[twelve40]

I'm genuinely curious how that works. I know once you get up to a certain level you can thrive just by crafting high-quality answers to random peoples' questions. But still. For me, even if I don't work on some routine production stuff and simply try to learn things, it takes quite a bit of uninterrupted time to master a certain topic. And with our field being what it is, there are more and more topics getting rolled out every day no matter what stack you use. So how is it possible for one person to run essentially a one-man commercial-grade support operation for a complicated ever-changing technology?

[jacobush]

Some combination on a 2D map of no-other-life and really really smart, I think.

[user5994461]

It's quite simple. You just do it for some time. You quickly end with enough knowledge to advise many people and spend your day answering questions.

As you write answers, you gotta check what you're saying and you spend time looking for references, so you dig even deeper and deeper and you master the topic even more.

[nathancahill]

Reply with a correct one sentence answer within 15 seconds, then continuously improve it until it's a 2 paragraph answer citing source code and documentation, with code examples to boot. Stackoverflow is incredibly easy to "game" if you have the time.

[holdenweb]

None of which removes the fact that Martijn is incredibly helpful to Python questioners.