41–50 of 96 posts
SO is much more pleasant if you stick to the less populous niche tags where there isn't a race to get the first answer, pompous mods, and other negative side effects of gamification.
This seems like desired behavior, no? Quick answers ought to be a goal for Q&A sites.
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There are a couple of limitations on that though. The first is that the downvote really is merited. The second is that if it's at all reasonable, you do add a comment explaining the down-vote. Nearly the only exception to commenting when downvoting should (IMO) be when there's already a comment pointing to the problem, so the added downvote is just to help the score reflect the answer's (lack of) quality.
I like Stack Overflow. I agree with many of its criticisms, but I still think it's a huge gain for the programming community overall. I think the worst aspect is the endless "your premise is flawed, you should do instead" answers. I often formulate toy examples, or ask questions out of curiosity rather than practical need. Somehow, users always latch on to the irrelevant part of my question instead of answering the p…
The problem is that not everyone is a very good teacher or judge of when it's proper to give advice. So you get a lot of people who don't know the answer and instead provide some workaround using technologies they do know and are comfortable with, which isn't necessarily helpful.
What a strange rant. First of all, this guy continued answering and asking questions since he published this article, so I guess he changed his mind about deleting his account. http://stackoverflow.com/users/2189331/jdevlin Secondly the italic bits about how he should be allowed to delete questions because he created the content make no sense. All SO questions and answers are collaboratively created so he can't claim…
But those posts have his name on them. He is judged by them, and he in some way has to stand by them. I don't know that deletion should be an assured right with all user-created content, but no one should be publishing someone else's content under their name without their continued consent.
Meta-comment: I am so over titles of the form "* considered harmful" when it has something to do with someone's opinion and IT/computing. Please just stop.
Here's the thing about stack overflow: How many people have worked at a location that has blocked stack overflow? Because I have worked with an organization of about 2500 people, not all of which were IT. One day, management went on a mad whitelisting crusade and blocked about 98% of the internet, including the stack exchange network. IT ground totally to a halt, across all our branches. No programming, no sys-admini…
> Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. The market for books on programming topics is miniscule compared to the number of working programmers.
why care about badges/scores. Just contribute, help and get help. It's great for just that. I find answers to 70% of programming questions I have.
I like Stack Overflow. I agree with many of its criticisms, but I still think it's a huge gain for the programming community overall. I think the worst aspect is the endless "your premise is flawed, you should do instead" answers. I often formulate toy examples, or ask questions out of curiosity rather than practical need. Somehow, users always latch on to the irrelevant part of my question instead of answering the p…
My buddy and I call that "I asked how to use a ladder, you told me to take the elevator" syndrome. I'm picking apples!