[lucb1e]

I feel you. I've taught myself programming between 13 and, well, I'm now 23; so by the time stackoverflow came around I had figured out how to solve things myself. When I have a question, it's usually either opinion-based (bad fit for SO) or not a common question.

I'd say 1:20 is a good estimate if I ignore answers that didn't read my question (which is most of them), but indeed the facts disagree.

[tyleraldrich]

What? Stackoverflow has been around since ~2008 - You certainly didn't learn how to solve things yourself a year into programming :).

[lucb1e]

Back then I didn't speak proper English, and how many questions were actually covered on SO in the beginning? It took some years to get to where we are, both for SO and for my English ;)