[cactus2093]

I also frequently run into the situation where I Google something, there is a perfect match on a SO question, but then the answer is "Actually, you don't want to do that thing you asked about, here is a different solution for your specific scenario". But often that alternative solution is not relevant in the general case, and there really are good reasons to want to do the thing as originally asked in the question.

Basically there are all kinds of situations where the specific question/answer format is actually at odds with generating good long-term documentation.

But that makes me all the more impressed with the success Stack Overflow has had. In my opinion their key insight is that it can be good enough. If I had come up with the idea for the product I probably would have been discouraged and given up way too early based on the fact that it is and will always be messy and imperfect.

[a1369209993]

> there is a perfect match on a SO question, but then the answer is "Actually, you don't want to do that thing you asked about, here is a different solution for your specific scenario".

That describes seemingly every Stack Overflow question I've found in the past four years. SO is basically useless for anything advanced enough to need SO.

[jamesmontalvo3]

Perhaps there’s a point at which you become advanced enough to not need SO. I’m certainly not there after a decade of software development. Do I have to dig a bit sometimes and go beyond the first few results on google? Sure. And if that doesn’t work I submit a question. I normally get an answer fairly quickly.

[a1369209993]

> Perhaps there's a point at which you become advanced enough to not need [something like] SO.

Not really, no, which is why it's so infuriating when people ruin it with "How do I do X?" "You aren't supposed to do X, here let me tell you how to Y instead.". The HTML/regex Zalgo rant at least had some style, even if it was utterly useless at answering the question.

[eyelidlessness]

I think the subset of programmers who don’t need something like SO’s value proposition is vanishingly small. Surely there are a few hundred people who have near perfect recall bolstered by perfect reference techniques.

At least speaking for myself, almost two decades in, I didn’t outgrow SO because I don’t need that kind of guidance. I outgrew SO because it doesn’t provide it effectively anymore.

[saagarjha]

There are topics on which Stack Overflow is worse to useless to me, mostly because I could probably name most of the experts who are better than me in the field and of course have ways of getting in touch with them on that. But I doubt there is anyone out there for which this is the situation for all topics.

[bentcorner]

Ironically the biggest problem I have today is that a lot of Q/As on SO are old, so it's hard to know if the answer I found is still canonical or if there's a better/different way to do the same thing, and I didn't perform the right incantations into google to find my answer.