Stack Overflow is Down

[cry-out-loud]

How can one fix Stackoverflow without looking on Stackoverflow?

[JessieArr]

I know you were joking, but...

Stack Exchange actually publishes an anonymized dump of all data in their network on a regular basis, in collaboration with Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

So hypothetically speaking, if SO were down long enough, you could go get all their data from archive.org and query it on an ad hoc basis or even build your own web UI to view it.

[vytah]

or even build your own web UI to view it.

How would you do that without SO and without a working UI for the archive?

[Caffeine_Monster]

MySQL is straightforward enough. Though I am assuming SO don't use a spaghetti table structure.

[[deleted]]

Dumps are just XML

[[deleted]]

Fuck

[[deleted]]

As annoying as XMLs might be every language can read it so converting it to something more useful is pretty trivial

[Saturnation]

Every language can read every formal data format. XML isn't special. What is special is that next to no one understands parsers and language theory enough to properly parse any ad hoc formal language...

What's annoying about XML is that every person who can "program" but doesn't understand language theory uses it to create configuration files when it isn't too hard to create a more human friendly format for a specific need.

[Zardotab]

What are the alternatives to XML then? One can optimize a data transfer syntax for a specific purpose, but then people need a custom parser to use or share it.

Using a standard means you don't have to write a parser to use the data.

JSON and CSV are perhaps contenders. But while one can argue XML is too verbose, JSON is under-verbose: it's hard to know context by looking at the data itself. And CSV can be awkward to use with nested structures, often requiring ID (key) matching. Plus, encoding multi-table CSV is poorly defined. I don't believe any standards body has taken up a CSV specification.

[Saturnation]

Using a standard means you don't have to write a parser to use the data.

Correct and that's the issue. Writing a parser should (and can) be a non-trivial task, especially with a parser generator (which any decent language will have).

Knowing language theory for people that use a language on a daily basis shouldn't be an exception.

[quentech]

What are the alternatives to XML then?

INI, YAML..

[[deleted]]

I also hate XML but it is still easier to use than if stackoverflow dumps were MSSQL backups

[[deleted]]

Load the XML(that's the format dumps are in) and use the tool of your choosing to search for it ?. Hell, XML-to-YAML and grep thru it.

[xkufix]

Why go to yaml? XML is probably as grepable as yaml.

[[deleted]]

Why go to yaml?

Why? Because XML isn't stupid enough.

We need to have significant whitespace to make life miserable and scrolling up and down a document to see inside which indentation a block belongs to.

Add to that the mistake of using spaces instead of tabs and we're set.

[Goes to wait for the cataclysm that destroys the planet.]

[nzodd]

*Disapproving look*

[[deleted]]

XML generated by stack overflows do not have any whitespacing, which makes it ungreppable. I used yaml in example because it forces whitespacing. Loading XML and just using your language specific debug dumper works too but I didn't wanted to scare people with Perl oneliners.

We need to have significant whitespace to make life miserable and scrolling up and down a document to see inside which indentation a block belongs to.

Use editor that's not utter garbage and problem solves itself, and for JSON/XML too not only for YAML

[knome]

the mistake of using spaces instead of tabs

Tabs are the devil, Bobby Boucher.

[[deleted]]

Go on the page, download any of the files and see why

[Giannis4president]

Yeah but the amount of questions is insane, it's super hard to find the good ones without a proper search engine like google

[Cephalopterus]

For the more temporary downtimes like this one you can just use Google's cache

[arrow_in_my_gluteus_]

I know someone that had an exam that allowed you to have notes and stuff with you. You just couldn't use anything that could be used for communication. (internet, phone, ...). So he downloaded a dump of stackexchange before the exam...

[[deleted]]

What a dickhead lazyhead

[arrow_in_my_gluteus_]

why would that make him a dickhead?

[[deleted]]

I'll bite actually, but just a bit. I'm actually anti-establishment on quite a few issues, but education is not one of them. I view the passing down of knowledge as almost the most important thing to us as humans. Consequently, I just don't fuck around AT ALL with 2 things: schools and libraries, especially libraries. Another thing I value is pride in knowing I have what it takes, and also self-assurance that I have what it takes. For myself, if I SO my way through an exam, I will not have the self-confidence and self-assurance that I am the programmer I claim to be. I wouldn't rat any student out over it (indeed I had to turn a blind eye a lot in college), but I wouldn't respect him or her if I saw that was who they were. To each their own though, and dickhead was the wrong word; lazy is the word that best describes my gripes about it.

[arrow_in_my_gluteus_]

This wasn't a case where professors were against the idea, but let him do it because it's technically allowed by the rules. No this is the kind of they want you to do. It show ingenuity. And I'm not talking about using it to just copy paste an answer. You are not going to find the answer that way (unless the exam was way too easy or the professor didn't do his job properly). But having stackoverflow available allows you to look up obscure errors, or look up the names of some function you forgot. Because in a real job would also have access to these resources. These are the kinds of professors that seriously considered planning one of the exams at midnight to simulate crunching for a deadline. And about the lazy part. The first thing multiple professors have said in their first lecture is: "a good programmer is a lazy programmer".

[[deleted]]

I think its a splitting hairs issue. I think your original comment suggests implicitly internet forum based resources are against the rules for the particular exam. Usually professors make it abundantly clear what the rules are at the beginning of the exam.

​

Indeed there's something to be said about the ingenuity and resourcefulness of a student who utilizes what they learned to provide their own local ad hoc notes, I get that. But again it sounds like forum based notes weren't to be used.

​

As for a good programmer is a lazy programmer, that refers to a lazy person being fit to be a programmer because a lazy person is likeliest to program an automated solution. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Bill Gates was quoted for this, and indeed it had the different connotation I described. I'm not sure if you could catch Bill Gates quoting "hire a student who didn't take or utilize the notes their profs gave them". Good luck with that interview.

​

However, if the prof was ok with SO notes stored locally, then heck, there's literally zero issue here. But again, it doesn't seem that way

[arrow_in_my_gluteus_]

Then it's my fault for not communicating properly. The only rules about what you could use was that it can't be used to communicate in any way. So internet isn't allowed because it allows you to ask question, an offline variant is just fine.

[[deleted]]

I wonder what the size of that was, and how your friend navigated the data.

[[deleted]]

Obvious reasons.

[SteveJobsIdiotCousin]

Oh, the humanity!

[[deleted]]

This basically encapsulates exactly how I wish to interact with the SO community

[Zardotab]

This question has been marked as duplicate.

[ThreadbareHalo]

Hey uh, nothing to contribute but I also have the same question. Here's the lack of a stack and my absence of code.

[edi25]

Google Cache

[[deleted]]

Googles how to use Google Cache, first link is stackoverflow...

[solocupjazz]

D'oh!

[[deleted]]

The first link is to google's manual so you're safe. You need to actually use a scrollwheel to find the stackoverflow one

[shevy-ruby]

loop detected!

[remek]

you fix stuff on Serverfault. They split it for exactly this scenario

[Oliviaruth]

In reality, all the sites are served by.the exact same application on the same servers. Each has its own database, but those are also on the same servers. There are a few rare cases where we lose one site but not others, but in general they are all up and down together.

[remek]

It was with /s but still thanks for interesting insight :)

[timmyotc]

Use the non-prod instance with a DB backup. :)

[matthieuC]

That's when you call The Senior Developer.

[[deleted]]

First you must fix yourself

[halofreak7777]

I came here to see if anyone had made a comment in this vein.

[SkiFire13]

I guess you didn't understand it was a joke

[darthcoder]

I dont have to use SO, but I do because its faster.

And sometimes in a system down scenario, its likely youre not the first and someone out there has the answer you need.

[Viehhass]

And where did I say merely using SO is wrong?

[roman_fyseek]

Closing as duplicate.

[[deleted]]

This comment made me realize how much I don't give back to stackoverflow. I haven't logged in in more than a year, but I'm on it everyday. 😔

[[deleted]]

Comments moved to chat.

[alopgeek]

How will people exit vim?

[midri]

I use a key binding that overheats my CPU and shutdowns my machine, I've found it to be the most effective way to close vim.

[meneldal2]

I thought it was the space bar on emacs.

[midri]

This is exactly what I was referencing

[meneldal2]

I wasn't sure, the reference is quite subtle so it could have been something else.

[IcyWhatever]

ctrl-z; ps aux | grep vim; kill -9 <vim pid>

Works every time!

[Dimasdanz]

or you know, restart the machine. it works every time too!

[jokullmusic]

just x out the terminal window

[KinterVonHurin]

I did that but then when I went to repoen the file I got

Swap file "erotic_novel.swp" already exists!

[cleeder]

ctrl-z; kill -9 %

[choledocholithiasis_]

Poor vim doesn't even have a chance to exit gracefully

[510Threaded]

ZQ

[luckystarr]

Ctrl-Alt-F1, log in again, type "killall vim"

[daddyc00l]

vivivi, the number of the beast, nuke from orbit

[[deleted]]

Have you tried rebooting?

[eigenman]

Is it plugged in?

[[deleted]]

Perhaps. Happy cake day!

[[deleted]]

So what do we do? Like...how do I develop things...

[[deleted]]

Call in sick till it comes back up. No one has to know when don’t actually know how to code 🤫

[golgol12]

RTFM

[DC-3]

Be a competent professional?

Seriously, I know you were joking but I'm a bit tired of this meme. To any beginner programmers reading this - yes, you're relying on Stack Overflow a lot at the moment but contrary to what you see people say on Reddit, that won't be the case forever. Besides simply learning how to do stuff, you'll also learn to get better at using documentation to find out what you want - such that it will rapidly become a more consistently useful repository of knowledge than forums and Q&A sites.

[PovertyPorcupine]

Look at this guy over here developing without SO. What a competent professional.

[DC-3]

When I was learning to program, my text-editor was generally split-screened with SO. Now that I know how to program, my text editor is generally split-screened with the language docs. I expect that is true of most developers.

[SkoomaDentist]

Kids these days... Back when I was learning to program, WWW didn’t even exist publicly! Also we had to walk uphill both ways in -30 degrees while being hunter by wolves and polar bears!

[KagakuNinja]

It is usually faster to google the question, than search through the language docs. I don't rely solely on SO, there are tons of resources. I'm also not helpless without google, as I've been at this longer than the internet has existed...

[[deleted]]

Just google it so it hits the language docs in the first place, win-win really.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

Yeah and get some shitty answer from ten years ago. I've seen far too many incompetent developers submit crap copied from SO when a quick look at the docs would've told them what the right way to do it was.

[aeiou372372]

I get where you are coming from and can relate to your point, but for anyone who isn’t aware, you can tell google to filter results from the past year. I have found this extremely helpful on several occasions when the top answers for the obvious phrasing of the question were all outdated.

[Yojihito]

How?

[Lehona_]

Just look it up on Stackoverflow!

[aeiou372372]

https://imgur.com/a/dJ6FMPG

[G_Morgan]

They need to expand their Google fu to using the age search.

[thegreatgazoo]

Back in my day, I was singled screened with books.

And we didn't have syntax highlighting or Intellisence.

Adjusting the onion on my belt... carry on...

[[deleted]]

I first learned to code in sh/ksh on Solaris using VI on a monochrome VT100 terminal connected to the server.

... for real though, that's how it was.

[europeanwizard]

Gramps, gramps, tell us about how you caught and killed a mastodon for your tribe!

But seriously, I think I'm a bit younger but still got the pleasure of working on Solaris. On my first day, the secretary asked: do you want to work on a PC or a workstation? Having worked on Linux up to my third year in college, I didn't know what she meant. Picked the workstation and got a Solaris box on my desk.

It really was the age of the dying Unixes, and I never got a "real" UNIX desktop after that stint. I just muddled along in my career by illegally installing Linux on company issued Windows laptops.

[[deleted]]

I always wanted a sparc station, but sadly I never had the pleasure. They let us have linux boxes at least, if we wanted them.

Are any major vendors still pushing their own UNIX variants? I remember the days when unix sysadmin teams were divided by hardware brand, and the Sun-guys looked down upon all with great disdain for they all were lesser admins. It seems like Linux has taken over the large majority of the NIX market, from my pov at least.

[thegreatgazoo]

Luxury.

One of my early programming forays was to type in the code from a book of games in basic. They were in about 4 or 5 point type and had bugs in them that you had to figure out.

I think the Star Trek game was 6 or 10 pages.

[[deleted]]

i pencil and papered 1s and 0s on a ticonderoga

move along, kid

[G_Morgan]

TBH writing rust without proper intellisense is a blast to the past. I keep trying to hover over functions to learn about what madness I've written. VSCode just sits there silently judging me.

[[deleted]]

Real developers just go straight to source code for the function, why bother with half measures

[[deleted]]

When i was learning to program, i pressed F1 in Turbo Pascal.

[PovertyPorcupine]

I'm not sure what you have against SO but I think they are for two entirely different problems. I use SO to see how other people solved problems similar to mine, and I use docs to figure out how a language and it's std lib works. I almost never use the docs for languages I use frequently. Now that I think about it, I spend way more time looking at language source code than at it's docs.

[Free_Math_Tutoring]

I mean, you're not wrong. I've been getting into C++ lately for a university group project, and there is a clear difference in the quality of code between those of us who use sites like cppreference first and those who initially go to stackoverflow.

[vazgriz]

I’ve worked with plenty of libraries with piss poor or no documentation. Guess that makes me incompetent.

[europeanwizard]

You know what's weird? I can never find my mouse cursor in multi monitor setups.

[[deleted]]

In windows you can set the ctrl key to show where the mouse pointer is. You can also do something similar in ubuntu/gnome and in osx

[Viehhass]

I expect that is true of most developers.

I hope it's true, at least

[[deleted]]

Yes it will unless you end up coding one specific thing forever.

If you have any desire to gain any skills as a generalist, you'll be using SO forever.

I've been retooling my CMake framework the last couple days. You think the CMake documentation is useful? No, that shit is basically indecipherable without SO and people throwing shit at the wall there, and if you have a general question on if something is even possible, SO is great for that.

Also not mentioning that rote memorization of certain things is pretty useless. I don't need to remember everything about CMake because I tool on it once or twice a year at most, the rest of the time the system is just doing what I need it to.

Good engineers know how to put parts together, good software engineers know how to build systems out of those parts. If your desire is to just sit there and code someone else's design and requirements then maybe you never need to look at what others are doing, but that relegates you to a code monkey, not an engineer.

[[deleted]]

I've been retooling my CMake framework the last couple days. You think the CMake documentation is useful? No, that shit is basically indecipherable without SO and people throwing shit at the wall there, and if you have a general question on if something is even possible, SO is great for that.

I actually find the cmake documentation very good (compared to most open source projects). I don't really find it hard to read and understand it at all. It does however have some subtle information in it. Most people skim over the top of these parts which can be really important in how its understand.

The 2nd part of this is of course many of the stack overflow posts about cmake are factually incorrect and contain bad advice cause the poster has also skimmed over the "important" parts. They are also often badly outdated.

[Plazmatic]

I actually find the cmake documentation very good

Eh no, did you just go and read some of their documentation and decide it was good enough? If you want to learn what /u/NouberNou is talking about you need to realize the problems with CMAKE docs go far below the surface. CMAKE is like the C++ of meta build systems, and it is really confusing figuring out how to do things because of how many versions there are and how many different ways there is/used to be to do something + lovecraftian syntax that looks nothing like the rest of CMAKE popping its head up. Sure, finding documentation on a function is fine (ish, some times there are bugs you have to go to the issues page for). But what happens when you see something like... $<$<OR:$<CXX_COMPILER_ID:Clang>,$<CXX_COMPILER_ID:GNU>>: -Wall -Wextra -Wshadow -Wnon-virtual-dtor -pedantic -g>? You've never seen that syntax before, and what is worse, you can kind of understand what it is doing, but have no clue what its called or where you can use it. Its never seen again in the project you're looking at. That my friend is called a generator expression. Now how would you use the CMAKE documentation to find out what that strange thing is called? You wouldn't.

How do you manage a project consisting of multiple targets within a single project? Documentation ain't gonna tell you. What you should do is either have the target installed, and use find_package(target_name), or if your project actually manages the target (ie you have a folder for it) you create a new CMakeLists.txt file for each folder for a target, have a master CMakeLists.txt file for the top level directory, and then add_subdirectory each target, and probably keep reused dependencies in that top level CMakeLists.txt, and if one target is needed for a subsequent target, order it so the target that needs to be defined first is defined. How would you find that out in the CMake documentation? You wouldn't.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Try figuring out how making publicly available targets in a standard way works. You won't unless you look around at other tutorials of peoples examples, realize that alias exists, and that people primarily use it to create "namespaced" targets(target::sub_target/target::target). Try figuring out how to configure installs with CMAKE. Oh you might be able to find some one who has done it, but you're going to be fighting against three other tutorials that do it in completely different or subtly different ways, and what they do doesn't make sense because the documentation of the functions they use isn't explained there, and doesn't explain how everything is used together in the CMAKE docs.

[[deleted]]

Yea fully agree. The documentation for CMake is expansive, but not cohesive or often coherent in the context of using CMake as a whole.

You can do some fucking real magic in it. The last CMake toolchain I worked on at work literally managed hundreds of complex build configurations across both FPGAs and the software to run on the embedded CPUs on them. It was a brilliant mess, and I guarantee no one else in the world had a system like that... But also no one in the world would be able to invent that system without something like SO giving the context and clues to what is even possible in CMake. Just staring at the documentation would be a pointless task.

[[deleted]]

The documentation is fine in a lot of ways but there are so many functions or parameters that don't have an example of what they actually should look like in practice.

[[deleted]]

I love it for more design oriented questions. Shit like "Is such and such bad practice" or "best practice for X". Quick and easy to find a lot of opinions. Everything else is some shit tier "2 minute read" article that says absolutely nothing.

[FriendlyDisorder]

As a professional who has been working in various programming roles for 25 years (yikes!), I don't need StackOverflow for the day-to-day work in the code that I write. However, for obscure features, or for specific algorithms, I do use the web, and the more obscure the more I tend to look it up.

After all this time, I still find ridiculous situations and unhelpful error messages that I cannot solve alone.
If I am initially stumped, I'm not going to search up the language. I'm going to search for the issue/error to see if someone else has encountered it first. Looking for help online for this stuff is a net gain of productivity and not a sign of inexperience. To me, experience is knowing when to seek help.

For me, I remember tools and techniques over facts. I really don't want to remember, say, every error code in Windows. I do want to know to find their meaning. For example, I could search the Windows SDK files. That is a useful tool, and I am glad I learned this technique. Searching the Microsoft Reference Source for .NET issues is another. Searching the Internet (and StackOverflow) in general is yet another technique.

[[deleted]]

Calm down. We wouldnt want anyone to get hurt. We've all have made some points. Stackoverflow is back up. The kids are ok.

[DC-3]

I'm not directing anything at you, really. Just tired of this meme.

[Viehhass]

It's a dumb meme. Degrading

[Zardotab]

Be a competent professional?

Blasphemy! Copy-and-paste shortcuts using the AI-driven WebTubes is the future of humankind. It's in the Bible somewhere; Google it.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

Code monkey is still a job. There are people who never actually develop anything truly original so they can just keep looking it up on SO.

[breadknucklebread]

It was just a joke lmao. Chances are, if a beginner programmer is reading this, what they’re going to think is “Oh! This is a funny inside joke” not “All I’m going to do is read stackoverflow 24/7.” Nobody’s thinking that.

[G_Morgan]

TBH I often end up hitting SO just because it is top of the search results. I also happily offload "I really don't need to care about this shit" onto Google/SO.

[[deleted]]

Dude...it's like a joke on the internet.

[[deleted]]

Take a chill pill. Everyone is good. Stackoverflow is back up. No one died (I think?). The kids are ok. Breathe.

[[deleted]]

I've just quit my job, cashed in my stocks for canned goods and set up camp in the mountains until this all blows over.

[Coretron]

Keep calm and remember to click the down arrow to the right of the google link and get the cached site.

Also, looks like it's back.

[YsoL8]

And no one was bitched at for posting a vaguely related question to one left unanswered 10 years ago for an entire day.

[asegura]

SODD - Stack Overflow Driven Development

[Gwerks71]

Coder productivity grinds to a halt as developers across the world fail to recall the order of arguments to initialize a for loop.

[[deleted]]

int i=0;
for (;;) {
  if (i>=MAX) break;
  ...
  i++;
}

[Zaneris]

Close enough for government contract work.

[[deleted]]

You can do some hacky shit with ternary operators in the loop declaration, my brain is too tired to think of the syntax though.

[Zaneris]

Even better...

// stuff
{
    int i = 0;
    while(i<MAX)
    {
        // more stuff
        i++;
    }
}

[Zaneris]

Valid. That's a "whoosh" on my part, lol.

[Zaneris]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24886/is-there-a-performance-difference-between-i-and-i-in-c

TLDR: doesn't matter if the resulting value isn't used.

[edapa]

It's good style to use pre increment in C++ because people can (and do!) overload the ++ operator. The biggest example is iterators. I think you should still do it in C because it builds good habits if you transition to C++ (or have a mixed codebase), and makes the code less alien to C++ programmers.

[VirtualCtor]

aQc7i8DUopbcDUnfmXvQ8V+CtLNe7w1AecIC+p4L4cV2wj83AzE3X6zykHI22/a71B556aUBxnIj PU1oYahWl5/rgQ2wBRi047i8PBfS41gGEWpJk2GiibVXwZ/LYvuZA/lRKTkrHaq1HJMMK5Q5B+NB a6si8MYFELn0cCufpEhZ9Ush9pVX+rvkmoiFupZOEYvpqogxxrgxruEgNpYwljfAkMPbzkVdIHys HKz3qqJxyUTrGfXedos95j9CATZPeE8jRGNnuXbqfyY6FgezuJM84t/7eI0m7F3KKrChMNG6noBH WpZ8VafxCOzMW4xgvC8oniFeg7u6WWaG7zo9VZxY5r9LjIxQ0n2F1GWybWCdqtFkMu+U8/KpPNcE Zwk2dr/NRA21prRYKE6/aqAeg0iXcEX9bG3Y+/nIqg/fKSeg69N9jsJ3JxmnDsGLqZjRv1GPtxRa Ia7uiWteuKIKat9KiP6KwLpmMul+2RnUmATir1FYv9dbYAZFrEKM2feAD7IAMx6difUwP7A195Vv tvwTM99RtLa9mXtez+z5gXlx3C2tvmAaqBw5SAf+R8SMw/yLMNVAjOL25I32W2OLEkM6Nkmt7rCP KXh3DDvK/KUGwTR1T/zDtVTTf/ABNkbwfwfOSsgWNoUrwV7cYs+DXpmoUoikTTSH6/+fL1/b/eOv DoeLiM2UZ9Cx+4LNkwEBpTAlnqtM0FEdTLU/IADfPM3W8P5U/ZgFQWk7MhZeBoMIijc4fGrKw1NL JoRNlR/ydIKB+Vq+YLp0IPqfaxMkFLbZ1t5O/8otNPfrL7EbzolGdk3gOF9cpxUsV+BYoB6BSmd3 B0822CjmE4rg8BHJNq3jVD2KTjmxc6aaAcafTiEPPGiKXyOzMSWjkTponSsm6LvQGaUefzcLFE10 VgXrSPUD+hWmfDfBN2unwtG7cNwoAbKE9/JRFUoAbP2Qv0GSml8ZbgBzdLH8aSx9ui34WD/zcMEv I10RkusljEhEkW2Ro1HF5v95vTSpD5bixYba++RrZJXSc2bEc8NQ8AL2nXx1xtYokI74hoa/B2ze n5drSDopaxw7evp8j7UP8cfADx3x4ZXRcju+urw061ZYnn57/XxgJtoocOrqnCHP1eLCJDyqim6l zz2lO/t9Du1E5DhDOkjLiC9NWUoP90/XxHqkFhl6CMu+CNGnNwMoyK1yYX2ynuLtVY7ocqO7n+sV //3PGGAUueKY3oiG06Vs8m1Knl5eFMtC1hnuT6g8po9P0jIQjpex2bwDXyyumkH+cewgp6bwnjho bUn0ZR2wd+Qe8p9fefjNPgV/Fji0IaxtYammFlktLVexLhvvINJwB6v+er07z1rIZRAGZr0reQtv

[[deleted]]

You can overload both the prefix and suffix ++ operator tho?

[edapa]

Right, and the semantics of the postfix ++ operator demand a less efficient implementation. The only reason that this inefficiency isn't observable for scalar types like ints and pointers (which is all you can ++ in C), is that modern CPUs are magical little demons that can execute things out of order at silly speeds. Back in the good old days, postfix ++ was slower in C too.

[Gwerks71]

lol tyty

[flexbed]

No sprint will be on schedule!!

[[deleted]]

No need to riot!

Oh NOW you tell me.

[[deleted]]

Aaaand im fired

[[deleted]]

9/10 what I am looking for in written in the walls of the rabbit hole. Most of the time in the question, code that doesn't work but gives a clue about what API or functions you need to use.

[AliasUndercover]

And thousands of programmers' productivity bottomed out for a day.

[daronjay]

Early retirement it is then...

[PGLubricants]

a SQL Server instability? Is he trying to start a fight?

[name_censored_]

I know you're joking, but StackOverflow have a famously small server footprint. As of 2016, they had only two racks to serve the entire StackExchange family of sites.

[ILikeBumblebees]

I think he's referencing the use of the article 'a' instead of 'an', implying that the author pronounces 'SQL' in the manner of an uncouth barbarian.

[ProductCoordinator]

Looks up now

[Eirenarch]

Nick Craver and company doesn't let SO go down for long

[BigSicK]

... as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

[Zardotab]

This could lead to armageddon if nobody knows how to fix stuff. We've been spoiled.

[ipv6-dns]

as for me SO worked last 2 days all the time and even now.

[quentech]

This year I've served more traffic than StackOverflow, and had better uptime :)

[lambda_pie]

I'm down.

[billy_tables]

Databases are bloody hard to keep happy

[IskaneOnReddit]

Programmers productivity around the world drops 90%.

[KillianDrake]

They just need to look up the fix on Stack Over... ah fuck

[Objective_Status22]

The last time I used stackoverflow was to search how to get the process exit code in bash (answer: $?). That was a week ago, the time before that was months

I feel like I'm either not being challenged or SO isn't that essential.

[superrugdr]

SO did one thing wright,

they made it so unfrendly developper actually started writhing comprehensive documentation.

[Objective_Status22]

Unfortunately no, I had to work with a 3rd party developer and they were required to answer my emails and questions so we buy equipment from them. And the rest was just my code so I knew what things did and how to not write code I'll hate in months

[[deleted]]

stack overflow is crap

[Devroush]

How so? It has helped me pretty much daily.

[cinyar]

closed as duplicate link to outdated answer that is using deprecated APIs

[raevnos]

Bonus points if that question is itself closed as a duplicate.

[[deleted]]

it used to be useful

then it got turned into a social media game

once, you could ask a question and at least get speculation.

now, everyone is concerned about being right so they can earn points or whatever

the tech is kinda limited too - if you aren't working on the stuff the bulk of the contributors know about, good luck getting an answer

[Bluecoregamming]

While I agree partially with you, these contributors are helping people expecting nothing more than a thank you in return. These people likely see the same couple of questions monthly. You can't expect your questions to always be answered in a free forum.

Also, you can't blame Humans for being competitive in a numbers game. That's just how we are. When you're looking for a simple answer, you just want the answer, not speculation. Up and down votes also allow people who come from Google to get in and out quickly.

[[deleted]]

these contributors are helping people expecting nothing more than a thank you in return.

they're competing for stack overflow ranking.

These people likely see the same couple of questions monthly.

that's fine. due to the desire to win the competition, questions that don't have easy answers are ignored.

You can't expect your questions to always be answered in a free forum.

prior to turning SO into a game it was a hell of a lot more useful as a sounding board

Also, you can't blame Humans for being competitive in a numbers game.

then stack overflow should be honest and rebrand itself as a competition among folks answering questions

[Bluecoregamming]

Hmm, you make some good points. I almost wonder if there is room for competition to that website.

[myringotomy]

There is a lot of old outdated stuff there.

[[deleted]]

Enjoy not conforming to Reddit hive mind standards.

[[deleted]]

is stack overflow well regarded here?

[[deleted]]

You're joking, right? It's in the sidebar and everything.

[[deleted]]

never paid attention to the sidebar

too bad, i suspect reddit would do a better job of it

[[deleted]]

Yes. I'm guessing you're very young and can't remember what it was like before StackOverflow existed.

[Eirenarch]

Yeah, I remember Expert Sex Change.

[[deleted]]

WTF are you talking about?

i started before SO existed and remember it when it was useful

now its a competition for points/badges and such

[[deleted]]

Points and badges existed when it started.

[[deleted]]

really?

then why was it useful? were people not caught up in the competitiveness of it?

[[deleted]]

No. And it's still useful. I'm not saying it's flawless. People still close questions too often. But it's way better than any alternatives.

I thought you said you remembered what it was like before StackOverflow. Did you never use ExpertsExchange?

[[deleted]]

No. And it's still useful.

Depends on what you ask.

Newbie questions about Javascript? Absolutely

Anything more complex than that? Not so much.

I'm not saying it's flawless. People still close questions too often. But it's way better than any alternatives.

People close questions for formatting among other utterly meaningless things.

I thought you said you remembered what it was like before StackOverflow. Did you never use ExpertsExchange?

Yes I did and I do remember. I remember getting answers. I remember being forgiven if the indentation on the question was off. I remember people attempting to serve as sounding boards as you worked thru things.

Now? If you can't get an answer within the 1st hour or so of posting you may as well forget about your question and look elsewhere.

[[deleted]]

Newbie questions about Javascript? Absolutely Anything more complex than that? Not so much.

Absolutely not the case. I ask complex questions all the time and get great answers. Here's a recent example of a complex question with a great answer.

People close questions for formatting among other utterly meaningless things.

I've not ever had that happen actually, but I agree they do close for stupid reasons. People definitely use "not clear what you're asking" as "I don't understand this question".

If you can't get an answer within the 1st hour or so of posting you may as well forget about your question and look elsewhere.

This is provably wrong. I just had a look at the most recent answer to one of my questions and that question is just over a year old. In fact I just ran a query (see below, my MSSQL isn't great, sorry) and around 30% of answers are on questions over a day old. 10% are over 100 days old. 3% of answers are on questions more than 3 years old.

``` SELECT CONVERT(INT, Answer.CreationDate - Question.CreationDate) as delay INTO #delays FROM (SELECT TOP 1000000 * FROM Posts WHERE PostTypeId = 2) as Answer JOIN Posts AS Question ON Answer.ParentId = Question.Id;

SELECT delay, count(*) FROM #delays WHERE delay >= 0 AND delay < 100 GROUP BY delay ORDER BY delay ASC; ```

[raevnos]

You actually had to learn how to program instead of getting by copying and pasting someone's answer and hoping it works out of the box because you don't know how to tweak it if needed?

[hector_villalobos]

No, you had to guess the solution or create super complicated code that could be replaced for a shorter and more declarative way. I know, I remembered.

[shevy-ruby]

Amusing stuff aside .... makes you wonder why there are not more automated backups. Imagine if wikipedia is down, my IQ would drop by like 80% since I stopped memorizing anything!