Ask HN: When was the last time you visited Stack Overflow?
10 TimLeland 19 9/4/2025, 6:53:52 PM
I recall using Google daily to search for solutions to dev issues using Stack Overflow. I think it's been a year plus since I visited the site. What about you?
I always thought it was crap and that the social mechanisms for sorting good answers to the top "just didn't work". First you have to work your way through the question which is usually poorly posed and rambling and has confusing comments, then the right answer is frequently the #7 or #24 answer, sometimes the accepted answer at the top is wrong and has a long thread of comments begging the original posted to unaccept it. You can't cut and paste Python answers because they are written in Python 2 and say
instead of the Python 3 equivalent and in general the mechanisms of the site don't allow for correcting things like that, as the system prevents the question from being re-asked and getting a better answer. Even worse you're just not allowed to have discussions about many of the most consequential topics for which other people's experience is crucial such as "What framework should I use for X?"But if you need 10 wrong answers for "How to center a <div>?" it's your place.
Back when they published a public data dump I thought about making some automated system that cleans it up, deletes all but the best answers, etc. It would be much easier in the age of AI, but that dump is long gone and the world has moved on now that AI can operationalize that kind of knowledge. Had Stack Overflow realized that it sucked 10 years ago it might still be relevant, but the logic of two-sided markets kept it alive long after heat death.
Ain't that the truth! That's why I avoid SO if I can - it's like looking for a needle in a shit pile: even if you find what you're looking for you still need to clean up; and if you don't find what you're looking for...
It has been awhile since I used stackoverflow, So I don’t know if it’s still this way but it used to be that anyone could edit almost anything except comments.
With some points, you were able to propose edits for review.
With more points you could make edits without any review.
With enough points you could review edits that people had proposed.
And when you didn’t have many points, making edits earned points. And finding things that needed fixing was how I started earning points.
Of course, most people don’t care about earning points and there’s nothing wrong with that. And different tags have different cultural norms…I avoided Python for that reason (your broken code Print example is an example of what turned me off of Python culture).
The folks who ran the Semantic Technology Conferences ran a "Semantic Overflow" instance of the S.O. software and I discovered on that instance I could get a very high score by asking questions, not answering them. I could have outpaced the #1 contributor but I thought he really deserved his spot so I didn't take it but I took the #2 spot because he kept closing my tickets for an open source project he maintained. I did look at that stats and found that nobody had done anything similar on the real S.O.
One trouble with all systems of recognition is that a lot of people have pointy qualifications. My opinions on many subjects aren't that good but on some I really am an expert and it's particularly frustrated when you know you really know your shit and you get shouted down.
Anyway, stackoverflow was/is a pretty amazing project and I listened to all the original podcast with Spolsky and Atwood while intercity driving. The very original podcast started when development started and was a weekly phone call between them.
Like I said, different tags had different cultures. I spent time in Racket and SML mostly…small ponds for small fish.
My Q/A participation was 2018.
But I am not a programmer, though I can program my way into a paper bag…sometimes.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16683121/git-diff-betwee...
Never opened the website again. F*ck the SOF.