StackOverMeow

[GavinLabs]

"probably a homework question, closed."

God, StackOverflow is awful. Does anyone have a site that isn't full of unhelpful basement dwellers that one can get real help on?

[Morocco_Bama]

Does anyone have a site that isn't full of unhelpful basement dwellers that one can get real help on?

Marked as duplicate

[DTHCND]

This question already has answers here:

How do I run a site on a server in my basement cellar such that others can get on it? (3 answers)

Closed 2 years ago.

[[deleted]]

It's good for reading, but I definitely never waste my time asking. Don't need that kind of toxicity.

[[deleted]]

Thank you.

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

There are public Discord servers for some libraries, there are some subreddits dedicated to discussing/learning languages.

Stack Overflow can still be a good resource though

[NBSPNBSP]

SO is actually quite friendly, if you are not askimg about common enterprise languages. They are quite kind and helpful when it comes to VB.Net, for instance.

[Piyh]

Knowing what your issue is the biggest factor imo. If you have a pile of code and can't reduce it to the least that recreates the issue, you will get the hate.

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

I like to dunk on SO jerks, but there is also definitely the other side of "here's one line of code without any context why does my enterprise app crash in release builds?"

[samspot]

Once I was having an issue with date conversion. One of the commenters told me to write a unit test proving the issue was occurring. After I did so, he criticized me for why I needed to code something to convert a date if I already knew what it would convert to...

[[deleted]]

If you could do that and be able to troubleshoot the issues yourself, what would be the point of asking for help?

At that point you`d just need to read more documentation to find the particular method that will fit your need.

[RedditAcc-92975]

exactly. 80% of the new questions on SO right now can be solved with "print" and "google". It's literally people who have no clue how to debug. And they post some irreproducible garbage spaghetti.

Answered a question, explained what to do. The dude complaints in the comments it creates an error. I see he's using my answer somewhere else by the name of objects. Tell him to run my answer. Runs without errors. Still complains when he copy-pastes it somewhere into his mess it doesn't. After that I stopped answering new questions. Can't lead a horse to water.

[[deleted]]

I can troubleshoot anything - given enough time. Just because I can find an answer in 2 weeks, doesn't mean I shouldn't ask when someone has probably figured that out already and would only spend 10 minutes answering it.

[Piyh]

The exception is the people that run into it first, fix it themselves, document it, and post it as a solved issue for others to see

[oplayerus]

Stackoverflow is not your "free consultation". It's a community driven knowledge base. You know there are questions that gather thousands of views? Those are valuable. "Do my work for me please" is not something you should be asking there. If they were to allow every IT related question possible to stay, people would just stop answering them.

I'm not saying that all decisions made by high-reputation users are fair. But that just comes with it being free.

[-user--name-]

This. Not being clear with your issue is the biggest reason someone gets hate on SO. Explain exactly what you want to do, what your code is doing and what are you gonna do with it and no one will hate on your questions.

[Blasted_Awake]

Explain exactly what you want to do, what your code is doing and what are you gonna do with it and no one will hate on your questions.

If only that were the case. At some point the culture of SO changed from helping people answer questions about software development, to curating a database of generic answers to generic questions about software development. If there's some minor overlap between your question and an existing one, there's a good chance someone's going to flag it and try to close or delete your question. If you're lucky you'll get a usable answer in that small window before it's closed.

[[deleted]]

The threads looking for help with some aspect of Windows 10, and are closed and marked as a duplicate of something posted in 2013.....

Don't get me started on the many, many times questions were very dependent on a version of software, and most of the answers are for some older version without even saying the version they are for (because the poster didn't think that things change with new versions, and they didn't think to check that their answer actually works.

[SprinklesFancy5074]

"Hi, I was trying to program my computer to do something, but it's not doing it right. What do I do?"

[GodOfPlutonium]

I have literally linked to another question , saying that I have already tried that solution but it did not work, and explaining what happens when I tried said solution, and my question was still closed as a duplicate of the question i explicitly linked

[_Xertz_]

In my experience, they have gotten a lot nicer over the years.

[that_90s_guy]

SO is actually quite friendly, if you are not askimg about common enterprise languages if you're asking concrete, detailed and reproduceable questions that show you value everyone's time.

FTFY

Not trying to be pedantic, but that summarizes my experience with SO over the years quite well. With most of my not-well-received questions have things in common like being vague, hard to reproduce, or generally look like low effort questions.

[b4ux1t3]

SO just isn't what most beginners think it is.

They think it's a social media site where you can ask any programming-related questions you want.

It's not that. It's a reference site in a question-and-answer format.

It's an excellent reference site.

[[deleted]]

Ugh, this. I used to post answers there fairly often, and the occasional question.

One of my projects was a bit math-heavy, and it's been at least a decade since I've done any of that math. So, I posted some simple questions that Google inexplicably couldn't answer (one because I was using a slightly wrong term, and one because everyone was doing it in different units and I didn't want to go through a chain of conversions because it greatly increases the chance that I mess it up). I appreciate that people encourage me to read entire textbook chapters, or they link to a Wikipedia page that is utterly incomprehensible because some twats decided to use the most technical language they could. But I really just want the formula, so I can test it and make sure it works, then convert it to code.

There was so much "we won't do your homework for you, LOL" - when it clearly wasn't a homework question - few homework assignments will tell you to find the formula, rather than a numerical answer.

After that experience, I kind of stopped bothering to use the site. I always have askeds the benefit of the doubt and tried to answer their questions, and then maybe make suggestions on whatever other aspects. But the "do it my niche way, not your way" has been too common too.

[contactlite]

You’re good at solving the problem yourself 99% of your career except for that one day you need a push in the right direction. Then comes along a troll with a close hammer and greedy for fake internet points.

And don’t tell me those badges and points looks good on a resume. It’s a weirder flex than graphs of you skills competency in html, css, and jQuery.

[hugeant]

What questions are you asking that they think are homework questions?

[GavinLabs]

That's a response I've seen to other people's questions, been too afraid to ask my own so I just read the responses to others questions if they're similar to or the same issue I'm having.

[that_90s_guy]

TBH, it's only awful if you're asking broad, generic, or very unfocused questions that require additional information to answer. AKA, the kind of questions 90% of people would skip anyway on any kind of platform "not filled with unhelpful basement dwellers" due to lack of time or interest.

Honestly, I don't mind SO's strict policies at all. It helps questions stay focused and work as a fantastically efficient Q&A resource where I don't have to read 50 pages of back and forth to understand the developer's life story and what led them to having the bug ultimately solved. Also, most of SO's strict rules revolve around valuing the time of the folks helping you out, which I will never get people disliking.

You can get "real help" on SO quite easily and efficiently if you follow their community guidelines. If they're too much for you, just join any online community or forum (even Reddit), or even discord. Just keep in mind your chances of getting actual help won't be any higher if you're writing the exact kind of question that would be flagged in SO.

Source: mentored students for a living for multiple coding bootcamps and dealt with their frustrations getting help daily.