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Stack Overflow and the Zeitgeist of Computer Programming (priceonomics.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Stack Overflow remains one of the most widely-used resources in the developer community. Around 400,000 questions are posted there every month. The Priceonomics blog is using statistical analysis to ask, "What does the nature of these questions tell us about the state of programming?" They see tremendous growth in questions about Android Studio, as well as more generic growth in work relating to data analysis and cloud services. Topics on a significant decline include Silverlight, Joomla, Clojure, and Flash (not to mention emacs, for some reason). The article also takes a brief look at the site's megausers, who receive a lot of credit for keeping the signal-to-noise ratio as high as it is, while also taking flack for how the Stack Overflow culture has progressed. "Others are worried about how Stack Overflow has impacted programming fundamentals. Some critics believe that rather than truly struggling with a problem, developers can now just ask Stack Overflow users to solve it for them. The questioner may receive and use an answer with code they do not truly understand; they just know it fixes their problem. This can lead to issues in the long run when adjustments are needed."
I've been posting/moderating slashdot for years, but just started with stack overflow. Here's my experience.
I definitely agree with and have seen what the articles are driving at. In particular, the "The Decline of Stack Overflow" is absolutely 100% on the money.
I answer questions. At least five / day. In a short time [about a month], I amassed 1000+ rep points. I'm now in the top 0.5% for the quarter. The article's comment about "SO hates new users" is true. Before I got to this point, I used to have more difficulty with certain people. As my point total got higher, the snark level went down. Ironic, because I was doing [trying to do] the best job I could at all times. My answers didn't change in terms of quality, just the tone of comments I got back.
When I post an answer, I take several approaches. Sometimes, a simple "use this function instead" is enough. Sometimes, "change this line from blah1 to blah2". If the OP has made an honest effort to be clear, but the posted code is way off the mark (e.g. has more than two bugs), I'll download it clean it up for style [so I can see OP's logic before I try to fix it], fix the bugs [usually simplifying the logic] and post the complete solution with an explanation of the changes and annotations in code comments.
This is the "cut-n-paste" solution. I may be just doing somebody's homework for them. But, usually, it's just somebody who spent days on the code and is "just stuck" [I've asked some OPs about this]. The controversy is that "if you do that, they'll never learn anything". Possibly. But, it's part of my judgement call on type of response to give. IMO, in addition to research and traditional classes/exercises, one of the best ways to learn is to read more advanced "expert" code. Compare one's original to what the expert did and ask "Why did they do it that way?!". This may foster more research on their part and they will have an "AHA! moment"
Unlike slashdot, one can edit a post [either a question or an answer] and you can delete them. Comments can edited for five minutes and deleted anytime. Now this will seem goofy: If you comment back and forth with a given user over an answer one of you gave, either a collegial discussion or a flame war, eventually an automatic message comes up asking if you'd like to transfer your "discussion" to a chat page. Also, because comments are limited to 500 chars, I sometimes have to post a partial, incomplete answer because what I need to say needs better formatting/highlighting than a comment and wouldn't fit in a comment, even though it's more appropriate as a comment.
The goofy thing is that you start with 1 rep point. You can post a question or a full answer. But, you can't yet post a comment!?
On SO, people edit their questions and answers, based on feedback in the comments. The answer may be edited several times before questioner accepts it. Sometimes, for complex questions, it can take a day or two to come up with the right answer.
Despite all this, once and a while, I get a "heckler" who doesn't like an answer [even though it's correct]. It goes several rounds in the comments, usually the other person doesn't understand the problem space enough to realize the answer was correct [or more subtle than they realized]. So, it goes back and forth, and each time I explain how I was correct, adding clarification or highlighting what I said originally. Eventually, the heckler says "Your answer doesn't answer the question". This is for an answer the OP questioner has "accepted" as the best one.
I've seen reasonable questions downvoted within minutes [I upvote them back]. I've seen people threaten to close the question as unclear, requires opinion, or can _not_ be answered as described. The last one is funny, because the question is clear to me, and I provide a correct answer [that eventually gets upvoted and/or accepted]. Sometimes I send the commenter who is threatening doom a message [you can direct a comment to
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there