Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 196 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#161

Post by benj111 »

ilaksh wrote: post #89

I stopped participating because I found that I usually was insulted somehow or my answer was not credited. If they can find any fault in a question or answer they will take the opportunity to do so. If you give a correct answer but don't include a significant amount of explanation, it will be marked down. Often times I see perfectly valid questions and people refuse to answer them but will only respond with a comment…

>If they can find any fault in a question or answer they will take the opportunity to do so.

Same on HN. I assume programmers get hyper pedantic because they spend their time telling a computer exactly what to do... Although I was pedantic anyway, so maybe cause and effect are the reverse.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#162

Post by Salgat »

moomoo11 wrote: post #85

Imo the high ranking people today on SO are annoying as fuck and on a power trip. I haven’t asked question in a long time and I had a unique situation and asked the question. Within seconds some guy adds some snarky unhelpful and honestly toxic reply and I had to repost my question. I ran a quick survey and found others who have had similar experiences and I feel this is terrible for newbies and even people like me w…

That's been my case too. I don't receive an answer to my question, just someone telling me I shouldn't do it that way. I then explain why I have to do it this way and of course crickets from them because they never had anything helpful to contribute in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#163

Post by senttoschool »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #60

I think it is dying and my bet for the reason why would be the policy changes. Take it as you might, but I think the main reason many people were answering questions in the first place is the feeling of competition and wanting to establish oneself as someone with knowledge. This included gaining high scores and for some reason correlated with being quite blunt in the comments. But SO changes a few years ago made it s…

So in essense, SO was destined to die.

If they kept their original polices, it'd be even more toxic to newbies which destroys their reputation over time.

But because they made it more friendly to newbies, the assholes who generated the most values left. Now questions are left unanswered, more duplicate questions are allowed, and answer quality has declined.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#164

Post by BlueTemplar »

andrewstuart wrote: post #63
rezonant wrote: post #3

Personally the only websites I see displacing SO on Google results are sites that reuse SO content and game Google to get ad revenue.

Stack Overflow had the best intentions by making their data available for download. The only outcome is see from that attitude is it fueled hundreds of spammy SO clones with names like “nerdsolution” and “geekanswer”. We’d be better iff with SO keeping the data private.

Wait, hasn't it always been a (public) website ?

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#165

Post by BlueTemplar »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #131
pflenker wrote: post #47

StackOverflow originated during a time when finding accurate and up-to-date documentation on the internet was a challenge. Today, however, there is a wealth of easily accessible, hands-on documentation that often includes links to support resources such as Discord. In my opinion, this has led to two types of questions being asked on StackOverflow: very basic ones that the asker could have easily found in the document…

The advanced ones don't get an answer or are too open ended for the website, which is incidentally why I stopped asking questions, they never got an answer or got closed. Got better results on reddit

Reddit is probably even worse though with its auto-closing of comments after a short time, and tolerance for reposts. (Both of which make for netiquette violations !)

P.S.: this is also an issue with hn, though at least dang et al. work tirelessly to identify reposts. It still makes it awkward when the best discussion that you would like to contribute to is locked, or worse, has now bits spread in consecutive discussions...

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#166

Post by nabi_nafio »

StackOverflow has been immensely helpful for me. When stuck on a programming problem, I usually look for solutions on StackOverflow or read the framework/programming language's docs.

It's highly unlikely that StackOverflow will slowly die. It's a very MOATY service: strong band, and network effects.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#168

Post by markus_zhang »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #104
moomoo11 wrote: post #85

Imo the high ranking people today on SO are annoying as fuck and on a power trip. I haven’t asked question in a long time and I had a unique situation and asked the question. Within seconds some guy adds some snarky unhelpful and honestly toxic reply and I had to repost my question. I ran a quick survey and found others who have had similar experiences and I feel this is terrible for newbies and even people like me w…

> I haven’t asked question in a long time By design I literally can't add comments/engage in conversation. I need 50 reputation on each individual StackOverflow sites. https://stackexchange.com/sites

TBH I got fed up so I used a few different accounts (they do have different purposes) to vote each up.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#170

Post by markus_zhang »

lgl wrote: post #169
markus_zhang wrote: post #167

SO is for browsing for answers and RT is for asking questions. People on RT are a lot more friendly and sometimes equally skilled.

I'm sorry, can you clarify what site you mean by RT? Is it Reddit?

Sorry yeah I meant Reddit
Post reply on HN