SO had a great year 1, and maybe year 2. You know, when real questions were asked.

Now you have beginners asking so simple questions it's both funny and tragic at the same time.

Here's the first question in the list when I opened the site today:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33989450/mysql-joins-on-t...

Yeah. That guy is one of those who just ask others how to to their job and then copy/paste it.

Who answers such questions? I have no idea. Probably the guys who are just a step above on the knowledge curve. They probably hang around to ask their own questions, and also find such questions challenging enough to bother providing an answer.

It's a platform for learning. The asker is a beginner. There is nothing wrong with that and someone asking with the intention of learning should never be looked down upon. If you find it so easy why are you even looking at that question? Your google-fu is sub-optimal?

I'm not looking down on anything or anyone. I'm just analyzing the state of SO today versus the first few years when it started.

As for the question, you obviously didn't read what I wrote carefully. I get served a full page of such questions every time I open the site. Finding an interesting question has became a tedious job and that's why I don't even bother to visit the site anymore.

Once again, I'm not even sorry about that. It freed a lot of my time - I rarely visit the site, but I'm still ranked in top 2% users, so you can guess how active I was before.

Fair enough. I find it a godsend. Nothing wrong with copy paste if it brings you forward faster and you take time to understand why it works. For architecture etc it's pretty useless but for the rest it is a very helpful tool.