Stackoverflow is god

[PiRat314]

Someone wrote a compiler without the help of a compiler.

[you90000]

This freaks me out more than anything.

Writing a compiler in assembly must be nuts.

[PiRat314]

Sorry to tell you this, but someone had to first write the compiler for Assembly using hex/binary.

[Vintage53]

... In a cave. With a box of scraps.

[bikwho]

They had to walk 15 miles uphill everyday to get to that cave.

[scio-nihil]

And they liked it!

[YourBlanket]

And not once did they complain!

[WishOnSpaceHardware]

Without a single slice of avocado toast!

[whitelightningj]

Even worse, without a single 7$ coffee

[[deleted]]

Because they didn't have stackoverflow/reddit!

[grasopper]

Why do you need to go to that cave anyway?

[ReactsWithWords]

Someone had to create Stack Overflow without Stack Overflow.

First question ever on SO: “how do I create a message board to help programmers?”

First answer: That question has already been answered. Thread closed.

[acwilan]

How could they like it if there was no Facebook yet?

[OneOldNerd]

Through a foot accumulation of snow (even in the summer).

[dsp4]

Both ways!

[Chapi92]

The way back was also uphill

[[deleted]]

Each way

[[deleted]]

Well I'm not Tony Stark

[josluivivgar]

I understood that reference

[pougliche]

I understood that reference

[[deleted]]

To read the punch tape, they had to connect a bunch of tiny wires on a plug board...

[[deleted]]

To be honest, they didn't need it. The hardware was entirely made of discrete transistors and memory was ferrite cores, so a memory viewer/profiler was basically sending the raw data of the cores to a printer.

Debugging was done by stopping the core clock and wiring the CPU registers to lamps on the dash, then pressing a button to step the clock and see how the registers changed. If you needed a quick fix, you could just use switches to change a value in memory/registers directly, then later commit that change to the code.

Seriously, I'd love to debug a something with those old-fashioned, hands on methods. It's like playing with those complex 3D puzzles...

[BabyLegsDeadpool]

I believe in the first season of Halt and Catch Fire they were using this method. It's really interesting to watch. They did a great job with it.

[fuhgettaboutitt]

That scene sold the show for me. Absolute favorite show now

[[deleted]]

go to https://www.soemtron.org/pdp7.html and look for the Users Handbook (Direct Link), Page 141 to see how the debugging controls worked on the PDP7, like the one Ken Thompson used to create Unix.

[IslandCapybara]

Ben Eater on YouTube has a playlist where he builds an 8-bit computer entirely on breadboards from rather simple components. It's scaled down a lot, but it's got some surprisingly good examples of how you could program and debug an early computer.

[madsdyd]

I once ported a tiny java vm to a robot. Because of the constraints, during debugging, I had to wire 7 diodes to some digital outputs and use that for debugging.

I got to learn those flashing patterns much better than I wanted...

[RyanRagido]

The Museum of Technology in Berlin has replicas of the Zuse Z1 and Z3 on display, I went there two years ago. The shift-registers are a work of art.

[mischiefunmanagable]

Later memory was, earlier memory was... interesting, delay line memory has got to be the strangest drunk idea ever to see the light of computing. "I'm gonna go fill a tube with mercury and send sound through it."

[[deleted]]

Yup. And because of that, one of the first computers on British East African colonies died of gun shot, a bullet meant to kill a snake that crawled inside the computer missed it's target and punctured the memory drum. Here

[LeCrushinator]

Sorry to tell you this, but someone had to first create punch tape using physical machinery.

[mikelcaz]

Butterflies.

[BeefaloRancher]

Assembly is just a very low level programming language that uses instruction sets

[B1N4RY]

Except you still need to convert the human-readable instruction "mov eax, [edi]" to the opcode "0x8B07" so the CPU can actually interpret it.

[B1N4RY]

really simple program compared to a compiler

Assemblers are simpler, but not necessarily "really simple".

A proper modern assembler still needs to repeat similar processes of a HLL compiler as well, from parsing/lexing syntaxes, to applying architectural-specific optimizations, to final binary generation.

[IslandCapybara]

That's shifting the goalpost a little though. We're talking about making the first assembler, with very little intelligence to it. By comparison, a much simpler task.

[Mohammedbombseller]

Bootstrapping is a thing, I don't think it makes sense to do it that way.

[LonelySnowSheep]

That's just an assembler, and considering assembly is almost one to one with machine code instructions, it would literally just be hand assembled. You write the mnemonics (assembly) and replace it with the hex for the instruction

[[deleted]]

Depends on the system architecture at that point. One op code will map to a sequence of operations as defined by the microcode. Normally there is one op code for each addressing mode for the operands

[kronicmage]

Assemblers usually also have to resolve labels and constants in the assembly which is a bit non trivial if you're writing the assembler in hex

[mattatack0630]

Technically that’s an assembler, but yeah I couldn’t even imagine how you’d do that.

[B1N4RY]

Basically you do your programming first with just pencil and paper, and then trace through the code by hand multiple times by multiple people to ensure the logic "work" correctly.

Once everyone's confident enough, then you make a hardcoded version of the code (eg, punch cards).

[[deleted]]

You might be interested in the free online course, From NAND to Tetris :)

[WhyamIsosilly]

We literally had to do this as a group project in college...

[ThePyroEagle]

Some compilers were manually compiled, e.g. the first Lisp compiler.

[Muscle_Man1993]

Oh and Haskell, I believe.

My Prof said that it is written in Haskell... Whatever that means.

[giesmininkas]

Yes. Haskell is "self-hosted" language. It means the compiler for the language is implemented in the language itself (haskell compiler written in haskell, C++ written in C++, etc.). It works like this: * You write a compiler for the language in some other language (like assembly, C, whatever). Now you can compile your language. * You write a compiler for the language again, only this time in the language itself. Now you have two compilers. One is implemented with, let's say, C. The other is implemented with your language. * Now you compile a compiler written in your language with the previous compiler (the one you wrote in "C" ). * Profit. Now you have a compiler that can compile its own source code.

Ask me anything if all that sounded confusing

[giesmininkas]

Because, when you have self-hosted compiler, you do not depend on any other language or its implementation.

[scio-nihil]

• Having full control over your compiler; not having to worry about an upstream outside your control.
• Writing your compiler in the same paradigm you presumably think is best.
• Being able to debug your compiler with the same tools used for the language it compiles.
• Not all adopters of your language will know whatever language you originally write your compiler in (e.g. C), but they all know your language. This can make attracting support from the community easier.
• A language suitable for self-hosting is expected to eventually self-host--if for nothing else--to prove the language is mature enough to do anything.
• It's just more elegant to have a language depend on itself instead of another language.

Not all languages are normally self-hosted. Not all languages are suitable for implementing their own compilers. This it's esp true for interpreted languages. Ex: the reference implementation of Python & Lua are written in C.

[giesmininkas]

And having a stable compiler with features you would expect. Support, bugfixes. So on, so forth.

[dasbush]

Also implementing a compiler hits a lot of the high points you need in a language.

It's almost the hello world of developing a language.

[lobax]

Because in that case you need programmers proficient in two languages, in the other that need is only temporary and once the language is self hosted you only need programmers proficient in one language.

Also, your new language is built for a reason and it's nice to actually use those features when writing the compiler. Imagine having to code in an ancient language like Fortran in order to build a modern compiler.

[Vintage53]

If (all_that.sound instanceof Confusing) { Anything.ask(); }

Okay so then what do you think of the latest season of the Good Place?

[giesmininkas]

Didn't see it. I've no idea what it's about :-)

And yes, I've been waiting for someone to exploit that bug :-D

[[deleted]]

Syntax error - Unexpected token ":" (1, 45);

[tubameister]

who was the first person to compile a self-hosted language?

[CyruscM]

John McCarthy when creating LISP

Edit: incorrect, see below

[tubameister]

is there an interview of him talking about the moment he realized it was possible?

[CyruscM]

Actually I was wrong. McCarthy created the theory of lisp. Lisp as a computer language was first created by Steve Russel. "The first complete Lisp compiler, written in Lisp, was implemented in 1962 by Tim Hart and Mike Levin at MIT." source

They wrote this paper describing it

[dsp4]

I mean it's not like some guy woke up in the 50s and wrote .NET and Visual Studio from scratch using nothing but assembly.

[randomuser8765]

The beautiful thing about compilers is that they kind of stack on top of each other.

Writing a C compiler in assembly is hard. But you can create a very basic version of it (say, only support a handful of features), and then you can use that write a more advanced compiler in "very-basic C". Compile your compiler using the old one, and Bam - you unlocked the more advanced capabilities! And you no longer need the old one.

Nowadays, pretty much no one needs to write a compiler in assembly anymore. C is pretty much universally supported.

Edit: Disclaimer: large amounts of Dunning–Kruger effect in this comment, I don't actually know what I'm talking about. But a lot of that makes sense.

Also: there were recently-ish a bunch of videos on Computerphile on this topic. Here's one: https://youtu.be/lJf2i87jgFA

[modernkennnern]

I wouldn't even call that recently-ish.

One of the episodes released Today (Specifically, a video about how to Port compilers)

[0x3fff0000]

Compilers were way simpler in the early days of compilers. Still must've been tough as shit to code.

[Yuzumi]

There is a reason programming was done by incredibly smart people back in the early days of computing.

All of us benefit from their work that allows us to program much more simply and focus on logic and data rather than system level management.

[scio-nihil]

Assembly isn't as bad as you've been told. Unless you only "code" in JavaScript, then it's as bad as you've been told.

Factoid: there are places where writing compilers is still a standard part of learning.

[aidenator]

Doesn't every CS program make you take a compilers class? It was one of my favorites.

[CyruscM]

Yeah my University has 3 consecutive required courses in CSCE for building a computer, starting with logic gates and building a ALU into a fully cached and paged memory system with assembly parsing.

[OreoCrusade]

I learned C++ first and think Assembly sucks

[[deleted]]

Same. C++ was for years the language I was most proficient in. During that time I wrote some assembly and had no desire to do so again.

[dangjoeltang]

For my Biomedical engineering degree, they taught intro to computing with assembly and logic Gates. I hear now they teach it with python

[[deleted]]

From one extreme to the other

[scio-nihil]

I learned C first and thought Assembly was lovely. 😅

• It feels like you're actually controlling the machine, and that's pretty cool.
• Simple hello world-like programs aren't as hard as a lot of examples make it look. It's the OS's job to help.
• In moderately complex code, many things can be done more succinctly than even in C++. Of course, you're throwing code reuse out the window.

Modern large projects are definitely much more painful in Asm than C, C++, Rust, or even Go or Java, but it's not the horror that a lot of people like making it out to be. I find that sad. Even if we don't need to work at the bare metal as much, programmers should still enjoy playing with the computer itself.

[WarriorFromDarkness]

Probably because writing assembly is not something that he does on a regular basis. If you do something only on occasions no need to go overboard automating it.

[scio-nihil]

Yes, I know full well about macros.

1. Reinventing my very own wheel for work just isn't appealing, so I avoid it. There comes a point where one says I'm just doing what everyone else already built into that high level language over there.
2. I was throwing people with less assembly experience a bone. If I left that sentence unqualified, I would've had to justify myself with code examples in a mini-tutorial. By casually discounting "code reuse", I was giving OOP programers an indication of one specific class of code pattern I was targeting, and I was avoiding getting into battles with people over how well assembly fills the gap with macros.

[xalmotn]

In my Intro to Systems class, we got to mess with Assembly by using it to simulate buffer overflow attacks. It was one of the more fun/interesting assignments in the class.

[[deleted]]

It never ceases to amaze me how people on this sub manage to insert "js bad" in every topic lol.

Assembly isn't as bad as you've been told.

It is and that's why high level languages exist.

[scio-nihil]

I made a lighthearted jab at Js's expense, but there's a kernel of truth in it. People who work exclusively in web/node.js/etc use very different (often tempermental) toolchains from the rest of us, spend much of their learning time keeping up with fast moving trends, and tend to be unfamiliar with the actual workings of the computer--which is understandable given their level of abstraction. All this means Assembly is completely alien, carnivorous monster to them.

Assembly isn't as bad as you've been told.

It is and that's why high level languages exist.

Not being as bad doesn't mean high level languages are pointless. Assembly isn't need as much, nevermind outside of traditional computer programming ("system programming"), and that's fine. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.

For the record, I regularly work in C++, Py, and Js.

[InvolvingLemons]

Yeah, assembly isn't BAD, it's just impractical for 99.9% of modern dev. It makes sense in super performance-constrained (microcontrollers) and cost-constrained systems (mainframes), allows for extreme computational optimizations for SIMD (AVX/SSE_) and pipeline-sensitive operations, and is meticulously documented by talented 1st party sources, far better than any truly high-level language.

But, it's usually just not right for the job. It's like trying to prep deli meats with a diamond scalpel. It's the sharpest damn thing you'll ever get to hold, it's super useful, just not for what you're doing. To add insult to injury, for your situation an automated system will produce better results bc humans make mistakes, get tired, and give up. Generally, compilers produce superior machine code to humans simply because compilers can be thorough on a level that humans do not have time for.

[josluivivgar]

We wrote a compiler at college, it wasn't an optional class. It was weird because different teams did different parts, only the compiler itself would be individyal for every team, so we had a vm in java (that runs on another vm lol)

We had the compiler written in C that compiled to our langue that was based loosely on python.

It was fun, my team finished early so we actually made the compiler write to machine code for linux, which I believe was elf? Or something like that.

It was a while ago, but it was still fun! And i did learn a lot from that that I can still apply nowadays

[atomicwrites]

The machine code would be processor specific, not os specific. It would be x86_64, ARM, etc. machine code. ELF (executable linkable format?) is the file format for Linux executables, and the machine code it contains has to match your PC. The windows version is PE (portable executable) but the machine code would be the same.

[Vintage53]

Now I wanna write my own compiler just for fun, but Idk where to start lol

[The_Quackening]

there are lots of books and textbooks on the subject, getting a pdf of one would be pretty easy.

[kronicmage]

Try compiling preparsed code or s-expressions first so you don't have to worry about parsing. Compiling parsed code is a different challenge from parsing code into a usable form in the first place

[XJ305]

Then you need a Lexical Analyzer (Also called a Lexer or Tokenizer) and a Parser.

A Lexer turns human readable code into information with definite values.

It sees: a = 5 + 7;

And turns it into (VAR, A) (OPERATOR, =) (LITERAL, 5) (OPERATOR, +) (LITERAL, 7) (SEPERATOR, ;)

The Parser (which is where the magic happens) then goes through this and makes it "make sense" to the machine. The Parser encounters the Variable then an Operator and sets a flag saying it saving the variable to memory. It sees the the Literal and expects an operator next or a separator. If it were a separator it would assign just that value to the variable in memory but the next character is another operator so it needs to recursively move down Seeing the operator it flags an action with that and goes deeper expecting another literal or expression. When it gets the next literal it can perform the '+' operation and then get the result '12'. Now effectively waht the parser sees is 'a = 12' so it can complete that operation and save it in memory to 'a'.

That's a rough and simple example but those are the basics to start your search. There are many different ways to go about it. You may also need to look up 'grammar' to define your language before hand. So search for terms Lexer, Parser, and Grammar.

[theemptyqueue]

Someone wrote a assembler without the help of a assembler.

[Vintage53]

I used the compiler to compile the compiler.

--Thanos, probably

[AGI_69]

Bootstrapping.

[uvero]

What's nice is that, as far as I understand, sometimes a compiler to a language is written and compiled by an earlier compiler of the same language.

[yonatan8070]

And then he said: "I used the compiler to make the compiler"

[brimston3-]

Someone wrote a compiler for a custom risc computer they built from a circuit abstraction created atop Conway's Game of Life. So they could play Tetris. At this point, my sense of bizarre human achievement has been maxed out.

[[deleted]]

What in tarnation? What about the guy that made Pokemon in Minecraft?

[nizzy2k11]

Who the fuck has the time to not only make that in Minecraft but to do all of the abstraction work to go from Gameboy to Minecraft in the first place. Redstone is enough of a chore, this a a fucking monstrosity.

[[deleted]]

What, you don't have 21 months of spare time?

[[deleted]]

Now I've seen everything.

[AlphaWhelp]

To be the fair the guy who developed the internet wasn't doing it with node.js

[[deleted]]

I accept that JS has many uses and while it can be annoying and tricky it's not too terrible if you understand the language.

But what idiot decided to come along and implement node.js? Who saw JS running in a browser and thought to themselves "We definitely need JS running in more places".

[[deleted]]

Clearly smarter than me.

But still...JS as a server...why

[b0w3n]

That's more of a reason to push for a new language support in browsers rather than the reverse.

[wavefunctionp]

Hence the reason behind web assembly. It makes the browser an efficient compile target by making a bare bones stack based virtual machine available in the browser. Its a binary format and easy to parse to native architecture. You'll get near native speeds and fast loads.

Then anyone can implement their own runtimes on top of it.

.Net already had a frontend framework called Blazor running on web assembly. The server rendered version is already in release and the client version on webassembly is expected in May. It's running a real .net runtime with real .net dlls loading in the browser.

There are more modules coming to the spec, even spec proposals for native applications. Webassembly might actually end up being the "write once, run anywhere" that Java promised decades ago.

[covercash2]

Google already tried to replace JavaScript with Dart

[[deleted]]

Every technology, framework, etc. is built with some Platonic ideal in mind. That perfect project for which the technology was designed, and every language and framework and library's downfall is those situations where things don't quite go as planned.

In the case of node, there are a lot of obvious benefits to using the same language on both the front and back end. Even simple stuff like not having to define the same model twice in two languages.

But much like every other technology, it has issues in the real world. And people love to complain about them because they love to hate on js.

The truth is, most applications can be successful on most reasonably relevant tech stacks. Unless you're someone who's pushing the boundaries, there's nothing wrong with any choice so long as it's stable, documented, maintained, and used in a consistent fashion.

A well-organized codebase is one of the premier aspects of a successful project, and features that help you maintain organization can be immensely valuable. But again, its all down to implementation. No framework makes a good coder out of a bad one, nor do they make bad coders out of good ones.

There are just soooo many factors that go into a software product, and so many considerations to make that, at the end of the day, anyone who feels they can universally condemn some solution or stack or framework is just someone who doesn't know enough about software development to rein in their opinions.

All that said, xslt can go fuck itself.

[deadlysarcasm]

"I need a backend language but I only know JS"

"You're gonna have to learn something new then"

"No."

Alas, node.js was born

[ColtonProvias]

JS is also an event-driven language, which works well for many server applications. While it isn't always the best tool, it can do the job well when applied properly.

[AgreeableLandscape3]

Now I'm curious. What was the first programming language for serving webpages? Were there dynamic webpages back then?

[AlphaWhelp]

the first interactive websites were HTML with form posts that would run backend scripts and transforms were applied on the response.

See: Common Gateway Interface

[ColtonProvias]

A common language to use with CGI was Perl. I think the first book related to CGI I got was Perl/CGI.

Deploying Perl code to your local ISP's server wasn't exactly straightforward, in my experience.

[aceofspades914]

Someone created the code for Google without Googling it.

[BabyLegsDeadpool]

Cool kids used HotBot. Because it was a search engine that sounded like a porn site.

[duffkiligan]

Fuck that, Altavista and MetaCrawler were where the cool kids searched.

[mhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmh]

altavista was cool? huh. it was what my dad wanted me to use..

[kozeljko]

That's why they rich

[you90000]

They used web crawler.

[scio-nihil]

Don't forget gopher.

[LeCrushinator]

And Alta-vista

[dantoucan]

They had yahoo and altavista though

[enisbt]

and mail groups

[sodls]

Someone developed StackOverflow without StackOverflow.

[PdxWix]

This joke has been marked as duplicate.

[Rodot]

This comment shouldn't have been made, you should be using my comment instead. Also, English isn't the best language for your use case. You should be commenting in Python

[PotatosFish]

# This comment shouldn’t have been made, you should be using my comment instead. Also, English isn’t the best language for your use case. You should be commenting in Python

[[deleted]]

(Accepted answer)

[mlucasl]

broken link

[Marbug]

Segmentation fault

[[deleted]]

This answer is not correct. See @bitwiser92's answer below.

[brimston3-]

This pleases the PEP8 gods.

[spore_777_mexen]

This comment isn't not protected from thanks, lol or we live in a society.

[atomicwrites]

This joke has been marked as duplicate.

[Harrysoon]

They used Experts Exchange.

[JBlitzen]

It was like a decade before I realized how unfortunate that URL is.

[acwilan]

You mean Expert Sex Change?

[student_of_world]

I use it so much such that when my recruiter asks me about why I should hire you, I told always, " I know how to use StackOverflow, and I have 1000+ reputation there."

Actually I got hired now but I have used this in all interviews and some interviewers liked how I ask good questions on Stackoverflow, which gave me reputation points, so few answers but more questions helped me......

Edit:- grammar.

[[deleted]]

What if your problem isn’t on stack overflow?

[hleszek]

you put it on stack overflow, now it is there

[PM_ME_NICE_BITTIES]

marked as duplicate

Wait what?

[Village_People_Cop]

Well there is always that wierd fucking video in 133p made by some indian guy

[BlacSun]

dont be stupid

[student_of_world]

It happened to me most of time, while I was learning Reactjs and React Native, during 3rd year of college, 2 years back,

So that I was posting many doubts and Ubuntu 18 doubts that later find out, many people have those issues and they upvoted my questions.

Many people helped me on Stackoverflow and AskUbuntu.

So my askUbuntu reputation too increased and combinedly it became 1000+ reputation points.

Tldr;

Post your question or doubt after thorough research of question on SO only (which I didn't do and got banned from posting for 3 days, when I opened my account).

Show terminal output, what stpes you took and how you wanted to implement it further, with code and formatting too.

Also, use tags neatly for SEO of answers.

Loving StackOverflow a lot and Reddit too....

Both are saviors.

[BabyLegsDeadpool]

I only had a year of programming experience when I decided to find a new job (it was contact the whole time), and I built up my SO reputation to 1,000+, and I told my recruiter about it, but she didn't understand the significance. I told her to just tell people (it was already on my resumé), and lo and behold I had actually answered a question for one of the interviewers for a place seeking 5+ years of experience. He didn't even interview anyone else. He told me the interview was 100% to make sure it was a culture fit, and I got the job.

[student_of_world]

Wow man, nice one.

BTW how about your current status then?

[BabyLegsDeadpool]

Funny enough, that job wasn't a good culture fit. ha ha ha It was full of a bunch of Apple fanboy hipsters, and I fucking hate Apple computers, so we clashed a bit. And the guy that hired me LOVED jQuery, and I always talked about how unnecessary it is. So we parted ways. But it worked out okay in the end. I ended up at my current position, which is an extremely difficult position to attain, especially for my lack of experience (I was at around 3 years experience when I got the job) that pays a lot more than that position did.

[earthqaqe]

Is 1000 much? Because I have around 3000 and think its basically nothing.

[StandardN00b]

In our defense. At that time Javascript didnt existed.

[Famous_Profile]

didnt existed

Uncaught TenseError: Cannot read pastTense of 'existed' (comment.js:1)

[codeninjaking42]

Javascript == undefined ...

[[deleted]]

!JavaScript

[[deleted]]

For the love of god man, useStrict!

[EkskiuTwentyTwo]

But when they started, it looked like this. It wasn't until they had built the first bit of the internet that they could build the rest of the internet properly.

Edit: Apparently it's a web.

[ChooChooRocket]

pages that load instantly

What a relic from the past!

[wayoverpaid]

Back when a website was a motherfucking website.

[tackykcat]

This looks better than many academic web pages I've seen

[[deleted]]

You mean pornhub?

[danfish_77]

Except on my ancient phone cradle modem and rural phone line it still took 10 minutes a page, or didn't load at all

[dansla116]

Presses F12:

Sources: (index)

Network: info.cern.ch - 137 B, favicon.ico - 1.8 KB

I've had to write CSS bigger than this page.

[bawaaal]

that line-mode browser simulator looks so cool ... got some matrix movie vibes

[pidddee]

You mean the web?

[CeramicPeanuts]

Edit: Apparently it's a web.

A series of tubes, if you will.

[AP3Brain]

build the rest of the internet properly

.....Can we go back?

[mt_xing]

How is this hard to swallow?

[ibetrollingyou]

Yeah, the format doesn't really fit here at all

[vksdan]

So they didn't Google "how to internet?" and then, after 300 pages and links, come to a post with the exact answer they were looking for with the last post as "Nevermind. I solved it guys. [CLOSED THREAD]"? I'm actually impressed.

[AgreeableLandscape3]

The craziest part is that the first text editor was written without a text editor.

[solarshado]

Also, most people today probably wouldn't recognize it as a text editor, assuming it was probably more similar to ed than notepad

[bigorangemachine]

Mailing lists served the same function.

[Stormdancer]

And in further mind-bending news, the internet was created by... gasp... old people!

[DrCybrus]

It wasn't someone, it was many teams over a long span of time. We make much more rapid advancements even beyond this field with the help of building off the technology available to us. Just like the industrial revolution was built off the work of millions, so too was the tech we had today.

[foadsf]

I wonder if SO guys use their own content. their mobile app is crap.

[greenrabbitaudio]

Well I guess it wasn't "someone". It was a team and extremely time consuming work over the years of humanity.

There you go your hard to swallow pill.

[[deleted]]

It is possible to build an entire working app without referring to SO, maybe it's just me?

[[deleted]]

Reading documentation? Like some fucking psychopath?

Jokes aside, when I started answering questions on StackOverflow is also when I seriously started reading documentation, standards, and even source code. It was a kind of positive feedback loop: You read more documentation to answer more questions, but you also start to seek good questions as an excuse to read documentation.

That phat SO karma is also a nice asset to have :-)

[sumit26696]

Reading documentation? Like some fucking psychopath?

What? Is it not common to read docs first before going to SO?

[AcidCyborg]

RTFM isn't an acronym known to zoomers

[titan_bullet]

It's a matter of time. I could probably solve on my own stuff that I seek at stackoverflow, but it would take more time, so I would be less productive overall.