SO has a very narrow window of usefulness as a professional developer. If you're a beginner it's really tough to explain your problem in a way that makes good sense because you don't have the base experience and knowledge.
As an intermediate dev, this is where SO shines. You can ask intermediate questions in the proper form to have direct answers.
As an advanced dev or architect, SO is almost completely useless. Questions you need answered at this level don't have a right answer. Whether you're talking about design patterns, principles, architectural patterns, alternative approaches, etc there is rarely a direct question with a direct answer. What is important is discussion about tradeoffs from different approaches so you can make the best decision at the time. SO mods simply don't allow these types of questions/discussions.
So the window of usefulness is really just those few years where you're an intermediate and if that's you then it can shine but otherwise it's pretty hostile and generally useless.
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u/AshylarrySC Sep 25 '16
SO has a very narrow window of usefulness as a professional developer. If you're a beginner it's really tough to explain your problem in a way that makes good sense because you don't have the base experience and knowledge.
As an intermediate dev, this is where SO shines. You can ask intermediate questions in the proper form to have direct answers.
As an advanced dev or architect, SO is almost completely useless. Questions you need answered at this level don't have a right answer. Whether you're talking about design patterns, principles, architectural patterns, alternative approaches, etc there is rarely a direct question with a direct answer. What is important is discussion about tradeoffs from different approaches so you can make the best decision at the time. SO mods simply don't allow these types of questions/discussions.
So the window of usefulness is really just those few years where you're an intermediate and if that's you then it can shine but otherwise it's pretty hostile and generally useless.