Personally, I post each and every question I have to StackOverflow. When I figure it out, I take some time to write out a detailed answer to my own question.
Why?
Because:
a) I love contributing with the online developer community and sharing back all that I've taken since I started freshman year of college.
b) Writing it out step by step solidifies the knowledge within me.
This. I've gotten a new appreciation for Stackoverflow in the past year or so.
Half of the drafts I write do not end up as published questions, just because the writing process itself is often helpful in figuring out what ever problem I have with my code.
I find that trying to ask my question at StackOverflow is the best way to improve. Because I have to think about how best to word my problem, and really make it clear and concise. And usually when I do that, I end up just solving the problem on my own.
Of course, I see a lot of give me teh codez there, so I can see where the author is coming from. Nevertheless, I find it to be a useful tool in helping me become a better programmer.
If I find a problem I can't solve I will post a question on Stack Overflow, then I go back to work trying to solve it. If I find the solution before someone else does I answer my own question on Stack Overflow.
My most updated answers have been to questions I asked in the first place.
I also get a chuckle when someone I know says they were googling a problem and found my post on Stack Overflow.
I've asked and answered my own questions on StackOverflow before. It's great for documenting things in a way that lets others profit from your knowledge.
When I learn something, I ask a question on Stack Overflow and I answer it myself, which is perfectly allowed and encouraged. The advantage with putting it on Stack Overflow is that I get corrections or better answers over time.
One interesting trick I've learned regarding "Don’t rush to StackOverflow. Think!" is that it sometimes helps me to go to StackOverflow and write out the question using clear, precise language and code examples. Nine times out of ten, the simple act of writing out the question helps me to solve the problem on my own. If it doesn't, then I can click 'submit'.
I've found StackOverflow to be extremely helpful when learning about programming. It fills in the gaps and complements textbooks, API documentation, and building stuff on your own nicely. Many times I've even answered my own question before pressing "Post Your Question".
Although I often feel stackoverflow is less useful than it used to be, without a doubt many of my google searches are answered immediately with a stackoverflow post at the top of the results, removing the need for me to ask a question in the first place. It's easy to discount how important SO still is to my developer learning workflow.
I'm finding I'm starting to go back to mailing list for niche programming topics (e.g., a specific framework or library) because nothing beats getting an answer from a top contributor or owner. Most people don't sit on StackOverflow all day waiting for questions, but they will respond to e-mails that pop up on their mailing list.
Both Stack Overflow and publishing your code openly are strongly motivated by pride/showing off your know-how.
When I participated on Stack Overflow, for me it was a combination of learning a lot by answering other people's questions and getting a kick out of demonstrating my expertise.
Ah, yes, that explains to me how it is that when I'm stuck in some bit of code and go look on StackOverflow or wherever, I find an answer I'd posted long before.
On more than one occasion I've started typing my question on stack overflow. I try to do my due diligence so I don't look like an idiot on the internet, and usually as I am anticipating responses I end up trying something that solves my problem.
The problem with stack overflow is that I ask for more questions than I answer.
There's a few reasons for this.
1) Finding time, although I can easily justify asking questions on SO at work it doesn't seem quite right using my employers time to answer somebodies (probably coursework) question and it's something I'd have a hard time justifying to the MBA types when there is other work that I could be doing. So my only option would be to go back home and specifically go on to answer questions.
2) Finding good questions to answer can be difficult since I only use a relatively small toolbox of software that is not particularly popular and I usually have more luck discussing it on google groups than on SO.
So that only leaves me with the easy lowest common denominator questions that have either already been answered or don't look terribly impressive to answer just as a way to earn points.
I would rather write a case study of developing something and problems that I solved along the way and publish this on a blog, of course I would have to be careful doing this about work things as well.
The score in StackOverflow is meaningless without looking at profile of an individual and see what question they ask or how is their level of knowledge in their answers.
Spending time to contribute to StackOverflow is not necessary a bad behavior. Programmers can meet challenges that they might have in feature and get ready for them.
I personally answer to questions that have no answer or not correct answer when I google for them but finally I've solved myself. I even googled and reached to my own answers!
Every useful question I have as I became more experienced doesn't have a clear answer and should be a discussion.
Yes I use stackoverflow at times as documentation, which is good. The other situation where it's good is when there are enough different answers to a question that help you attempt different approaches.
I never ask a question on Stackoverflow like I did before, anything useful I'd ask can't be asked.
StackOverflow serves a dual purpose: (1) to answer the immediate question of the original poster, and (2) to serve as a reference for anyone encountering the same problem in the future. I'd say that (2) is more important - good question/answer pairs on SO have helped hundreds or even thousands of developers beyond the original poster. Answering "what have you tried" may help with purpose (1), but is often just distracting for (2). If I'm looking for a way to do X, reading through someone's failed attempts to do X is a waste of time. And this whole notion of making someone "struggle a bit" is entirely misplaced when you keep purpose (2) in mind. Let's say I'm not a CSS expert and I'm trying to find a way to make a sticky page footer. I can "struggle for a bit", spend maybe 30-60min researching the topic and come up with a solution myself, without ever involving StackOverflow. Multiply this by 1,000 developers facing the same problem, and you have 500-1000 hours of wasted developer effort. Compare this to spending 15min to write a precisely-worded question (but without "steps you've tried"), and an expert spending 15min to write up an answer. From that point on, the piece of knowledge is available to anyone, enormously amplifying the impact of this initial time investment. Of course I'm oversimplifying, but I see this amplification effect continuously ignored in discussions of StackOverflow posting guidelines. I think this attitude of "show your work" and "make the original poster struggle a bit" comes from the days of IRC/Usenet questions, where an answer to a question only helped one person, not thousands.
Why?
Because:
a) I love contributing with the online developer community and sharing back all that I've taken since I started freshman year of college.
b) Writing it out step by step solidifies the knowledge within me.
It's a win-win!
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