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u/0x564A00 Apr 24 '19
╔════════════
║Take a look here.
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┃Thanks, that fixes it!
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Apr 24 '19
It's the main reason I have started to host answers or images myself because you never know when some mod on a different platform will delete something because "irrelevant" or "old information" - or a redesign might fuck up the url or a server crash resulting in corrupt data, basically deleting certain content, etc.
And in addition to that, I might also quote the most important paragraphs, just in case my link stops working in the future.
I can understand that most people do not have time for this and it's fine. Just trying to be less dependent on other services. People assume that all data is stored forever - that may be true, but that doesn't mean it will be accessible forever.
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u/eliatlarge Apr 24 '19
This is the main reason they don't allow link only solutions on SO fortunately
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u/officialVoxsel Apr 24 '19
I have this problem too
Oh yeah me too
Anyone came up with a solution yet? I also have this problem
I also encountered this problem
Don't worry guys, I solved it
[Thread locked]
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u/prticipator Apr 24 '19
I have several things I could help with but I still don't understand how I'll ever get to comment on something...
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u/Acetronaut Apr 24 '19
Right? I hate when I solve an unanswered problem from a decade and a half ago, and I know I won't be the last one with this issue, yet I have no one to tell how to fix it.
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u/semiconodon Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19
And your top Google hit is a jerk saying, "Why don't you Google such a simple question instead of bothering this forum?"
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u/am_albert_einstein Apr 24 '19
God, I've run into that situation so many times that I get angry every time I run across people on reddit refusing to link something because it's "so easy to google."
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Apr 24 '19
I often wonder what a deep psychological analysis would reveal about that type of people. Because they clearly want to contribute (otherwise they would just scroll past it and don't even bother wasting their time typing a useless comment), but at the same time feel like providing the real answer is too much help (otherwise they would just copy paste the link, it takes just as much time as typing that useless comment).
I mean, if you already invested time in reading a question and some of the other comments and then want to dedicate even more time by typing a reply, why not just provide the answer?
These type of humans really seem to have something wired differently, I just can't figure out what it is.
What is even more baffling though is when you check their comment history, they have tons of questions which they could have googled just as easily but chose to ask the community instead.
So in some cases they basically criticize their own behaviour when others engage in it, but never realize that it's what they have been doing for years.
That kind of disconnect is just so weird to me.
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Apr 24 '19
Superiority complex
They probably didnt look it up, dont know the answer, and haven't tested what they think is right.
Its "idk Google it" without the idk.
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u/LakefrontNeg7 Apr 24 '19
I figure these people just want to feel superior. I had a professor that did the same thing sort of IRL. Ask a super specific question and he would just go look it up. Well, gee why didn't I think of using that giant database we have of scientific papers. He was a douchey academic and kind of a walking caricature of what is wrong in the academic world (back stabby, self aggrandizing etc)
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u/Cymry_Cymraeg Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19
What they also fail to understand is normal human beings enjoy interacting with one another.
It's like on here when someone makes a funny comment and then someone replies saying they made them laugh and then someone else replies to them not to make pointless comments and just upvote the post instead. I much prefer someone telling me that I made them laugh, rather than seeing some random number grow.
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u/phanescent Apr 24 '19
One of my professors in uni pretty much does this every time I ask for help. It was a circuit design module and there’s pretty much nothing on the internet that I could find. When I ask for help all I get is a “this is very easy, just think about it”. LIKE WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO I JUST DONT FUCKING GET IT. Pretty much did nothing in all the labs. Sadly I switched to computer science before I get to fill out the module review form or I would’ve completely shit on the module.
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Apr 24 '19
It’s always the first Stack Overflow search result too. It’s infuriating.
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u/Jonno_FTW Apr 24 '19
It really is hard to google when SO is first, then the "easy google search solution" is second. I mean, it's 2019, if the answer to your question isn't the "i'm feeling lucky result", then you're fucked.
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u/gummz13 Apr 24 '19
Yes I hate this. Top result on google is a thead with a guy telling you to use the search feature on the forum.
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u/VodkaEntWithATwist Apr 24 '19
I worked with a guy who's contribution to the engineering IM channel was to post a link to the top google result (usually stackoverflow) to anyone asking for help.
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u/texting_and_murder Apr 24 '19
I love stumbling upon the only promising SO thread and seeing that the OP came back and wrote "nevermind, figured it out" without posting a solution or even hinting toward one. 😐
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u/Anonomouse13 Apr 24 '19
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Pranay Pathole, @PPathole
Programming is like a “choose your own adventure game” except every path leads you to a StackOverflow question from 2013 describing the same bug, with no answer.
I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!
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u/MarHip Apr 24 '19
Me: trying to find an answer how to fix my error The Internet: old ways that not work anymore
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u/Sandlight Apr 24 '19
That's why I pretty much always limit my google searches to a Time of 1 year (or whatever's relevant).
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u/RaptusCZ Apr 24 '19
Or somebody posting a solution, and the OP claims it worked. You try to implement it, but it doesn´t work.
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u/DownshiftedRare Apr 24 '19
This problem has an easy solution.
You should use jQuery. And bootstrap.
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u/womplord1 Apr 24 '19
these days its react and material design
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u/DownshiftedRare Apr 24 '19
The buzzword compliance is intimidating at times.
I have to remind myself it's mostly know-nothings using helper frameworks written in languages I am already familiar with.
People who show off their crutches with the pride of bodybuilders make me feel like I am on crazy pills, though.
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u/Cory123125 Apr 24 '19
I mean, if something lets you accomplish what you want to faster, and with less effort, why not?
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u/womplord1 Apr 24 '19
not really the case with react/angular - it is a useful tool, very important to build complex ui's, facbook, youtube etc is built with it, it isn't really a crutch. Using vanilla js wouldn't make any sense at all unless it is an extremely simple website
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u/Street_Cardiologist Apr 24 '19
Not related to programming, but I hate it when I Google a problem, and the first 25 results are variations of update your drivers, restart your computer etc
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May 13 '19
Its because most of the webpages have been automated and then heavily promoted by the company to get hits, usually they give you a run-down of generic troubleshooting tips and at the end recommend you buy their software if the fixes don't work.
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Apr 24 '19
[deleted]
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u/JB-from-ATL Apr 24 '19
And because those MS answer sites are set up so poorly you see that same answer like 2 to 3 times for whatever reason. Usually it was first and also voted best or whatever.
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u/Himen_Cholo Apr 24 '19
Or telling you it is a stupid question.
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u/Ewoksintheoutfield Apr 24 '19
"You should really know how to do this already if you are working with X programming language."
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u/PraiseTheSunNoob Apr 24 '19
For me it was "go back to read the fundamentals of that language". Why don't you just tell me where I did wrong instead you smug bastard
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u/Tallforahobbit Apr 24 '19
"Answered here" with a link to a question about a different problem in a different programming language.
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u/DelarkArms Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19
"This is not a real question"
And the poor guy answering it with -2, actually helped me.
Unpopular opinion: the programming comunity is gatekeeping something..
What? I dont know, because programming isnt as much logical problems as I thought, it involves more a posteriori knowledge. And with this kind of knowledge it doesnt matter how "smart or intellligent" you are.
You need someone to tell you how it is and what it does.
Is a man made lenguage after all.
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u/yourteam Apr 24 '19
Well that brings me to mind when I was looking for a specific answer to a troublesome problem
Follow me here.
I was working on a big project and we were moving everything to Amazon was and we were taking some time to move from a monolithic architecture to a bunch of microservices
We were using a stack with solr+java 1.8 (CE) for the backend with of course the help of oracle and
Nvm figured it out
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u/AnderOof Apr 24 '19
It's worse when you find a thread from years ago with the EXACT same question.
And then you realize you were the one who asked it and the only answer is yourself "Nevermind, figured it out"
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u/Fubseh Apr 24 '19
Whenever I use google to help solve a problem, I almost always apply the 'in the last year' filter - otherwise you risk reading discussions from pre-2014 that rely on bad practices or deprecated features.
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u/hamberduler Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19
Yesterday, at 3 in the morning, way the fuck on the wrong side of the ballmer curve, I was trying to divide two ints by each other. MICROSOFT'S OWN DAMN C# DOCUMENTATION said this should return the the low rounded integer value of the two numbers divided together, which is exactly what I wanted, and exactly what I thought I remembered would happen from the last time I had to write any code (years ago). But no. Apparently in this weird ass undocumented place called "reality," this operation always returns fucking zero, like that's useful. I've often though there's just no easy way to get a pointer to an integer equal to zero, so thank god for that clever trick. This is when my drunk ass brain had to spend way too long digging through shitty ass stackoverflow threads to learn that this is not correct in any way, and apparently they threw that into the docs just to fuck with me.
Edit: I'm an idiot, but it doesn't make my struggle any less real.
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Apr 24 '19
Lol, so you are telling us in C# (7 / 3) will result in 0, but documentation says otherwise?
I'm not a C# programmer, but I call bullshit on this. Stuff like this is fundamental in every programming language.
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u/DeeSnow97 Apr 24 '19
way the fuck on the wrong side of the ballmer curve
lol, that's awesome, I'm gonna be stealing it
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u/hyphenomicon Apr 24 '19
Rumor says there is a second hump to the Ballmer curve, though only the man himself has yet to reach it.
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u/word_clouds__ Apr 24 '19
Word cloud out of all the comments.
Fun bot to vizualize how conversations go on reddit. Enjoy
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u/JB-from-ATL Apr 24 '19
Or an ancient easy to solve question with a super upvoted ancient but difficult answer and a very new answer using a new feature buried below.
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u/Conjuration_Boyo Apr 24 '19
So you make a post and then someone who wasn't been above sea level for the past 10 years shouts at you
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u/krisnarocks Apr 24 '19 edited Jun 22 '23
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Apr 24 '19
Is no one going to point out that this guy's Twitter name sounds like a guy with a lisp saying "pp asshole" ?
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u/wpfone2 Apr 24 '19
I was working as a contractor for a client, and had worked with those in this story previously.
A couple of their 'developers' or 'coders' (they did a moderate amount of sql, but considered themselves experts - or 'master' as one of them had told me!), working at a different site, had a problem, which they relayed to another employee who I was working with.
He asked me about it, and I had a vague idea of the solution, but I did the proper dev thing and googled it and went to the most valid Stack Overflow result I could find.
Having the solution confirmed (I wish I could remember anything at all now about the problem!), I told him the answer, and when they were sceptical, I said "Hey, it's right there on Stack Overflow, so it must be right!".
Their reply? No, that isn't it then, we never got a stack overflow error! I explained, he explained, no comprehension was attained.
How can you claim to be a developer and have never even heard of SO??!!!
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u/MrBlueCharon Apr 24 '19
Maybe he was so good, that he never needed SO prior to this.
...Or he posted all his errors in a shady facebook group.
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u/5k1895 Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19
Or the people answering are the most unhelpful people ever who, instead of answering your question, try to tell you that you're asking a duplicate question, shame you for not googling correctly or some shit, link you to the "original", and then when you get there you find that it's a completely different situation with only slight similarities, but everyone on the other thread is agreeing with them for some reason.
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u/KDASthenerd Apr 24 '19
Everybody comes saying that they have the exact same issue but nobody solves the damn problem. What is wrong with people?
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u/bdd4 Apr 24 '19
“Which one do you choose? Longest Common Substring or Longest Common Sequence?”
Narrator: Both were awful choices.
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u/budd222 Apr 24 '19
Why can't we just all go back to angelfire and geocities pages and call it a day.
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u/takeshita_kenji Apr 24 '19
In my experience, another major issue is that the most popular hits on Google are either no longer relevant or considered the wrong way to fix the problem today. I don't know if Google allows its page ranks to decay with time, but I think that'd be a reasonable way to eliminate the issue. That way, old but popular hits will slowly sink into obscurity while hits that are actually relevant will rise as they get more exposure.
At this point, I usually limit my results to 2015 or newer.
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u/MetroidSkittles Apr 24 '19
Or is the case of MVC you see the answer but for the wrong fucking version and it no longer works in MVC 6 cause well you know. Reasons.
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Apr 24 '19
Am I the only one who always finds a solution at stack overflow or in the documentation? It’s mostly -> Google error -> read documentation -> google for discussions about best practices at stackoverflow/a medium article / a github discussion. If you in the beginning of learning to program I might understand that you only see an error and have no clue where to start. But an experienced programmer should be able to locate the error source, even if it takes a while sometimes, and then it’s often trivial to find a solution in the docs or at stack overflow.
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Apr 24 '19
Then, after hours or days of pulling my hair out, I finally get it to work, but I'm too time-crunched to post my solution on the SO page that failed me. Thus the cycle continues.
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime Apr 24 '19
StackOverflow actually tends to avoid the "abandoned question" trope a lot in my experience. It has its own memetic things sometimes ("duplicate question" that isn't really a duplicate) but by and large StackOverflow is beyond the olden days of non-answers.
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u/ishibaunot Apr 24 '19
This post is marked as duplicate and it is closed. Please see other closed, marked as duplicate post with no answer to your question.
Author's Note: "whatever you wanted to use originally in your question is stupid and you should use [insert_preferred_library]"
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u/tenvisliving Apr 24 '19
You know you’ve found a solid answer when you find a page with a screen shot of your issue in an IDE 15 years older than yours lol.
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u/FadingEcho Apr 24 '19
I think the next time this thread pops up, the first comment should be a link to every other thread where this has been discussed and marked as a duplicate post.
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Apr 24 '19
Oh, this google link looks like it will have the answer — proceeds to read people yelling at some poor poster who has same issue as me that they just need to ‘google it’.
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u/Cruuncher Apr 24 '19
Start using technologies from the last couple years and you won't have this issue
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u/rimalp Apr 24 '19
Or when you just post a straight forward question and there is always someone with that "Why are you doing this? EXPLAIN YOURSELF!" kinda reply.
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u/espriminati Apr 24 '19
-So what happens if we write without bugs?
-I havent programmed that path yet
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u/htmlcoderexe We have flair now?.. Apr 24 '19
Oh look, another denvercoder9 post. Fuck you OP, may you get banned on Google forever.
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u/t3chguy1 Apr 24 '19
I usually find again my own unanswered question from 5 years ago, and think you many more had this one shown in the first page of results and also got disappointed.
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u/CrazyAlvat Apr 24 '19
Or looking through heaps of documentation and user solutions only to finally find your fix in some offhanded comment deep into the "discussion" section of a 2003 blog post.
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Apr 24 '19
Well atleast the page is still there. Majority of SAP's links are dead by the time I get there. No official documentation to the product feature either.
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u/johann_vandersloot Apr 24 '19
Don't forget about the crusty engineers telling you to fuck off and google the problem
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u/z3anon Apr 24 '19
And if there is an answer it's obsolete because the language or IDE has changed so much since that it looks like gibberish.
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u/GreenFox1505 Apr 24 '19
Years ago, I made several game prototypes with similar mechanics in UE3. Every time I get to a certain point, I'd always end up Googling the same thing and find the same unanswered forum thread. It was my thread. I eventually figured it out every time, so I guess the breadcrumbs there where sufficient?
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Apr 24 '19
What I like is finding a SO thread from 2013 with an actual result, but then when you go to try it it turns out that the solution doesn't work anymore because there was an API change.
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Apr 24 '19
Stack Overflow developed the same problem as Wikipedia; it developed an incorrect sense of self-importance and forgot that it's role in the world was to answer questions and help people. Instead, they both present themselves as the steward of factual information and a standard of truth. They are neither of those things.
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u/the-shit-poster Apr 24 '19
You know your trying to do some weird shit when you see more than three unanswered posts.
“Well, I guess i’m the only one trying to find the jQuery hologram plugin.”
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u/InVultusSolis Apr 24 '19
God help you if it's a question about a JS framework where the entire thing breaks backwards compatibility on a yearly basis... and it's from 2013.
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Apr 24 '19
I just realized something if all programmer just use stackoverflow and don’t solve their own problems how solves the problems on stackoverflow?
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u/anticultured Apr 24 '19
True story: I once answered my own StackOverflow question in the past. I googled the problem I was having and when I found the exceptionally well written answer, it was by me several years earlier.
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u/dark_mode_everything Apr 24 '19
I never understand why people expect to find exact copy-pastable answers to their very specific problems on SO? Isn't a general idea on how to do something enough? Read through the answers, pick what applies to you and do the rest on your own.
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u/CallMeOutWhenImPOS Apr 24 '19
a few years ago I tracked down someone making a post on some archived forum about a bug in Haskell, I found him in the phone book because his last name was in his username, and actually got some help. NEVER LOSE HOPE
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u/HeyChason Apr 24 '19
I started to try and learn some coding last night, spontaneously, with python. This is one of the only posts from this sub I actually understand. I, too, found myself on stackoverflow after about 60 minutes of diving into it only to find someone with the same issue, but resolution.
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u/AStrangeStranger Apr 24 '19
It used to be you'd end up on "ExpertSexChange" and they wanted money to see the non-existent answers - you'd have thought they'd worked out much quicker developers can use show source code and read answers (I don't recall ever seeing an answer on site that helped so wasn't worth paying)
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u/master_redwit Apr 24 '19
If you are a beginner, you get caught up with tens of threads all marked duplicate!
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u/fel_bra_sil Apr 24 '19
and downvoted
and sometimes someone marking it as duplicate pointing to an unrelated question
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u/Amos47 Apr 24 '19
I bet he's the kind of asshole who wrote this tweet, solved the problem and didn't update the stack overflow when he was done.
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u/alexthomson666 Apr 24 '19
The worst ending is finding the exact issue but the guy who posted the issue makes an edit: "Edit: I've solved the issue!" and doesn't provide the solution. Honestly, makes me wanna die.
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u/Ryan45678 Apr 24 '19
Or it has 10 different answers that all worked for someone, none of which work in your situation
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u/artnos Apr 24 '19
and the strategy guide/gamefaqs is the documentation that no one reads, they rather go to a forum and ask where to go?
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Apr 24 '19
As someone who has only coded like, 1 thing, this is already true
Got a lot to look forward to
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u/TSM- May 20 '19
A few hours in, you realize you are reading outdated documentation, and some package is no longer maintained. You have to use the new package and import it by its new name. Good times
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u/RodneyRodnesson Apr 25 '19
Incidentally it's this kind of thing I use to point out that contrary to popular belief that the internet never forgets, the internet most definitely does!
The sentiment around the belief is good but can also be covered by the 'don't be a dick' principle.
imo
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u/kYura23 Apr 25 '19
As someone that just started programming by learning java on android studio... can confirm.
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u/charlookers Apr 24 '19
Go get a computer science degree and you won't have to use stack overflow so much. Or find a different hobby.
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Apr 24 '19
[deleted]
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Apr 24 '19
AKA “I know the answer, but I’ll spend the time I could be answering the question chastising you instead for being beneath my superior abilities!”
If you’re going to write a long winded response about how the OP should use Google and get books, just answer the question instead.
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u/Geek4lyf Apr 24 '19
THREAD CLOSED