Has Hacker News cost billions of dollars in programmer productivity? :P
Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
51–60 of 179 posts
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#52A 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…
Google did this as well. It's extremely annoying. They're basically telling users to "Fuck off, we don't have time for you. Go ask your questions somewhere else."
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#53I'm still waiting for someone to coin a term for when you google around for a problem and end up at your OWN answer on SO from a year or so earlier. This happens more often than I'd like to admit.
I'm incredibly thankful for the many, many hours that SO has saved me personally.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#54Wikipedia, Youtube, Google, StackExchange, should all get world peace awards.
Foodstamps and cat videos are the new bread and circuses
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#55Stackoverflow is awesone and for me, it has saved me countless hours of thinking, even on non mainstream platforms like FPGA design. That said, I hope for one improvement. I would like to upload my code into a machine with a command line...and those who are on stackoveflow can with login, try their hands at it without having to ask me. This way, they will save time trying to reproduce my sandbox.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to float a different hypothesis: the perception of programming is so hung up on the idea of individual brilliance that most people, especially beginners, don't even realize how much value there is in reading the manual. And we as programmers add to the problem. It's not very sexy to say that there is a lot of useful software out there written and documented by smart people and if you read that documentation, a…
My experience has been that technet's documentation is so unreliable that I've learned to go to SO first.
Yeah, I goto SO (well, SO through google) because with most questions, I get a practical answer to my exact situation in seconds, as well as suggestions as to why or why not different approaches might be warranted. They're not all perfect, but it's usually food for thought.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#57A 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…
Google did this as well. It's extremely annoying. They're basically telling users to "Fuck off, we don't have time for you. Go ask your questions somewhere else."
When I first started doing Android development in late 2009 the API documentation quickly brought back memories of MSDN in the late 90's.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#58Two words you youngsters probably don't remember - Expert Sexchange..
What about it? I very much doubt that Experts Exchange saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity. I was always annoyed at landing there from searches before Stack Overflow existed. And it is/was much harder to use than Stack Overflow is today.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#59Don't hurt yourself trying to pat you on the back. The vast majority of those questions have already been answered by Google. Some people just like paying.
In other words, if you pay for something that you could get for free with just a bit more effort, how is that saving money?
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#60Just FYI, if you are making $10 per hour programming in the US please Google "salary entry level " and tell your boss what you find out.