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A comment on What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016). Parent comment

Re:What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack O... by throwanem on Monday May 15, 2017 @06:21PM (#14345688)
It's full of people who can't be bothered to do even the most trivial investigation into their own damn bugs - the same trivial "I didn't configure it lol" and "I have no idea what I'm doing, nor interest in developing one, fix my thing for me plz" bugs that the site already has a dozen answers for. It stays that way because volunteer moderators don't want to wade through sewage all day. So it goes.

The topic-specific SE sites are often better; Emacs.SE, just off the top, is consistently of very high quality, with maintainers of several high-profile packages and Emacs itself regularly active there. But I abandoned any attempt to participate on SO proper years ago, and rarely even check there except on the off chance that some weird exception has an obvious cause that'll save me a source dive on a library or some similar large investment of time.

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Re:What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack O... by cm2187 on Monday May 15, 2017 @07:09PM (#14346019)
There are also many questions that I asked myself or googled and that I found shot down by overzealous SO moderators before someone could bring some element of response.
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Re:What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack O... by d0lph on Tuesday May 16, 2017 @01:51PM (#14351677)
"Just google it"

>First google result

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Re:What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack O... by alanbernstein on Monday May 15, 2017 @11:14PM (#14347116)
Fair, but that's the point of upvoting questions, no? As someone who uses SO through google searches 95% of the time, I mostly see high quality discussions.
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Re:What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack O... by data_hope on Monday May 15, 2017 @11:43PM (#14347225)
The best discussions are usually marked off topic or 'no good fit" or "not of use for future readers"
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Re:What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack O... by wst_ on Tuesday May 16, 2017 @07:03PM (#14354113)
And that's OK because discussions tend to lean in different direction, very often, and before you know it you are talking about something completely different. If you are sticking to the topic and have something really important to add, don't worry, moderators won't get in the way.
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Re:What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack O... by alanbernstein on Tuesday May 16, 2017 @09:31PM (#14354891)
Yea - that's my biggest beef with SO currently, what I thought OP would say when I asked him.
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