Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
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Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
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Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#2I know it's fashionable in certain circles to rag on it lately, but I'm not too big to admit it has saved me a lot of time here and there over the last 4-5 years. I would bet a lot of devs use it more than they would admit to check down on things throughout the course of any given project.
Billions seems like a lot, but I wouldn't call BS on it out of hand.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#3A lot of time has been spent by developers trying to get points. There is a cost to that.
The site has enabled software vendors to slack off on their documentation. If there was no StackOverflow the vendors would have to do better. I'm thinking of msdn as an example since a lot of the Stack questions are MS technology based. MS is far from alone though. Much of the money saved has gone to vendors.
Even given those points it has still saved a lot of money. But billions? I don't know if it would be that much. It would be interesting to know what the global number for reputation points is. There may be a correlation to money saved.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#4From an econometric perspective evaluating these kinds of things is fun. I would guess that any productivity gains would be concentrated in the most difficult-to-answer questions, that you can otherwise spend hours / days trying to debug or understand. "20 hours for 5% of questions" is probably a more accurate characterization, although it would work out the same.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#5[deleted]
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#6It is the internet and www in general that enables people to be connected and share ideas. There's no reason to credit specific sites like Facebook or eBay with connecting people, because someone else would have done it (possibly better) if they had not.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#7More likely it had merely promoted the quick and easy pop culture, where people no longer take the time of reading a book. After all you can just use google and look up your next short fix.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#8A lot of time has been spent by developers trying to get points. There is a cost to that. The site has enabled software vendors to slack off on their documentation. If there was no StackOverflow the vendors would have to do better. I'm thinking of msdn as an example since a lot of the Stack questions are MS technology based. MS is far from alone though. Much of the money saved has gone to vendors. Even given those po…
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Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#9A lot of time has been spent by developers trying to get points. There is a cost to that. The site has enabled software vendors to slack off on their documentation. If there was no StackOverflow the vendors would have to do better. I'm thinking of msdn as an example since a lot of the Stack questions are MS technology based. MS is far from alone though. Much of the money saved has gone to vendors. Even given those po…
When you answer questions and get points though you teach and that is the best training. Many times when I answer questions I find out more details and learn as well. Anytime a question is answered this is training investment for free really. It is also something that helps your programmer brand.
With open source and sites like stackoverflow, a single programmer can become a team of programmers/knowledge very quickly. It is part of what has made each programmer better I believe. On the flip it has also made programmers more lazy possibly. Finding an answer and being able to solve and provide an answer to the question are two key pillars to providing solutions. So I'd say question answerers and associated companies are getting more out of it.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#10More likely it had merely promoted the quick and easy pop culture, where people no longer take the time of reading a book. After all you can just use google and look up your next short fix.
Oh I hear you! I can't say how much I regret all the time spent in the 700-800 pages of these Wrox or Addison-Wesley books trying to find that one line fix. These were the good old days!