Maybe I'm weird, but I end up in an SO page perhaps one a week, and maybe 50% of that time is it actually useful. I really had no idea it had taken on such importance (real or imagined) for others.
I No Longer Need StackOverflow
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Convenience is good but i have to agree with him on this one. Understanding the technology in a deeper way is a lot more useful in the long run. And once you understand it answering other questions you may have gets a lot easier and arguably that 5 hour investment in the beginning may be a bargain. He spends 5 hours to understand it first you spend 5-10 minutes on each question and you may run into dozens if not hund…
Easy solution: 1. Look up the first 60 questions on StackOverflow. That amounts to 5 hours you would've spent on just the first one. 2. If you still have more questions, spend another 5 hours learning the ins and outs of the darn thing. Problem solved: now you're not sacrificing latency for throughput.
This is exactly the rent-or-buy problem!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_rental_problem
You just described the best deterministic algorithm, but it turns out there are even better randomized algorithms, where you "flip a coin" when deciding to look up StackOverflow or keep learning (of course, that may or may not be practical :p).
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#33What a strange thing to say. He is obviously planning to work with his current stack forever. He has decided to be dogmatic at the expense of his project team. Basically, he will be unemployed within 5-10 years.
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#34When SO's down, all the programmers grind to a halt. When HN's down, all of them accelerate to levels normally unseen.
So what happens when both SO and HN are down? Where does that spontaneously unleashed energy go?
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#35Some guy in his early 20ies thinks he has it all figured out. News at 11.
I'm in my early 30' and I desperately need stackoverflow and anything that shows up in a quick Google search. I need to spend time on deciding what problems to solve and on what's the proper solution. Not how to implement the solution.
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#36Hmm, that's a superb piece of self-promotion. Most experienced developers make the cross-over from needing SO to contributing answers on SO, but it never occurred to me to write about it. I envy the marketing chops this dev acquired in the process; it can make a huge difference to your salary / career.
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Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy solution: 1. Look up the first 60 questions on StackOverflow. That amounts to 5 hours you would've spent on just the first one. 2. If you still have more questions, spend another 5 hours learning the ins and outs of the darn thing. Problem solved: now you're not sacrificing latency for throughput.
This is exactly the rent-or-buy problem! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_rental_problem You just described the best deterministic algorithm, but it turns out there are even better randomized algorithms, where you "flip a coin" when deciding to look up StackOverflow or keep learning (of course, that may or may not be practical :p).
Thanks for the link!
Hmm... given that you stated that the best randomized algorithms we have beat our best deterministic ones, isn't there a place for even better deterministic algorithm?
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#38Is not using something for a single day a sign you never need it? I sometimes don't refer to SO for weeks, simply because I'm dealing with problems I can figure out without it. But sometimes I'm dealing with something I'm totally unfamiliar with, and docs and tutorials are badly written, and then some example on Stackoverflow can be a great help. And more importantly, sometimes I'm stuck on something really obscure.…
> Are there really people who check Stackoverflow every single day of programming?
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#39I no longer need the Internet. My hamster chewed through a CAT cable last week; it took me three days to notice, so complete was my Zen immersion in creating a period-accurate replica of the first Galilean telescope, using only Haskell lenses. When it finally dawned on me I had attained a sophistication that transcended the internet, I felt the inessentials fall away from my craft in an instant, and I was left in an…
how did you post?
Re: I No Longer Need StackOverflow
#40"Instead of asking StackOverflow if an API exists or a library has a particular feature, I read the docs instead." That's what you're supposed to do :) Ask the question only after you do the homework, not INSTEAD of it
In my experience, just googling a (simple) question is much faster than trying to browse any documentation by some other means. One could say that the web is the docs nowadays and Google is just the frontend.