Let's not forget that StackOverflow has basically replaced ExpertsExchange for everything.
That alone is probably worth $1B+.
Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
101–110 of 179 posts
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#102A 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…
I find the opposite with iOS/Apple programming. Often I'll be looking for something on Stack Overflow only to find the true answer lurking somewhere in one of Apple's guides or example apps lol. But if there's a Stack Overflow answer, it's often exactly what I was looking for, and that can't be undervalued!
True, iOS docs are really good compared to Android docs.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
StackOverflow has been the opposite for me. I am someone who reads the man pages and does a lot of experimentation before turning to a Q&A site, I fully document what happened, the expected result, and the deviations between the two, and my hypotheses on why it happened, then post. As a result something like 85% of my questions go unanswered or are eventually answered by myself. I have stopped answering my own questi…
Exactly. If you have complex question (the actual problem) it will be unanswered or downvoted to oblivion. That is logical because inexperienced engineers don't know what they don't know and experienced ones will be wisely silent. And the worst thing is that some answers are wrong but since they are upvoted so they seem "right" (the joke is that all javascript questions are answered with "use jQuery"). So in short: i…
Does John Carmack count as experienced? Because he is the guy who made the claim we're talking about.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#104Is this a question? Or a user with 31k points using skeptics.stackexchange as a blog host? The back of the envelope calculation was fun to read, though.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#105I believe it. And that's not even counting looking up answers or getting your questions answered. When I am truly stumped, I immediately start drafting a comprehensive SO question. Nine times out of ten, clearly enunciating the problem leads me directly to the answer and I never even post it.
On multiple occasions I've searched for an answer, found it on S.O., thought "this seems vaguely familiar," and then realized that it was my own answer from a couple years prior.
Saved me time the second time around I guess.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, but several people I have encountered don't feel this way. For instance I had someone try to explain how using HAML made their developers more valuable because of all the keystrokes they were saving. When you're counting keystrokes as a developer productivity metric I can only wonder how toxic the work environment becomes when you need to stop to look at documentation yet alone use Google or SO.
Maybe that person's team is more productive with Haml not simply because of the small amount of time that's saved by less typing, but because of the huge amount of time that's saved by not needing to replace developers who are institutionalized or commit suicide as a result of being forced to type HTML tags like it's still 2005[1]. [1] The year before Haml was introduced.
I'm not saying HAML isn't of value. Please don't misunderstand me, I like HAML. I use it for my template engine with Sinatra. But in the grand scheme of things if using HAML to increase productivity by saving keystrokes is what the company thinks is its competitive advantage, which is what they told me, then how do they deal with someone spending time just researching (i.e. stackoverflow, google) and thinking a problem and solution through thoroughly? The two seem at odds to me.
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
stackexchange.com is bigger than stackoverflow.com. Source: https://www.quantcast.com/stackexchange.com?country=US https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=US
That's good but SE is a federation of sites, so it's an unfair comparison. From the start I've always thought that the biggest danger to SO/SE wasn't failure, you guys are smart enough to see and recover from outright failure. Instead it's reaching a level of success far below what you're capable of. It seems to me that SO/SE spent a lot of work innovating in the early days but once they found their comfort zone they…
"I remember back when you and Jeff were talking about taking over the way all online discussion happened."
Aren't they now -- or at least Jeff Atwood -- working on Discourse?
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
StackOverflow is just the manual in an easily searchable form. Lots of times I'm not even sure of what to even look up and that's when I post to StackOverflow. The next time someone else tries to do something similar, Google will have found it in StackOverflow and it will be easily found.
Easily searchable and constantly updated form. And free of vendor BS, too.
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And you're a bad person for asking!
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#109A 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…
dead on with the cost of wasted time through gamification. And many questions on SO can be answered with ~10 mins of extra thought. It's a good reference though, as someone mentioned. Makes a manual searchable, basically, with a bit of layman explanation.
I get bitter though because any time I post a question that actually requires thought (can't be answered by checking an API) it ends up getting downvoted because you well... actually have to read a paragraph to understand it, I assume. That site has an uncanny ability to trash anything of value so a lot of the time I spend on it I wish I just spent reading programming theory instead of gleaning random bits of knowledge. I guess its enlightening though to see the level of developers & tech engagement in the different communities. It lets you see how active the community is and what level of quality the devs are, basically. (So... more questions doesn't necessarily mean better community...)
& o god lets not even get into the amount of wasted time spent wanting to claw your eyes out when someone (especially mods) say some horribly arrogant thing responding to some imaginary version of your question (i guess they read 2 or 3 words from each sentence?). or they point out some semantic reason why theoretically they're right even though in practice they're wrong and the theory doesn't actually support their argument, it's just agnostic... chills
Re: Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know programmers at microsoft who use SO as an intern. They just post questions about strange windows problems they can't work around. Somebody on SO will respond with a 1,000 word essay with 500 lines of code about it within a day, thus solving their problem with no employee time "wasted" by thinking or researching or paying for anything additional resources.
Ha, that's me. I'll post questions on how to write code, not just problems I can't work around. Then I go off and slack off, and wait until someone answers it. My version of "I'm compiling".
The microsoft thing is a little ethically strange but yeah i feel you on this.... if these try-hards wanna do your work for you just to get a "+10" may as well give them the privilege of "building their digital resume" while you read about something more interesting.
Programmer culture involves too much self-glorification & SO embraces that in the hugest way. If the discussions were more interesting it would probably worth more attention but usually it's just some know-it-all quoting docs they just Googled for so they can lock down the question / points. I'm not sure I'd ever want to hire a SO mod...