[crispyambulance]

Yes, the best teachers ask questions of their students, engage in a dialog and provide "guard rails" for the student to gain mastery of a topic. The end result of learning is not merely knowing answers but being able to ask strong questions (pithy, but true).

This is also part of the reason why Stackoverflow is in such a negative light lately. SO is extremely good at providing answers to narrowly-focused well-defined questions, people forget or aren't aware that this IS NOT a good way to learn subject-matter. It leads to frustration from users because they're expecting someone to give them pointers on how to move forward on general problems and it's frustrating to point-mavens because they aren't empathetic enough to see what the problems are.

[Xelbair]

SO answers are really good learning place. That is if you read the whole thread instead of copypasting the accepted answer.

Usually, at least for .net, there are explanations not only how to do something, but why do it this way.

I learned quite a bit from SO, it at least pointed me towards right direction in docs. Nowadays i just read the docs instead, but i still google for SO answers for new problems.

Maybe there is an API i have no idea about ,nor my colleagues do? Maybe there is a better way to solve problem XYZ?

Instead of skimming myriad of blogs i can just read the answers on SO and then read up the docs.

SO is as good, or bad, as you make it - if you just copypaste answers, or provide an answer in form of code with minimal explanation why - then that's on you.

[crispyambulance]

SO is a great place to go when you're in a jam at work as a pro doing your stuff. It has specific answers to specific questions. Sure, if you have enough background expertise to navigate the answers, you can "learn something" (1) along the way.

The kinds of questions that people ask when they're focused on learning something new, however, are DEFINITELY NOT what SO is intended to handle. It is why SO is actively hostile to people that try to use it to learn by asking questions.

(1) For .net in particular, Jon Skeet's answers are magnificent resources. He even made the content from his answers into a book. The book, of course, has context and coherence. It's not just the answers copy-pasted into a text. Sadly, Skeet is the exception rather than the rule. For everyone putting up nice answers to questions following the example of Skeet, there are dozens of smug, persnickety jerks making people feel like shit in a hundred different ways for daring to ask a question.

[Xelbair]

>> The kinds of questions that people ask when they're focused on learning something new, however, are DEFINITELY NOT what SO is intended to handle. It is why SO is actively hostile to people that try to use it to learn by asking questions.

Exactly, at this phase of learning go and read other questions and answers related to your topic instead.

Jon Skeet is a goddamn national treasure.

[the_af]

StackOverflow is in a negative light? What did I miss?

[Kihashi]

People have complained for years about over-moderation on SO. Here's a good overview article[0]. You may also want to look into recent controversies about licensing[1] and how they treat their community moderators[2][3] (both of which were on the front page of HN).

[0]: https://hackernoon.com/the-decline-of-stack-overflow-7cb69fa...

[1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333678/was-the-retr...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113344

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176712