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

The Fall of Stack Overflow

observablehq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 808 posts

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#161

Post by majikaja »

charcircuit wrote: post #116
majikaja wrote: post #108

I tried asking a legitimate question before on SO about physics education and it got shut down because it wasn't a question with a definitive answer. What non-trivial question has straightforward answers? It's just a homework help site. No serious discussion is allowed.

The point of asking a question on stack exchange is to create a question answer pair as the whole goal of stack exchange is to create a repository of high quality question answer pairs. If it's not possible to select an answer to a question then it isn't a relevant question for stack exchange.

And the point of this repository created by users for free is to sell it to a 3rd party I suppose?

Why would anyone other than undergraduate students spend their time on such a site

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#162

Post by kristopolous »

The technical qualifications of the responses are lacking.

They usually seem to only know magical incantations that will get things to work and don't have deep familiarity because really competent people aren't googling for answers like we are so they never land on the page to give their 2¢

There needs to be different exclusion and barriers but not through the wacky constitutional sheriff system they are using.

Mailing lists are decent because you know you're going out on blast so social norms kick in. If you mail say LKML, most people imagine important kernel people taking their time to read your blabberings and that likely stops those who can't improve the silence.

SO OTOH seems too unbounded and freewheeling where popularity is more important than responsibility. It's the wrong cadence between invitation and expectation.

Anyways, grumble grumble.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#163

Post by aperture147 »

Proactively asking on SO is a no go to solve any problem. Just digging for anyone who already answer your question, or open a issue on the github repo which host the library you use. SO used to be a place where people could ask anything they want, but now only difficult questions could be answered, or else it will be downvoted, marked as duplicated or answered by some toxic people, definitely not a good beginner experience.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#164

Post by andirk »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #81
dhosek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the people who took on Rust questions to be actively hostile on SO when I started learning Rust. The Reddit community was much better, so I’ve tended to hang out there for Rust q&a. Most of my time in the Stack Overflow world these days is mostly in the more specialized StackExchange sites. tex.se tends to be pretty good, as does latin.se japanese.se seems dedicated to stomping out anything that is remotely a…

Reminds me of being on IRC in 97 asking questions about Assembly. When someone did finally respond it was "Did you read the manual yet"? It's ironic that SO became what it was replacing.

But did you even _try_ to read the manual? Did you lift a finger to figure out what the issue is? Some of the best answers are ones that directly quote the manual and then add clarity since manual language can be terse.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#165

Post by paradite »

JohnMakin wrote: post #120
JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

I'm assuming you are talking about XY problem?

https://xyproblem.info/

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#166

Post by monkin »

I think Discord has had a huge impact on Stack Overflow as there are many communities created for specific technologies, languages, frameworks, or topics, where most users can get answers from direct contributors or people who have the best industry knowledge on the topic in question.

Not to mention how beneficial it is for brands and products to create such closely-knit communities for their users. There's no need to Google things or ask on SO, as one can chat in real time and go back and forth for solutions with other users.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#167

Post by p1mrx »

osigurdson wrote: post #149
ezconnect wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always read here ChatGPT is amazing. Can you give a link on how to use it? Every time I tried to google it returns lots of different results and when I tried it it:s not even usable for basic things I want. Is the ChatGPT you:re talking about on their website? Do I have to pay for it?

https://chat.openai.com/ I currently pay for it but I'm not sure if it makes any difference.

https://ai.com is easier to type

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#168

Post by Eisenstein »

JohnMakin wrote: post #120
JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

The thing is that oftentimes people who want to do 'X by Y' are actually asking how to accomplish Q. They think 'X by Y' is the solution and get hit by a roadblock, not knowing that it will not help them and they are wasting time.

This is called the XY problem and is extremely common on tech related forums and mailing lists.

* https://xyproblem.info/

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#170

Post by noduerme »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #150
choppaface wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot and ChatGPT have taken a lot away from StackOverflow.

This is true for me. I wanted good ways to deal with pointers to 2D arrays in C, which aren’t hard but you need to remember that [] has precedence over *, so (*pointer)[x][y] is needed to deference. It’s not the hard to mess it up. Ultimately GPT had an OK answer but… it had that immediately without searching and the didn’t have to craft some well written example, it picked up my dirty explanation no problem. I have…

Asking anything C or C++ on SO has become an invitation to a ritual hazing. If, after dealing with everyone's ego, you can successfully demonstrate that you already know enough and you're not asking to pass a CS test, the Wise Ones may - may - deign to bestow you with an answer. Which usually won't relate to your specific issue.

Also, in C++, you can set your clock to someone commenting that you should just use smart pointers. It doesn't matter if the question is entirely unrelated.

As someone who spent a decade helping people answering code questions on Flashkit and later SO, I find the SO community and moderation now to be so off-putting that I avoid asking anything there if I can. I still give answers sometimes, but I'm much less likely to be on the site at all.

Post reply on HN