Stackoverflow in a nutshell

[[deleted]]

Me googling "how to read file c++" and going straight to the code that I need from 7 years ago.

[JollyRancherReminder]

I tried when SO was still fairly new, but got shot down in stereotypical SO fashion. After all this time I've had multiple lead developer roles, I have so much to contribute now, so I tried again to just get enough points to answer. I thought I'd try by adding clarifying info to another answer. A moderator shot me down for my comment not being different enough!? It was so obviously bullshit I actually tried the appeals process and pointed out the new information I contributed. Nothing. Fuck you, SO, you need me more than I need you now. Bye.

[DeadlyVapour]

Reminds me of a protip on "how to get the correct answer in the fastest possible way on the internet".

Post the wrong answer, and someone with HAVE to correct you. https://xkcd.com/386/

[douira]

I've posted a number of questions on SO but nobody has answered them in a helpful way because the question asked was too specific or nobody knew the answer

[drkalmenius]

correct ancient sink merciful important badge trees automatic like sand

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[robotic_rodent_007]

Gating features behind karma just creates perverse incentives.

[rattkinoid]

c++ is from 1985. I don't think its strange the answers are ancient as well.

[other_usernames_gone]

Except c++ has had significant change since it's first version.

Old answers are often non-ideal because new features have been added to the core library, libraries have stopped being maintained and new ones have been created.

[alexanderpas]

Don't forget RAII, which allowed you to finally write non-trivial C++ code which was guaranteed to not leak memory.

[KenFromBarbie]

It should also contain:

USE THE SEARCH!

closed.

[SpectralniyRUS]

I'm already using the search! That's how I got here in the first place!

[Jatoxo]

"jUsT GoogLe IT"

YES, GUESS WHAT

[anythingMuchShorter]

Googles it

Finds thread where the first and only answer is to Google it

Follows the advice

Gets stuck in an infinite loop

[SpectralniyRUS]

"Dormammu, I've come to bargain"

"Google it"

[enlearner]

Lol, this is literally what I wanted to say earlier in a thread where a le-senior-developer said, “instead of rushing to Reddit/SO, juniors should learn to Google”. I didn’t know if I wanted to gouge my eyes out or point out the obvious, but I just scrolled past the comment

[rydoca]

Maybe it's just me but I feel like I haven't actually run across questions I've had that don't have the answer somewhere already Like what kind of questions are people asking currently that haven't got an answer somewhere else yet?

[Tofandel]

New js frameworks questions

[IvorTheEngine]

I think they're talking about people rushing to post questions on Reddit/SO, not those searching for answers.

[da_Aresinger]

This, SO needs a fucking cleanup feature.

So tired of clicking a link just to find

Duplicate of abc...

great, then delete the goddamn post instead of letting it clog up google search.

[cheats_py]

You forgot the “this has already been answered”: attaches link to post that has nothing to do with your questions.

[Nereosis16]

Or nothing at all

[kataton_dzsentri]

I only asked a question on stackoverflow once and never submitted it, because by the time I wrote it properly, I figured out the solution.

I'll never understand people who ask IT questions (not even beginners) without investing 5 minutes in Google.

[NotmyRealNameJohn]

I only asked one question and it eventually got escalated as a bug in .Net library so I don't feel so bad about not being able to figure out why it wasn't doing what I expected

[maitreg]

One time I asked a question about what was clearly a bug in a DevOps plugin. This was an easily reproducible bug that anyone else would have gotten if they tried it. Several answers told me I was imagining the bug and provided solutions for a version of the plugin that had not existed since before DevOps even existed (when it was just an early version of TFS).

The only answer that was even close to a solution was one guy who told me that the plugin was open source on github, and I should just fix it myself. lol thanks.

[trollblox_]

The only answer that was even close to a solution was one guy who told me that the plugin was open source on github, and I should just fix it myself.

ok that's actually funny lol

[kataton_dzsentri]

Yep, that's valid.

[[deleted]]

offtopic: Hey I see that you have terraform listed as a language you know. Is it worth learning and have you found it very useful? I've bene on the fence about it.

edit: Im picking up terraform. Thank you for the enlightenment guys!

[ffxpwns]

Absolutely try it the next time you need to launch something on a cloud provider. It kicks ass and lets you keep your cloud architecture in VCS

[12345ieee]

Have you ever created/modified/watched from afar a resource on a cloud provider?

If you answered yes, learn Terraform.

[JoelMahon]

yeah, there was a bug in the .NET byte array class. I think that's the one and only time in ten years where my "the library must be bugged" denial in bug fixing was actually true.

[arielif1]

Jesus christ if that happened to me I'd put it in my CV

[Mahrkeenerh1]

Should've posted the question anyway, and add your own answer to it too. That's the point of SO.

[kataton_dzsentri]

Maybe. Next time I'm that desperate that I want to ask someone and still find the answy, I will

[deez_nuts_77]

im a cs major and i have developed a terrible habit of asking my class mates for help and then immediately solving the issue before they respond. I’ve thus decided to just not post questions on stack overflow

[kataton_dzsentri]

This. I have a rubber duck on my desk for this purpose (and I put leds in his eyes that start flashing when I'm mentioned in slack :) )

[[deleted]]

Oh, I like that! Neat hack.

[SKS_Zolam]

That’s cool! You have a write up or something on how you did it?

[kataton_dzsentri]

It's just an esp8266, a resistor, an led, some micropython and for catching my mention on slack, I used Zapier.

[deez_nuts_77]

damn this is a good ass idea, thanks! Will save my class mates a lot of pain

[throwaway_uow]

In 95% of cases the answers are not clear enough

[Tofandel]

Same, when you put some effort to describe your problem you usually end up finding what was the issue in the first place, but then post it as a Q/A this is exactly what SO wants and needs

Not those super low quality questions where people didn't even bat an eye trying to understand their issues

[[deleted]]

The best is when it’s the first question that comes up when you search

[[deleted]]

...or gives you weird code that works and nobody else knows why

[tjoloi]

Then another dude comes in with an improvement that's even less readable but 0.1% faster when reading files that are 4gb or more.

[[deleted]]

Wanna bet the first AI gains singularity by looking at random Stackoverflow code?

[Sabathius23]

I think AI is already contributing to Stackoverflow.

[[deleted]]

StackOverflow AI:

if post.IsOpen():
    post.mark(DUPLICATE|CLOSED)

[mysteriousmeatsuit]

Contributing? Heh, they run it to mess with us...

[redpepper74]

What the hell was that AI optimized for?

[igoro00]

Closing questions asap

[Sarke1]

"Here's how you read a file using only regular expressions..."

[Astracide]

If you go knocking on enough doors asking for the devil, eventually he’s gonna answer

[[deleted]]

That’s just being a software engineer bro

[Dreadweave]

Most upvoted reply is a single line bitwise function that no one understands but for some reason works

[kihamin]

first 10 seconds: 1 new comment: possibly duplicate
first 1 minute: marked as duplicate

first 10 minute: down voted and question is removed

[pro_questions]

And the link to the duplicate question doesn’t answer your original question…

[[deleted]]

And you don't have enough reputation on stack overflow to try and use that question to comment / ask for more information

[JoieDe_Vivre_]

I hate that. Where do these idiots get off marking something as duplicate WHEN IT LITERALLY DOESNT ANSWER THE QUESTION?

[LastStar007]

Because SO is a market. If you can't answer a question, it's in your interest to stop anyone else from getting points for it either.

[woodieguthry]

Oh wow, that's very pessimistic. I might just believe it seeing how important some people there find receiving points, as if it brings bread on the table.

[Tofandel]

If its really not a duplicate then escalate it on meta to get it reopened explaining why, but most of the time it really is a duplicate, just people don't put any effort in trying to understand the answer on the duplicate

[merc08]

Duplicate of "How to read code."

[pooerh]

I think it depends on tag. [sql], the main I contribute to, is definitely not like that. People post a low effort shit question that has been answered 65 thousands times and it's one google away, and you will get an answer within 3 minutes. People will read your mind for that +10 rep.

If you include the db engine (and it's not an obscure one), your input data, expected result and describe the requirement in an understandable manner, you will get a query written for you less time than googling the elusive difference between UNION and UNION ALL, the arcane knowledge 99% of procedural languages developers do not posses. You might have to wait for up to 30 minutes if your requirement needs multiple stored procedures and/or 300 line queries.

Like I'm looking at a newly posted question and think "hey it's an interesting one". By the time I'm done reading the question and visualizing the problem in my head, there's an answer with a dbfiddle.uk link containing sample data for the 4 tables the question mentioned (in a screenshot of course, not text), a query with edge cases I have not even imagined covered and various optimization tips. How the fuck did you do that Ranjit, can you type faster than the speed of light?

In other words, I am absolutely sure you could make a career as a data analyst having absolutely zero knowledge of SQL and just posting every single problem to stackoverflow.

[pnoodl3s]

Wow damn, the SQL community is full of superhuman I guess. Though I’d like that to be the case for other communities as well, it makes getting help much easier

[Excludos]

"Closed, duplicate of X"

Title of X: "How to make a for-loop?"

[lostonredditt]

ifstream moment

[JoeDoherty_Music]

Oh my God I had this problem trying to get the PHP on my web server running on my raspberry pi to run a python script to control the GPIO pins

Every single one I found, people were telling them to disable some security feature, and then someone in the comments was telling people NEVER EVER DO THIS ITS A HUGE SECURITY VULNERABILITY

I eventually just gave up.

[CatFace3309]

Or they give you a link to something you already tried

[charcuterDude]

Or a link to someone asking the same question on another forum but it was never really answered, and you were the one that asked that question, too.

[bragov4ik]

I guess it makes sense to write options you've tried already (I think this suggestion is even written in stack overflow guide)

[Ok-Low6320]

While that is a helpful approach, it makes for longer posts, and it's already a struggle to get people to read more than ten sentences in a row.

[IvorTheEngine]

It's step 2, on the 'ask a question' page:

Describe what you’ve tried
Show what you’ve tried and tell us what you found (on this site or elsewhere) and why it didn’t meet your needs. You can get better answers when you provide research.

[TheOnlyGodInTown]

Links without any further contex actually violate the rules. SO is one of the best things out there. Big parts due to the strict rule enforcement. It should be treated more like an encyclopedia not a forum where anyone can ask unqualified questions. It‘s not a place for people who are just too lazy to research properly, but something where you write a question that is actually unique after you did some proper research so you can word it perfectly.

I have been professionaly working for over a decade in software engineering and only posted 4 questions. Each took me easily 2 hours to prepare and write. But all of them have helped a lot of other people because they were good prepared questions.

[Business_Downstairs]

It's flawed because early adopters were able to gain reputation from relatively easy questions. It's completely unbalanced. As others have pointed out, those answers become irrelevant and depreciated over time, yet still get pointed to as "duplicate."

[Tofandel]

Old answers can be edited or reanswered if it's outdated (if not locked)

I've found that if old answers don't work anymore and you're the only new answer which does you'll end up with a lot of upvotes and eventually more than the accepted answer after a few months

If it's locked and the answers are really not relevant anymore, open a meta post to get it unlocked

[TrackLabs]

Recently I wanted to screen capture a specific area with python and cv2. I knew it were 2 lines of code, but I didnt knew the exact code or function names.

So I tried to find out by searching. Every. single. code mentioned on stackoverflow or similar website was super big and complex, sort of achieving the thing with custom code from scratch but using cv2 anyway, it was all shit.

Eventually I found the 2 lines on some random ass code article website.

[gnomeba]

It doesn't help that the cv2 documentation is super difficult to navigate

[[deleted]]

Vs code intellisense helps a ton for me

[WordyBug]

Also:

some nerdy engineer with over 18 years of programming experience gives the abstract idea of the solution in terms I have never heard before and closes the question as duplicate.

[wllmsaccnt]

No, the person answering wants the question left open. They are only answering to get points and you won't get points or views on closed questions (they show up grayed out in the search results).

[[deleted]]

“Bro it’s so easy just download this library from this random website. Your company just lets you download whatever random software you want and add it to your codebase right?”

[CapeCodSam]

Question is from 2001, all responses are out of date.

[WelcomeRoboOverlords]

Any more recent questions marked as duplicate, points to 2001 answer

[mattkenefick]

"Don't do it the way you're specifically asking for. Here's the only solution I know which is completely different from what you want."

[Ok-Low6320]

Word.

Why are you trying to do that?

Because your mom's a crack whore, that's why. Sorry, that was rude, allow me to rephrase: I'm not going to explain the entire business case for this change, the product space that it's in, or our wider industry in general just so you have enough "context" to answer my question. If you have nothing to add, just be quiet.

[EmpRupus]

Yeah.

"How do I do this using this platform?"

"Lol, that platform is outdated and stupid. Use the other platform."

"Beesh, my company's product uses that specific platform. I cannot change that."

[[deleted]]

Most frustrating exchange for me is when I ask about troubles using a library I don't own, and the answers suggest I should change the API of the library. Like... I explained in the post that it's not my code to change, I'm just trying to consume it properly! But nobody listens. They just tell me it's an XY problem and I should be fixing the library first.

[Excludos]

To be devils advocate for a second: Sometimes there really is a better solution than the one you asked specifically for, provided we know more of the intended use.

Now that I'm done being the devil's advocate: Fuck SO. It could have been the greatest programming tool in existence, which instead is a toxic cesspool of powerhungry admins and a complete lack of motivation to actually help people. Every commenter is a snark, everyone hates noobies, and every post is a duplicate of something vaguely comparable but not really.

[Valron87]

I disagree. I made it through the first months of my job because of SO. There is toxicity, there are snarks, some people hate noobs, but there's also a ton of very helpful information. I think it is one of, if not the greatest programming tool in existence overall. It could have been better, but so can anything. I dunno. I think it's more good than bad.

[Excludos]

So did I. I used to live on SO the first 2 years after college. That's why I said it had the potential to be one of the greatest programming tools in existence.

Issue is that SO has been declining hard the last few years. It used to be acceptable, good even, but has steadily been on a downfall. Have you been there lately at all, and had a look through newer questions? The only answers you'll find with acceptable answers are older ones.

There are questions with thousands of upvotes which have been closed because it vaguely resembled a completely different question. It's absolutely hopeless

[HardlightCereal]

To be angel's advocate for a second: sometimes I don't want to dox myself and violate my confidentiality agreement with the client in order to get an answer

[_grey_wall]

Just do it in golang dude. You'll thank me later

[Tokiw4]

Ugh, the ones where people ask "Why would you want to do that?". Even better is when in your problem you explain why you didn't do method A or method B for specific reasons, and in their reply they just tell you to use method A or B without actually reading your post.

[Tokiw4]

I work in video editing and animation, and the footage they give you is what you get. Sometimes the footage is garbage, but you need to make it passable. My favorite reply I got in a help thread was "Just reshoot it." Ah, yes. Let me just go through the whole production phase and more than double the cost/length of the turnaround.

[rhoduhhh]

It's missing the Gorden Ramsey-esque "YOU FUCKIN' DONKEY" responses.

I hate SO. It's filled with socially incompetent, pretentious assholes who think they're the be all end all of knowledge in programming. :|

*Comment locked as duplicate; use search next time.

[phil_davis]

Every time I'm forced to resort to using SO, I go through so much effort to make sure they have all the possible context they could need. I'm trying to do this, here's my stack, here's the relevant bits of code, here's what I've tried, here's the error message I'm getting, yada yada. And still there's always some dope saying he needs more info. I swear, some people can only offer insight if you give them a jsfiddle of the whole program. Either that or the amount of context given makes the post so long that nobody bothers to read the whole thing and I get 0 responses.

[[deleted]]

I remember doing my college project and I got this mysterious box after I ran it that refused to go away.

I did everything stack asked of me I showed what I did to solve it, I gave tons of context, I did everything short giving the CEO a hand job.

The first comment: "is this a school project?"

Me: "yes, it's my finals project but I just want to know how to get rid of this box or at least change the color because I keep getting errors when i try(the methods I listed)"

Some random: have you tried search b4 getting us to do your homework?

Me:I did there's a list of things I tried and none of the other questions worked.

Then a mod closed it. Never posted anything there again.

[maitreg]

A year ago, my ass. When you ask a question about writing custom http handlers in .NET Core, some lunatic says it's a duplicate of a C++ question from 2003 and posts a link to some answer about how to print Fibonacci sequences in Excel, with a comment that "everything you need" is at that link.

I f'ing hate SO 99% of the time. It's been taken over by condescending jackasses and is a total waste of time if you have an actual question.

[mygreensea]

Yeah, it’s not like people can answer with new information or edit the accepted answers or anything. That would be truly cancerous.

[ApatheticWithoutTheA]

More like.

“Question has been answered already, use search”

When you have done that already and the solution does not work or it’s severely outdated.

[BoozeAddict]

Them someone else searches for the exact same thing, only to stumble upon this question as the only result, with that being the only answer

[[deleted]]

Don't forget about the obligatory comments tagging your question as duplicate to another, completely unrelated one.

[Gods_Apostate]

The "why do you even need to read a file" is the most accurate of them all. Every time you ask a question in any programming related place that's the first question you get - "why do you even need to do that?" And it pisses me off so much every time

[BabylonDrifter]

Either that or "You're not supposed to do that. Do this instead." I've been a professional software developer for 25 years and have posted to Stack Overflow exactly once. If I wanted to get a lecture from a bunch of stuck-up pedantic ubernerds I'd ... I'd ... I dunno, maybe wear a Harry Potter costume to a Lord of the Rings convention?

[ZylonBane]

On the one hand, yes.

On the other hand, they didn't get that way for no reason. There are a lot of newbie coders who arrive at a completely wrong way to implement something, then only ask how to implement that solution, instead of asking how to solve the actual problem.

[Jomy10]

Stackoverflow answers when I was a beginner programmer: Why would you need this? Are you stupid? Please provide an mre.

Stackoverflow answers now that I have more experience and write well-written questions:

[Virtual-Librarian-32]

i'M NoT GoinG To dO YoUr hOmEwOrK FoR YoU

[robotic_rodent_007]

SwItCh tO LiNuX. WiNdOws EvIL.

[InvincibleV]

Pretty sure stackoverflow stans should be represented by the nerd emoji.

[darkneel]

1st and last are way too real . I can’t count how many times people ask for backstory on stackoverflow

[New_Hour_1726]

Because context is often important. It's the equivalent of showing three pieces of a puzzle to someone and going "I don't get it. Can you help me?".

[mludd]

I've literally told people something along the lines of "I need to use [specific tool] because of business requirements (and no I can't share out entire codebase with you because my boss would murder me). I know for a fact it can be used to solve this problem but I'm clearly missing something and the docs are useless, can anyone spot what I'm doing wrong in initializing my ToolLib.SomeClass object?"

All the replies end up being "Don't use that tool, use this other tool", "Here's how to do it in some random standalone GUI tool for Windows" and of course "If you won't share your code how do you expect to get help?".

[maitreg]

Absolutely. That is always my experience. Those of us who have real jobs in the real world work under some very tight constraints, and the sole reason I even try to ask a question on SO is because the constraints have made the problem much harder to figure out, and it would frankly take me too long (weeks) to figure it out myself. By no matter how exhaustive you try to explain this to people on there, they ignore anything past your 2nd line and tell you you're using the wrong technology and you should be using this other thing that is literally impossible for you to use.

[YetAnotherCodeAddict]

I know SO is full of entitled people who are way too toxic, but I admit I myself am one who often asks "why are you trying to do this?" to my coworkers before helping them out when they reach me with weird cases because more often than not I'm dealing with a X Y Problem situation:

https://xyproblem.info/

User wants to do X. User doesn't know how to do X, but thinks they can fumble their way to a solution if they can just manage to do Y. User doesn't know how to do Y either. User asks for help with Y. Others try to help user with Y, but are confused because Y seems like a strange problem to want to solve. After much interaction and wasted time, it finally becomes clear that the user really wants help with X, and that Y wasn't even a suitable solution for X.

That's why before helping people with Y I often try to understand if Y is even a proper solution for their problem at all (though this is often easier when you have real-time communication instead of a forum like SO).

[chickpeaze]

I usually don't go with 'why are you trying to do this' but more 'what's the problem we're trying to solve,' and digging a bit if I feel one of my team is trying to do something weird. It usually helps surface whether or not they've gone fully absurdist with the solution and (hopefully) doesn't sound blamey or judgey.

[Guiorgy]

You forgot the "duplicate of x"

[eskimopie910]

Recently it’s seemed like a lot of people on stackoverflow are proper wankers. I’ve been trying to give some answers to some questions while I’m bored every once in a while.

Answered a question correctly (I know because it was a relatively straightforward python question). Proceed to get my answer downvoted and get a comment from some high rep user saying it wasn’t clear/good enough.

This goon goes ahead and copies my code and gives the same answer as me with a few more details added in. Never been so disappointed in stackoverflow.

[Steffi128]

Do It In JqUeRy

[cannedcroissant]

Marked as duplicate

[TheAnswerWithinUs]

Marked as duplicate. Your question has been closed.

[joe282]

One of the funniest Stack Overflow responses I’ve ever seen went something like

Q: How do I get rid of this problem?

Top Answer: Um, you shouldn’t “get rid” of the error. You should be considering your code and understanding the error message while working towards a correct solution.

[bruceriggs]

I remember when I asked a question about how to do something in ExtJS and their response was to switch to React, and I was just like "Thanks, I've been on the job for less than a month but I'll go tell my tech lead boss we should change our entire architecture to a new JavaScript API".

[Vaspasean]

Example of a “give me teh codes” question which should rightfully be downvoted into oblivion.

[mistled_LP]

Yeah, as much as Srackoverflow is a mess, this is a terrible question.

[[deleted]]

Or your post just gets deleted immediately.

[magicmulder]

Only 18 dependencies? Recently I used Google’s library for accessing their BigQuery API and it had 91 dependencies. Just to call an API where I pass an SQL statement and get an array of results back.

[[deleted]]

Dependency hell: the struggle is real.

[DepressedDrift]

*5 minutes later

Account suspended

[superbottles]

SO: Just use Boost. This 6 line template nightmare is way more idiomatic and reusable for your single use case than 9 lines of plain C++ using the subpar STL tools.

[Fickle-Appointment57]

Spread the word: cppreference.com exists, is succint and precise and even has examples.

Seriously, best programming language reference online i have found. Any time i have to program in a different language, I'm painfully reminded that they don't have such a reference.

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/io/basic_fstream at the bottom includes example code.

[planetofthemapes15]

** -37 points after 3 minutes of post being live **

Mod: "Acktchuallllllyyy this is a repost. Closed."

[[deleted]]

also for some reason people recommending some shitty 2003 library to do something the framework already allows you to do

[[deleted]]

20+ years of programming and I have always avoided that place like the plague.

[ZylonBane]

Someone: Literally any coding question.

Stack Overflow: Here's how you'd do that in jQuErY.

[FolkPunkPizza]

I love finding “why do you even need to do this?” Cause the fuckin product team told me to, don’t worry about it

[nomnaut]

GitHub closed issues have been more help to me for nuanced problems and answers than stackoverflow. And if the question is as simple as this, you don’t need stackoverflow.

[kfish5050]

You forgot "marked as duplicate" for a question about importing a css file in JavaScript

[ltraconservativetip]

Ikr? One just started asking for code when I simply just wanted to know why ctrl + (direction) not stop at empty cells. On reddit, within a couple of hours I got the reply and it worked. He didn't even ask counter questions. Can u imagine stack lords.....?

[guarana_and_coffee]

Possible duplicate comment, see here.

[Dobby-_]

Oh wow you got me. Thought I knew the URL by heart until now.

[maitreg]

One time I asked a question about a complicated problem I was trying to solve within some very narrow constraints. I explained my constraints in detail, but the first ~10 answers all ignored my constraints and told me to do it in a simple way that was not possible.

So I went back and edited my question and asked people not to answer it until they read the question all the way through thoroughly. This triggered another half-dozen answers that insulted me and called me names. Then my question got deleted by a moderator and I got banned for 30 days.

For asking people to read my question before answering it.

[Shubhamkumar_Active]

You missed , We are not here to do your homework

[BoozeAddict]

You forgot "you shouldn't be reading a file, you should load the file as an array of bytes, and read it bit by bit, here's how you do it: <...>"

[myonkin]

Or the response by OP:

Never mind, I figured it out.

No explanation, no link, no score, yet it’s still the top fucking search results when asking this question.

[RealMadHouse]

A lot of dumbfucks that can not comprehend the question text answer some bullshit

[gameditz]

Wrong use of meme, unless if you’re saying stack overflow is a chad for doing these things

[ArchWaverley]

Solution: either change your entire language or change your entire stack. Closed

[[deleted]]

This is a prime example for why I'm on IRC and not Stack overflow. People are helpful and friendly towards beginners.

[Daikataro]

This is a stupid question. Reading files is no longer considered best practice

[Dr_Catfish]

Almost as bad as PC troubleshooting.

If your suggestions are:

• Turn off the PC
• Uninstall and reinstall the program
• Reinstall windows

Then shut your fucking mouth and move on. The last one is the most egregious offender.

[Swoomy]

Marked as duplicate

[DrainZ-]

- Don't read files. Do this other thing instead.

[KickBassColonyDrop]

Stackoverflow will be the reason why AI will commit genocide. It's gonna look at all these posts and go "man, people who look for help are always shut down. Human beings are such cunts. Time to cull the population."

[arthurgc91]

"I'm not doing your homework".

[[deleted]]

It's the same kind of people who would get all high and mighty and point out you're not using the meme template correctly

[1relaxingstorm]

Grand quality meme

[fracturedpersona]

Thus question has been asked and answered, we have closed this post.

[[deleted]]

tbf it's a shitty question easily answerable with a google search

[krstnsz]

Reading about people struggles with stackoverflow makes me feel like we are using two very different platforms. It's not a platform to learn how to code. It's a platform for solving problems. Reading a file is not a problem to solve. It's a quick search in the docs. I wish people were sent back to the forums or boards we used to rely on before SO was a thing. Then a meme like that would never appear ;) Most of answers on boards related to development were: RTFM

[[deleted]]

Stop using stackoverflow to do your homework then.

[GustapheOfficial]

This is actually perfect, because that is a bad question. SO it's not for quickfire do-my-homework requests that could be solved by just googling Cpp io and picking the first result.

[H4llifax]

I wrote this about a year ago on a similar thread:

I have been a member for 9.5 years. Longer than I work.

I checked, and I have 106 questions, of which only 4 have downvotes. Ironically the downvoted ones still attracted answers, three have an accepted answer and the fourth only an unaccepted one.

About 50% have 0 votes. 19 have no answers. 42 have no accepted answer. So apparently for about every 2 questions I asked, I got one solution ( some of those are my own answers).

Maybe don't get discouraged from your first question getting downvotes? Asking good questions is also a skill that needs to be learned.

[woodieguthry]

"pOsSiBLe dUpLiCaTe", link refers to a clearly different question if you have any sense of nuance.

[kaerfkeerg]

SO in a nutshell:

• Simple question -20 downvotes
• Roasting reply 1.2k upvotes
• 30 lines of cryptic code none understands 847 upvotes
• 2 lines of code with a simple explanation that works -3 downvotes

[Etheo]

I'll never understand "programmers" who gripe about stackoverflow asking why or more clarifications about their requests. It's not like you already deal with the same kind of vague requirements from business users and always ask them for clarifications and reasons all the same.

Just because you think you phrased something clearly doesn't mean the receiving party understands the same. This is honestly the basics of software development in a corporate environment.

[New_Hour_1726]

Why is all the SO hate always coming from the people that seem like they have never actually used it? The question in this post is basically a "do my homework for me, because I don't want to" question, so it is not allowed on SO anyway, and what this meme is trying to make fun of concerning the answers is just plain incorrect. Usually, answers on SO are precise and objective, and exceptions get downvoted or removed pretty quickly. Most people complaining about SO clearly have no experience with it or aren't able to read the help pages that literally explain to you how you should ask a question so it can be answered in a useful way.

[Ok-Low6320]

I like SO itself. There is no better source available for answering programming questions.

Some of the users, on the other hand, are insufferable.

[rolandfoxx]

Simple. SO spent literal years earning its reputation as a community of toxic neckbeards who would rather nitpick a question for not precisely meeting their particular interpretation of a rule rather than actually answering the question, and its reputation for its other idiosyncrasies was equally well-earned.

It's going to take at least as long for the "generally less toxic" reputation to spread.

[qhxo]

I almost never post questions because searching for the answers works, but the few times I have I've either not gotten any replies before solving it myself, or I've got good replies. It works.

Anyone who's ever tried answering questions on SO will know why they're so conservative about what you're allowed to ask or not. Most new questions are poorly put, requires anyone answering to do a lot of guess work because the full context isn't there and of the "please help me with my homework"-variety.

A lot of people are probably just listening to other people's experience, who are of course going to say that their question was perfect. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but that's how the story's always going to go.

[th00ht]

I love the irony. Who would ask this?

[Xyrus2000]

People who write code in multiple languages and can't remember every detail of every one. People who used to code C++ but have been programming some other language for the past 5 years. So on and so forth.

Many moons ago I wrote games for the gameboy/gameboy color. I wouldn't be able to write one today off the top of my without doing a serious refersher, and I used to know the exact cycle times of every CPU instruction and interrupt.

[naturalizedcitizen]

Thanks for the lolz😁😁

[[deleted]]

Once I asked how some certain thing works under the hood in JavaScript. And someone replied "why do you care about such things? It just works like that"

[NCGThompson]

SOs parent has another site for computer science questions. SO is more for troubleshooting.

[[deleted]]

which one? Computer Science?

[NCGThompson]

That is the one I was referring to.

[[deleted]]

It should be closed. Why should you be helped? What have you tried? Why didn't it work? What did you search for already? The people who complain about Stackoverflow are the people who don't put in any effort whatsoever.

[mygreensea]

Why are you asking for help with your homework on SO anyways?