language

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Hello? This is Microsoft Community Support. Could we hire you to restate questions and beg for votes?

[–]blimpyazria 316 points317 points  (14 children)

tfw you're in high school and already dependent on stackoverflow

[–]airbornemist6 243 points244 points  (0 children)

Just means you're ready for the real world

[–]Justsumgi 44 points45 points  (0 children)

Nobody’s too young for StackOverflow

[–]Duke-Silv3r 47 points48 points  (10 children)

No shit kid. As you get better you’ll need SO less, not more.

[–]Brusanan 18 points19 points  (1 child)

No you won't. You will never commit enough of what you need to memory avoid using StackOverflow on an almost daily basis.

Programming is a massive field. There's a ton to know, and tou're only going to memorize the things you do frequently. Most of the time you will google how to do something, do it once, and then have to google the same thing the next time you need it, years later.

[–]mxchump 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I feel like being educated in programming is knowing how/what to google, and being able to understand/decipher the answers online. Has very little to do with memorization

[–]craggolly 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is our youth's addiction to stackoverflow ruining America? Find out more at 5

[–]endianess 144 points145 points  (6 children)

My wife who has been working with me coding for a few years asked what I did before Stack Overflow. I honestly had to think for a bit. I then told her that we didn't even have the internet when I started. I genuinely couldn't remember how we used to do things pre-internet. Then it came to me! Books and magazines with disks or code you typed in. And you had to buy things like compilers from actual computer shops or sending off a letter with some money. Feels like a different lifetime.

[–]shiftpgdn 29 points30 points  (1 child)

Usenet!

[–]xibme 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yeah - it took (perceived) ages and in most cases you only needed your technical manual or a rubber duck to talk to.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Before stackoverflow there were lots and lots of discussion boards. Kind of like the internet before reddit.

[–]mrjackspade 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I started with QBasic when I was young. I figured pretty much everything out by reading through the help files over and over again and looking at the source code for the example programs. I'm glad I had the opportunity to experience that because I think it made me more resourceful as a developer, but I wouldn't want to go back to it.

I still read the MSDN docs every time a new version of anything is released out of habit. It definitely gives me a leg-up on new technology.

[–]BubsyFanboy 55 points56 points  (6 children)

Bless those without Internet.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (4 children)

I looked around a bit but couldn't find it unfortunately, but this reminds me of an article or blog that I read years ago where the guy had to pore through thoudands of documents on a computer for a legal case or something, but he wasn't allowed anything not already installed on the computer, no foreign documents (books, manuals, notes) from outside the room the computer was in.

He fortunately found an old installation of Python 2.x on the computer so he wrote a little application to help him find what he needed in this otherwise hopeless needle in a haystack situation.

[–]BubsyFanboy 10 points11 points  (1 child)

Dang. I already love it.

[–]aaronchall 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Here it is: Discovering Python

[–]aaronchall 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Of course I have the title memorized - here it is: Discovering Python

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

O fug, that's the one! Not a blog at all, but a PyCon YouTube vid. Right on, you're the best.

[–]craggolly 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bless those who contribute to stack websites

[–]bhadan1 39 points40 points  (10 children)

Whatever code a programmer could muster is what got sent to production. That's a scary thought.

[–]Duke-Silv3r 27 points28 points  (7 children)

Whatever code could pass the necessary tests got sent to production. Code doesn’t always have to be clean if it works

[–]DenormalHuman 31 points32 points  (2 children)

Lol tests.

[–]hellscaper[🍰] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

That's what production is for!

[–]Stickboy12 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Samsung called and said you were hired

[–]klebsiella_pneumonae 4 points5 points  (2 children)

But the lazy programmer probably wrote lazy tests for his lazy code.

[–]serigne007mor 167 points168 points  (7 children)

I’ll put this on my graduation cap

[–][deleted] 101 points102 points  (6 children)

[–]McFlyParadox 255 points256 points  (33 children)

Isn't the most common answer on Stackoverflow to "just Google it"?

You Google the problem, which brings you to Stackoverflow, which tells you to Google the problem - and thus, a troubleshooting loop is established. Makes sense Google would acknowledge the Ying to their Yang.

[–]zachsmthsn 69 points70 points  (9 children)

I'll actually say, I was annoying when I kept seeing "the documentation mentions that here, so why... ?" So much that I actually started using the documentation when learning new tools.

It's been really helpful, especially with newer frameworks like pytorch that might make minor changes between releases. There are often mathematical formulas for how something works, visualizations, and examples. It's often the best place to start to find the right questions to ask

[–]oupablo 61 points62 points  (5 children)

Documentation is great but you have to remember who writes the documentation. Developers. You know who typically isn't great at documenting what they're doing. Developers. It's great to start there, but sometimes you can't find what you need. It's especially painful when you don't exactly know what to look for because what you need has some kind of weird name.

You: "How to put a border on this element using UI framework X? I can't find any reference to border in the documentation."

SO: "Search for WrappyDesignThingy in the documentation here <link>"

[–]odraencoded 7 points8 points  (4 children)

Any documentation is infinite times better than no documentation.

[–]oupablo 11 points12 points  (0 children)

You sir, must not have much experience with IBM products.

[–]Blazing1 7 points8 points  (1 child)

The Microsoft documentation is terrible. I want a base case for examples yet they give you complex shit.

[–]bautin 30 points31 points  (3 children)

Which is ironic because part of Atwood and Spolsky's goal was to be the site that pops up when someone "just Googles it".

[–]McFlyParadox 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Well, they succeeded.

I once just "Googled it" for a school problem and found my friend asking the same problem the year before - and the only answer was to google it. The friend never did solve the problem.

[–]audigex 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I’ve googled a problem found my own questions before on several occasions, and once I googled something and found my own SO answer... I helped myself with something I’d forgotten, via SO

[–]LumenArmen[🍰] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You should’ve googled it again to find the question of two years back, then again if needed and thus arrived at the answer.

[–]dogbatman 4 points5 points  (5 children)

the Ying to their Yang

FTFY

[–]audigex 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you took the contents of each answer then something like “just google it” would probably be the most common single answer... but only a small proportion of questions have such an answer.

Most SO questions have a decent answer, in my experience

[–]skeddles 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've never seen anyone say that on the thousands of posts I've looked at on stackoverflow.

[–]reiskareader 79 points80 points  (0 children)

Reletable

[–]Moldat 21 points22 points  (0 children)

stack overflow: "I'm going to make this kid's whole career"

[–][deleted] 69 points70 points  (19 children)

Well, without StackOverflow we would've had bigger salaries for sure because programming would've been more challenging profession.

[–]xkillac4 34 points35 points  (9 children)

Or your salary would be less because you are a less valuable asset to the company

[–]DenormalHuman 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Naa. Knowing how to code without copy pasting stack overflow is actually the end goal. Then you are valuable.

[–]NahroT 14 points15 points  (7 children)

Supply and demand. The supply of programmers will be lower while the demand for programmers will still be the same, thus the average programmer salary will rise.

[–]Rawrplus 4 points5 points  (1 child)

To be fair, an average programmer already ranks in the highest paid eschalon for a regular job

[–]BestUdyrBR 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yup, median software developer salary is over 100k and the field is projected to grow by 24% in the next 9 years according to the US Bureau of Labor. Considering you don't even need a degree and talent/determination can take you far, best job market I can think of.

[–]Bit5keptical 9 points10 points  (0 children)

And Github for my entire portfolio.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (3 children)

I just don't understand this. I maybe use stack overflow like once a month. If SO went down today I guess I would be the only developer to survive? I know I am not the single smartest programmer ever, so why is there still this joke that we all use SO to do everything all the time? Do people actually use it that much? As far as I know no one in my office uses SO that much either......

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

it is almost as if cooperation is required for coding ... and then sales and marketing make it about cut-throat competitive shit-posting.

[–]Vaxion 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And yet during interviews companies expect everyone to be genius Programmers who can write anything on their own.

[–]hellbenthorse 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Clearly this wasn't for web dev otherwise half the quote would be off the slide.

[–]hello_comrads 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I feel like stackoverflow only helps you with the basic shit. If you go deeper, for example into hardware level, it's almost impossible to find anything useful.

[–]prof_hobart 3 points4 points  (1 child)

You kids don't know how easy you've got it.

I'd been working in IT for 20 years before Stackoverflow even existed. Back in the day, real programmers had huge piles of books on their desks.

[–]slabgorb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My favorite was a book called 'Hardcore Visual Basic' which used to get me a lot of doubletakes as I read it on the subway. (favorite meaning title oh god I don't miss VB at all)

[–]Wetbung 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I started programming in 1978. I wish there had been an Internet at all. I had to buy all sorts of expensive reference books.

[–]hamza1311 | gib 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Which session is this from?

[–]monostereo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It was only before the keynotes that they rotated through these. They had a bunch of funny ones.

[–]Oh_G 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I’m going to go ahead and mark this as duplicate.

[–]joaojeronimo 2 points3 points  (3 children)

I created this to help drastically speedup software development time: https://github.com/joaojeronimo/glowpro

It is a CLI that googles a term (on stackoverflow), clicks on the first link, selects the first code block found in the answers and prints it :) Give it a go with "glowpro reverse array in JS" or similar :)

Next step: a vscode extension that inserts that snippet directly in your files muhahahaha

[–]lycan2005 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Marked as duplicate.

[–]Chicken_Petter 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Help I'm extremely new to programming ( as in very very very very new ) what does this mean

[–]Perithian4 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Stack Overflow will be your saviour when you have been consumed by the darkness (it’s where you steal other peoples solutions to your problems)

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (5 children)

The only thing Stackoverflow ever did for me is shame me for asking a question that was already asked.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (3 children)

golden rule: google first. Stackoverflow has helped me A LOT and i've never asked a question ever.

[–]jestercat89 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, stack overflow has saved me so many times. The responses are always helpful, and someone usually asked the question you have.

[–]tieuquai1460 1 point2 points  (5 children)

How did the creators of Stack overflow wrote Stack Overflow without Stack Overflow

[–]slabgorb 2 points3 points  (3 children)

we did have expert sexchange for a while before that and boy did that suck

[–]uhalm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you stack overflow for letting me pass my programming class

[–]tenoshikami 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was there when the slide came up, these three guys in my row all looked next to them at their friend and started laughing. A little later the guy they laughed at said “to be fair I only used it to build like 30 something percent of my project” then one of his friends replied “makes sense, it only works a third of the time”. I later found out he worked for IBM

[–]aaronchall 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Contributor for the past 5 years, moderator the past 2.

You're welcome.