I no longer need the Internet.<p>My hamster chewed through a CAT cable last week; it took me three days to notice, so complete was my Zen immersion in creating a period-accurate replica of the first Galilean telescope, using only Haskell lenses.<p>When it finally dawned on me I had attained a sophistication that transcended the internet, I felt the inessentials fall away from my craft in an instant, and I was left in an affectless state of pure, actualized <i>creation</i>.<p>Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Internet isn't a great tool- I remember when I, too, used the Internet on a regular basis, daily even, and perhaps even relied on it. If you have no idea about anything whatsoever, it can be a fantastic resource. But when I want to know something, I don't look up the documentation, or download the source code. I <i>am</i> the source code, the documentation, the alpha build, the omega build. The Seraphic gatekeeper of the NANDs. The bit stops here.<p>So I ask you- are you ready to unplug? Because I already did.
It's not always a question of "needing" something, it's a question of whether you spend 5 minutes searching for the answer or 50 minutes, or 5 hours.<p>It's a tool. Use it.
Is not using something for a single day a sign you never need it? I sometimes don't refer to SO for weeks, simply because I'm dealing with problems I can figure out without it.<p>But sometimes I'm dealing with something I'm totally unfamiliar with, and docs and tutorials are badly written, and then some example on Stackoverflow can be a great help.<p>And more importantly, sometimes I'm stuck on something really obscure. Doesn't happen a lot; once every few months or so, but when it happens, putting a bounty on Stackoverflow is a really nice option to have.<p>Are there really people who check Stackoverflow every single day of programming?
I'm capable of debugging stuff myself, but I still always go to SO as my first port of call when I hit a roadblock. If I can find a comprehensive answer in 1 or 2 minutes of searching around, which I normally can unless it's really niche, that's far better than wracking my brains looking through somebody else's unfamiliar code.
Now you've finally matured into the kind of developer who can ask interesting questions - the type that are not easily answered by studying docs or source code. Sometimes because you're not asking the right questions, sometimes because your problem is obscure, sometimes because it's a little bit "subjective" - but above all, it should be interesting to other people who also know how to read docs and source.
Well looks like the poster doesn't use SO quite well on a normal day then.<p>What you describe as a newfound way to program is actually what should be considered normal. SO isn't about getting an answer to some code problem or your homework or something like that.<p>To benefit from SO you should have an informed question that displays a good degree of personal research. THEN it's time to tap for the collective developer mind and be enlightened.
><i>Whenever a library behaved in an unexpected way, I started digging into the code to really understand what was going on. Instead of asking StackOverflow if an API exists or a library has a particular feature, I read the docs instead. Instead of asking if my theory will work, I figure out a way to test it, and try it on my own machine.</i><p>Yes. Or you could use Stack Overflow, and also learn something you didn't know by reading the answers.
"Instead of asking StackOverflow if an API exists or a library has a particular feature, I read the docs instead."<p>That's what you're supposed to do :) Ask the question only after you do the homework, not INSTEAD of it
On one hand, I don't need SO much either. I mostly go there to answer questions, not to ask them or research them.<p>On the other hand, SE has some really great sites where I can get really good reviews of stuff I am working on by other people other people who know their stuff (I use dba.stackexchange.com this way).
The guy hardly ever contributed to StackOverflow anyway - he's linking to his SO profile on his website. He only asked 8 questions and answered 5, in 4 years. Kinda like me and my mother-in-law.<p>So it's a bit like a bloke who hardly ever has a drink blogging how he "no longer needs alcohol" because he went through a whole weekend without sipping a beer : )<p>I know that you can use SO passively - only by searching - but the real power of the forum lies in the cases where your problem is original and you have to summon the community to give you a hand.
I learnt from electronics.stackexchange in the other direction: I applied my fragmentary knowledge to <i>answering</i> questions, as a hobby. A combination of googling, helping the questioner improve their question, and basic thinking has resulted in me getting about 10k rep and broadening my knowledge quite a bit.<p>My top-voted answers are surprisingly general: <a href="http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/97277/when-can-fpgas-be-used-and-microcontrollers-dsps-not/97307#97307" rel="nofollow">http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/97277/when-ca...</a> and <a href="http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/67598/how-are-integrated-circuits-fabricated/67602#67602" rel="nofollow">http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/67598/how-are...</a> (the top-voted answer by Olin Lanthrop is one of the highest-voted answers on the site and well worth a read). But I got 16 upvotes by translating assembler to English: <a href="http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/86744/from-c-to-assembly/86746#86746" rel="nofollow">http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/86744/from-c-...</a> which I hadn't realised was such a rare skill in this area.
I've been a developer professionally for over 7 years, I still use SO on a regular basis. I can dig through APIs, pull library code apart and do the research, but SO often speeds that process up. The chance of you having a completely unique question is small, but if you do then some incredibly smart developers are there to help. Why delay yourself from solving a problem and moving on?
There is nothing wrong in needing SO.<p>I totally agree with the article that the initial source of documentation should not be SO though. Want to learn something? Yeah, then SO is not the starting place. Grab the tool, read the docs, browse the forums, engage with the community.<p>But sometimes there is no forums, or they are almost dead. Sometimes you want to know how other people are using that tool. Sometimes you don't find the answer to your question in the tool's forums and sometimes you got into trouble and can't figure out the issue by yourself. Even sometimes you've come up with a wonderful solution and that solution might actually be a mess but you haven't found out yet.<p>SO is an awesome and thrilling community that can help in all the above situations. So, in my opinion there is nothing wrong in using it to validate what you are doing or to find a solution to that annoying issue you are having or to simply help others. But yes, not really the starting point for learning something in my opinion. I don't think that is its intent either.
Maybe I'm weird, but I end up in an SO page perhaps one a week, and maybe 50% of that time is it actually useful. I really had no idea it had taken on such importance (real or imagined) for others.
While I agree with the premise, I think no one has touched on why SO has lost its crowned place among programmers.<p>Simply put, search has gotten much better, and programmers have mass adopted blogging.<p>I wasn't aware of StackOverflow's existence when it was first gaining traction; in fact, I think I first discovered it around the time that it ceased to be as necessary as, from what I've gathered, it once was.<p>Nowadays, when I do a search, 80% of the time there's a blog post that gives me a detailed answer to my question with an in-depth explanation of why. StackOverflow is <i>often</i> useful for answering my questions, but seldom really scratches the itch of <i>why</i> (with exceptionally insightful answers comprising a minority). I think most programmers that have achieved mastery gain more satisfaction by blogging and having their insights centralized, publicized, and monetized to their liking than they do from accruing points on SO.
"Instead of asking if my theory will work, I figure out a way to test it, and try it on my own machine." - this is what you are _expected_ to do before posting on SO.
I often find I spend 20 minutes trying to formulate a good SO question, only to discover the solution just before pressing submit.<p>Further reading: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging</a>
I've been programming professionally since 1981 and I actually remember having to figure out everything myself. No internet, no SO, no email, I had to go to a library to find algorithms. Sure I succeeded in doing complicated work. But why, today my brain can be expanded by the cumulative knowledge of the entire planet. I'd rather go to a grocery store and buy food than go out each day and hunt for critters. It's a tool and people are tool using, so why knock tools? Hope you enjoy eating skunk every day.
Some of us remember learning to program before SO existed. Hell, when I started to learn to program the WWW was still pretty new, and still looked on as something of a fad. You had to read books, and man pages to figure anything out.
I no longer need Stack Overflow, but I was in Stack Overflow 4 hours ago :-)
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/users/288570" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/users/288570</a>
That's one of the thing that surprises me: how does StackOverflow keep quality answers since people who are knowledgeable enough don't need to be there on the first place.
And the entire beginner community went to <a href="http://www.downforeveryone.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.downforeveryone.com/</a> at the same time
Hmm, this is fine when you really need a deeper understanding of something, but sometimes you just need to get some code out to fix a bug, hit a deadline, etc.
I consider my self an experienced programmer, but I would estimate that I use SO at least a few times a day, when programming. It's usually through a Google search, but nonetheless. I also find information in other places of course, but I really think that site heightened the quality of available information remarkably.
Hmm, that's a superb piece of self-promotion. Most experienced developers make the cross-over from needing SO to contributing answers on SO, but it never occurred to me to write about it. I envy the marketing chops this dev acquired in the process; it can make a huge difference to your salary / career.
Maybe we should run an experiment. Block SO from our routers/browsers (whatever works) and then see how we feel coding without SO. The time frame for this block should at least be a week.<p>I have a feeling we'd feel better about reading the proper documentations as opposed to trying out random answers from SO.
And to think that I was turned down as a candidate for a programming job because I wasn't visible enough on the internet (contribute to trending github projects or write a blog). This is the exact style of blog you see all the time and I couldn't bring myself to even parody it.
What a strange thing to say. He is obviously planning to work with his current stack forever. He has decided to be dogmatic at the expense of his project team. Basically, he will be unemployed within 5-10 years.
There are downsides of stackoverflow like the high karma bullies who love to moderate & flag at the drop of a hat.<p>However, it's still an awesome community. Too bad it's not for you.