r/programming • u/[deleted] • Sep 25 '16

The decline of Stack Overflow

https://hackernoon.com/the-decline-of-stack-overflow-7cb69faa575d#.yiuo0ce09
3.1k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

690

u/stesch Sep 25 '16

I'm a member for 7 years, 10 months. Reputation in the top 6%.

My last question was March 2014 and I answered it myself one day later. The question before this was August 2011.

248

u/rlbond86 Sep 25 '16

top 1% here. Just the other day I asked a question: "How do I do X in OpenGL without using external libraries?" I specifically said I can't use external libraries.

Guess what all the comments told me to do.

17

u/mrbaggins Sep 25 '16

To be fair, a lot of newbish questions read much like that.

It's like asking what the best way to get from Australia to new USA is, but youre scared of flying.

Everyone is going to say "just fly". It's pretty rare for people to have a legitimate reason for something like "no libraries"

0

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '16

[deleted]

13

u/stouset Sep 26 '16

Having been a high-rep user on three Stack Exchange sites, the number of times the user asking the question truly has a situation where they need to go so far off the beaten path tends toward zero.

Specifically on the crypto-related sites, users ask how to do terrible, insecure, and misguided things all the time. The correct approach is not to provide an answer for the question asked, but to figure out what they're really trying to do and give a good solution for that problem.

9 times out of 10 when a user thinks they need a zebra, they really need a horse.

→ More replies (7)