Kinda a Big Announcement • Hacker News Board

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#31

Post by wcarss » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #20

tdeck wrote: post #13

> almost anyone I talk to is too young to imagine The Days Before Stack Overflow, when the bookstore had an entire wall of Java and the way you picked a Rich Text Editor was going to Barnes and Noble and browsing through printed books for an hour, in the Rich Text Editor Component shelf. I remember the "Days Before Stack Overflow" and Joel is giving himself a bit too much credit here. Before SO, when I googled a prob…

> Before SO, when I googled a problem I would often find a solution on a blog, personal website, or some community's PHPBB/vBulletin forum. Even more likely, you would get links to Experts Exchange, which was ad-riddled with the actual answer behind a paywall. I'm glad that SO was able to at least kill that business model. Someone should do the same for Pintrest and their dominance of Google Images.

I remember listening to the podcast where they announced Stack Overflow, and cited exactly the problem of walled communities like Experts Exchange as who they wanted to drive out of business.

Stack Overflow ain't perfect, but it's amazing to see how impactful it's been. Especially the unix/superuser stack exchange sites for having useful tips that would be a pain to find elsewhere.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#32

Post by sorbits » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #25

tdeck wrote: post #13

> almost anyone I talk to is too young to imagine The Days Before Stack Overflow, when the bookstore had an entire wall of Java and the way you picked a Rich Text Editor was going to Barnes and Noble and browsing through printed books for an hour, in the Rich Text Editor Component shelf. I remember the "Days Before Stack Overflow" and Joel is giving himself a bit too much credit here. Before SO, when I googled a prob…

The contrast from bookstore to single site Q&A is exaggerated, but I was around before Stack Overflow. The problem was not just that there wasn't a single (popular, highly active) site, and not just that you had to sift through search results. It's that if you didn't find your answer, you didn't know for sure where to post your problem, and actually expect to get answers. You might post it on a personal blog or forum…

> you didn't know for sure where to post your problem

It depends on the topic/domain, but I have fond memories of being on various mailing lists, and there was also usenet.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#33

Post by tdeck » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #26

tdeck wrote: post #13

> almost anyone I talk to is too young to imagine The Days Before Stack Overflow, when the bookstore had an entire wall of Java and the way you picked a Rich Text Editor was going to Barnes and Noble and browsing through printed books for an hour, in the Rich Text Editor Component shelf. I remember the "Days Before Stack Overflow" and Joel is giving himself a bit too much credit here. Before SO, when I googled a prob…

I think you might be giving Spolsky a bit too little credit! I remember the days before SO as well, and while you might luck out by finding your answer in some obscure niche blog, there was a relatively high chance that that error message you were staring at wouldn't have an accessible solution online (or at least not one that Google could provide). You could really just get stuck on a problem for a day, or never fin…

> And I really did find myself buying a lot more programming books than I do now. When's the last time you picked up a book just to learn how to use a language - just the ins and outs of the syntax?

Perhaps this is an age difference thing? I'm 29 - I learned to program between 2003 and 2010 from online resources, mostly in the pre-SO era. I learned BASIC, Perl, PHP, and Python entirely online. My impulse was always to just Google things, although I fully admit finding results was more time consuming and frustrating back then. The only language I learned from a book was FORTH, and that's mainly because it's an older language and Starting Forth is one of the few good resources on the language even today.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#34

Post by ianmcgowan » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

sorbits wrote: post #32

neogodless wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contrast from bookstore to single site Q&A is exaggerated, but I was around before Stack Overflow. The problem was not just that there wasn't a single (popular, highly active) site, and not just that you had to sift through search results. It's that if you didn't find your answer, you didn't know for sure where to post your problem, and actually expect to get answers. You might post it on a personal blog or forum…

> you didn't know for sure where to post your problem It depends on the topic/domain, but I have fond memories of being on various mailing lists, and there was also usenet.

Came to say this - the more niche usenet groups were full of helpful people that didn't mind answering questions, and discussing fuzzy issues.

I don't think of the developer eras as pre-SO vs post-SO, more pre-Google vs post-Google, though SO has definitely been a net positive.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#35

Post by mechEpleb » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

necovek wrote: post #30

tdeck wrote: post #13

> almost anyone I talk to is too young to imagine The Days Before Stack Overflow, when the bookstore had an entire wall of Java and the way you picked a Rich Text Editor was going to Barnes and Noble and browsing through printed books for an hour, in the Rich Text Editor Component shelf. I remember the "Days Before Stack Overflow" and Joel is giving himself a bit too much credit here. Before SO, when I googled a prob…

To be honest, Google returning SO answers for something that is exactly not what I am looking for instead of language/library reference documentation as it used to is one the most annoying things for me as a developer today. Though I think that's mostly on Google "optimizing" my queries by dumbing them down. As an example, try looking for "python setattr" in your search engine of choice, and look for python.org docum…

> Though I think that's mostly on Google "optimizing" my queries by dumbing them down.

I'd say it's become a lot worse than it was just a couple years ago when you could massage the queries to get you exactly what you want. Now google seems to think it's more clever than you and turns every question into an entry level one.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#36

Post by austincheney » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

> The biggest problem is that developers of programming tools love to add things and hate to take things away. So things get harder and harder and more and more complex because there are more and more ways to do the same thing

Kind of, but not exactly.

As a given software platform evolves rarely do the defining foundations significantly change. This means there becomes many ways to solve a problem down the line, but the original few solutions typically still work and apply just the same as they did in the early days.

I cannot emphasize enough just how important that is.

The implications of grasping this allow a developer to solve almost any problem like magic. The mythical 10x developer sprinkling their pixie dust like dropping blow at a night club. That is because the developer knows the durable solutions to most problems already and optionally may consider newer approaches when beneficial. They know what works and have the freedom to deviate at their convenience.

The implications of missing this produces infantile developers dependent upon the flavor of the moment. The developer reliant upon a late stage convention or supplemental tool has less flexibility than the developer more experienced with the foundational concepts of the given platform. This is vaguely related to the Law of Leaky Abstractions[1], but that law just describes reactive scenarios.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#37

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #19

kbelder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. It sidetracked nearly all the communities for a full year, triggered resignations, and caused lawyers to get involved. They've done other things to cause various 'controversies' with their base... changing the license answers are under, hiding controversial questions, etc... but their amazingly unprofessional treatement of Cellio caused more lasting damage than any of that.

It's interesting, I'm on Hacker News almost every day and have benefited enormously from Stack Overflow yet I have no idea what you're talking about or who Monica Cellio is. My guess is that the vast majority of their users haven't either. I only mention this because seemingly major events in online communities don't always have the impact that people involved or following closely think they do.

[deleted]

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#38

Post by dpedu » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

necovek wrote: post #30

tdeck wrote: post #13

> almost anyone I talk to is too young to imagine The Days Before Stack Overflow, when the bookstore had an entire wall of Java and the way you picked a Rich Text Editor was going to Barnes and Noble and browsing through printed books for an hour, in the Rich Text Editor Component shelf. I remember the "Days Before Stack Overflow" and Joel is giving himself a bit too much credit here. Before SO, when I googled a prob…

To be honest, Google returning SO answers for something that is exactly not what I am looking for instead of language/library reference documentation as it used to is one the most annoying things for me as a developer today. Though I think that's mostly on Google "optimizing" my queries by dumbing them down. As an example, try looking for "python setattr" in your search engine of choice, and look for python.org docum…

I've found DuckDuckGo better for searching for specific terms or functions like this. OTOH, google seems better for more vague concepts (like "python add attribute").

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#39

Post by noir_lord » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

necovek wrote: post #30

tdeck wrote: post #13

> almost anyone I talk to is too young to imagine The Days Before Stack Overflow, when the bookstore had an entire wall of Java and the way you picked a Rich Text Editor was going to Barnes and Noble and browsing through printed books for an hour, in the Rich Text Editor Component shelf. I remember the "Days Before Stack Overflow" and Joel is giving himself a bit too much credit here. Before SO, when I googled a prob…

To be honest, Google returning SO answers for something that is exactly not what I am looking for instead of language/library reference documentation as it used to is one the most annoying things for me as a developer today. Though I think that's mostly on Google "optimizing" my queries by dumbing them down. As an example, try looking for "python setattr" in your search engine of choice, and look for python.org docum…

Zeal (if on Linux) or Dash (if on Mac) are a lifesaver for that stuff.

It's ironic that I use Zeal so much but it really does just give me the answers quite often with less hassle than figuring out the search term to tell the search engine to get out the way!.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#40

Post by philovivero » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #19

kbelder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. It sidetracked nearly all the communities for a full year, triggered resignations, and caused lawyers to get involved. They've done other things to cause various 'controversies' with their base... changing the license answers are under, hiding controversial questions, etc... but their amazingly unprofessional treatement of Cellio caused more lasting damage than any of that.

It's interesting, I'm on Hacker News almost every day and have benefited enormously from Stack Overflow yet I have no idea what you're talking about or who Monica Cellio is. My guess is that the vast majority of their users haven't either. I only mention this because seemingly major events in online communities don't always have the impact that people involved or following closely think they do.

Yep. Same. Read HN at least 2-3x/wk and use Stack Overflow and a bunch of their related sub-sites about the same frequency. No clue who this is or what the event is referring to.

(Nor do I want to gain any clue)