SO has helped my career dramatically, but it has its warts. One thing is that as software products evolve, answers to questions change, but when you search you get all the old stuff, too. It is often very hard to discern what is current for a fast-moving technology. There's this thing called "experience" that SO does not provide--one must know how to make use of answers or be able to interpret them. I see too many copy & paste coders who try to solve problems they don't even understand.
At one point I became a member on SO so I could answer questions and give back. Wow, that became a frustrating experience! I was not prepared for the many jerks down voting my answers long after they were made (sometimes a version of something changes or a preferred approach changes, but at the time of the answer my response was correct). And then there was the incessant arguments about things that the person clearly had no professional understanding of. It made me realize that Europe(?) must be full of "programming hobbyists" who seem to have never worked a day in their lives. God bless them! But whoever they were, they don't even know when they're wrong or had any shared perspective about my answers, which told me clearly they didn't actually work as developers. I have personally given tech interviews to hundreds of senior-level developers, I know who is on the level and who is bullshitting.
The world needs what SO provides, but somehow the format needs to evolve, become curated and become an archive, a trove with "freshness dates" or something. Otherwise the site will lose most of its relevance as time progresses.
At one point I became a member on SO so I could answer questions and give back. Wow, that became a frustrating experience! I was not prepared for the many jerks down voting my answers long after they were made (sometimes a version of something changes or a preferred approach changes, but at the time of the answer my response was correct). And then there was the incessant arguments about things that the person clearly had no professional understanding of. It made me realize that Europe(?) must be full of "programming hobbyists" who seem to have never worked a day in their lives. God bless them! But whoever they were, they don't even know when they're wrong or had any shared perspective about my answers, which told me clearly they didn't actually work as developers. I have personally given tech interviews to hundreds of senior-level developers, I know who is on the level and who is bullshitting.
The world needs what SO provides, but somehow the format needs to evolve, become curated and become an archive, a trove with "freshness dates" or something. Otherwise the site will lose most of its relevance as time progresses.
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