---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: ! 'Stack Overflow: a hate/love story'
author: Julien Lengrand-Lambert
author_login: jlengrand
author_email: julien@lengrand.fr
author_url: http://www.lengrand.fr
wordpress_id: 772
wordpress_url: http://www.lengrand.fr/?p=772
date: 2012-10-01 12:39:05.000000000 +02:00
categories:
- programming
tags:
- stack overflow
- developer
- programming
- google
- SEO
comments:
- id: 2394
  author: My (almost) perfect setup to stay focused | loup2fu
  author_email: ''
  author_url: http://www.lengrand.fr/2012/10/my-almost-perfect-setup-to-stay-focused/
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  content: ! '[...] my last post, I explained why I hate Stack Overflow, so I won&#8217;t
    explain it again. Let&#8217;s just say that I try to avoid searching for answers
    [...]'
- id: 2404
  author: Tristan
  author_email: trisweb@gmail.com
  author_url: http://www.trisweb.com
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  content: So you hate it because it's *too good*? That's an interesting reason. You
    can easily choose to balance good resources, and to form a good knowledge based
    on official documentation before going to other sources like SO, but I don't know
    why this should foster dislike!
- id: 2409
  author: Scott Schulthess
  author_email: scottschulthess@gmail.com
  author_url: ''
  date: !binary |-
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  content: Post came off a bit linkbaity to me :)
- id: 2454
  author: Julien Lengrand-Lambert
  author_email: julien@lengrand.fr
  author_url: http://www.lengrand.fr
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  content: ! "This is exactly the reason why I mentioned both hate and love :). \r\n\r\nSO
    is one of the most powerful tools I have seen those last years. It is basically
    like having dozens of more experienced developers than you around, ready to help
    you if needed.\r\n\r\nThat without mentioning the rubber duck effect (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/rubber-duck-problem-solving.html)\r\n\r\nWhat
    I tried to highlight here is that it tends to make me become lazy. And I think
    I am not the only one in that situation, just look at the main page of SO and
    you'll see plenty of question posted from people that obviously haven't given
    a thought in what they do. \r\n\r\nAnd this becomes more and more true as SO questions
    make it to the top of Google. \r\n\r\nChoosing between a code snippet directly
    digested, or an ugly doc page; what would you take ? :)"
- id: 2455
  author: Julien Lengrand-Lambert
  author_email: julien@lengrand.fr
  author_url: http://www.lengrand.fr
  date: !binary |-
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  content: ! "Mentioning SO, hate and love in the same sentence ? \r\nThe title is
    indeed a bit catchy :).\r\n\r\nBut the content of the post is a real concern of
    mine ;)"
- id: 3590
  author: Bob
  author_email: bloggerbob91@yahoo.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: ! "Stack Overflow represents everything I hate about programming in general
    ... mainly the people itself.  \r\n\r\nGood helpful answers can be 'not' upvoted,
    down voted, or even criticized by overly-anal programmers that think they know
    everything in the world.  \r\n\r\nIt's the only place I know where trying to be
    helpful and sharing your knowledge (which I consider to be valuable) can go punished.
    \ Why should I share my expertise with ungrateful little twits and at the same
    time engage p-iss-n contests with other programmers when I could just keep it
    to myself?\r\n\r\nPeople go to Stack Overflow only because they have done a great
    job of getting their posted answers to be in the top 5 of google searches."
- id: 3591
  author: Julien Lengrand-Lambert
  author_email: julien@lengrand.fr
  author_url: http://www.lengrand.fr
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  content: ! "I think I understand  what you mean. And I kinda agree with you, but
    in a less extreme way :). \r\n\r\nGood answers ARE usually upvoted, and if there
    actually is a whole bunch of morrons on SO they don't have the majority yet .\r\nWhat
    pisses me off of bit more is the tendency that people have to upvote the answer
    from the guy having the biggest number of points instead of the one that took
    more time to answer. \r\n\r\nI go to SO because it is the only place indeed where
    i can get the EXACT answer to my question quickly (and also because I know it
    is only one click away).\r\n\r\nBut I disagree with the fact that SO is the only
    place where sharing knowledge is punished. Have you ever subscribed to Linux forums,
    hardware forums, or even tried to help one of your collegues at work? \r\nI mean,
    depending on the guy you will get ungrateful feedback. SO just makes it more public
    and direct.\r\n\r\nI use SO as a way to quickly get answers on simple question
    that you don't really need to have expertise in :\r\n- parse stuff\r\n- eclipse
    error \r\n\r\nThis kind of things you would spend some time searching in the docs.\r\n\r\nFor
    more complex stuff (architecture, project feddback, . . . ) well there are other
    places that are way more focused on that (like hackerbuddy : http://hackerbuddy.com/).\r\nI
    never got any bad feedback here :)."
- id: 21502
  author: Ellipsis
  author_email: kellmoony@yahoo.com
  author_url: ''
  date: !binary |-
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  content: Naileddd ittttt  ^ ^ ^ !!
- id: 21503
  author: Ellipsis
  author_email: kellmoony@yahoo.com
  author_url: ''
  date: !binary |-
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  content: Nailed ittttt  ^ ^ ^
---
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a title="stack overflow" href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/the-gamification.html" target="_blank">A lot of great people already blogged</a> <a title="jeff atwood anti social" href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/12/building-social-software-for-the-anti-social.html" target="_blank">about the reasons why they loved SO</a>.<a title="love stack overflow" href="http://www.littlehart.net/atthekeyboard/2009/11/03/why-i-love-stack-overflow/" target="_blank"> All of this is true</a>. <a title="hate SO" href="http://mikeongis.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/things-i-hate-about-stackoverflow/" target="_blank">Definitely true</a>.</p>

<h1 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>But I want to share something else</strong></h1>
<span style="text-align: justify;">The number of people posting on </span><a style="text-align: justify;" title="Stack Overflow" href="stackoverflow.com" target="_blank">StackOverflow</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> has greatly increased over the last years. It is in fact so crowded that it is not rare to have 4 or 5 answers posted just in the time needed to read a question. It has even become really hard to be the first to answer a question now, and </span><strong style="text-align: justify;">I love that</strong><span style="text-align: justify;">!</span>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Users got used to the rating system, and most of the questions I see now end up with a validated answer. Those answer (and the corresponding questions) will usually later be upvoted over time as people with the same issue find the solution to their problem. This is the very system of Stack Overflow,<strong> trust users with giving answers and sharing knowledge. And it works like hell. </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong>Another thing is that lately, I have seen more and more people completing others answers instead of posting theirs; or editing the question to remove context dependent information so that it can later be useful to more people. <strong>The desire for points is overcome by the desire of giving a precise and complete answer, and this is a sign that the platform answers a deep need</strong>.</p>

<h1 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>SO is now such an important service that it definitely plays the role of a huge SEO platform for good answers</strong>.</h1>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Those last months, it became more and more rare that I query Google for an issue without having a really close match on SO, upvoted by so much people that the question is in the <strong>top 5 results from Google ! </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong>With the number of specialized Stack Overflow "themes" growing every day this also becomes true not only for programming but <a title="cooking overflow" href="http://cooking.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank">cooking</a>, <a title="gaming exchange" href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank">gaming</a>, <a title="math exchange" href="http://math.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank">mathematics</a> and even <a title="scifi exchange" href="http://scifi.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank">sci-fi</a>!</p>

<br>

<center><a href="{{ site.url }}/images/posts/2012/10/StackOverflow.jpg"><img title="Stack Overflow" src="{{ site.url }}/images/posts/2012/10/StackOverflow.jpg" alt="in Windows . ." width="290" height="150" /></a></center>

<h1 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>And this is the very reason I also hate Stack Overflow</strong></h1>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong>SO is so efficient that it slowly became <strong>my first source of information</strong>. If you use <a title="ddg" href="http://duckduckgo.com" target="_blank">DuckDuckGo</a> like me (<a title="you should use DDG" href="http://blog.clifreeder.com/blog/2012/02/12/why-i-use-duckduckgo-and-you-should-too/" target="_blank">and you should</a>) you know that it comes first in the results;<strong> even before the official documentation</strong> of the project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It is now very rare for me to have to read the API or the manual of a framework any more, simply because I know I'll directly find the answer somewhere on SO.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This has very tricky effects:</p>

<ul style="text-align: justify;">
	<li><strong>I don't even have to remember the answers I find</strong> (even if I should), because I know I can search for it again whenever I need it and find the answer ready to be ingested.<strong> </strong></li>
	<li><strong>I lost the habit to search for solutions</strong> to problems by myself, and spend sometimes even more time searching for a match on SO than trying to solve my problem by myself.</li>
	<li>My tendancy to search for answers this way came slowly as SO became more and more successful, and I recently realized how dependent I am. I'd even say that if <strong>I had to choose between Google and SO today, I'd go for SO!</strong></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">You might say I am <a title="programmers before were better" href="http://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/the-programmers-before-us-were-better/" target="_blank">a bad programmer</a>. Perhaps. Or I just choose to follow the easy way and <a title="programmers before us were better" href="http://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/the-programmers-before-us-were-better/" target="_blank">take the low hanging fruit</a>. This is why I'll stop using it for a month. I want to keep my ability to think. <a title="please don't learn to code" href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-to-code.html" target="_blank">I don't want to be a code monkey. </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I'll keep posting answers on the platform, but from today I'll always got for the documentation first. <a title="SO" href="http://stackoverflow.com/" target="_blank">Stack Overflow</a>, I love you. . . but I want a divorce.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a title="stack overflow image source" href="http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/29631" target="_blank">image</a>]</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"></p>
