Re:StackOverflow modding itself out of existence
by jameshart on Saturday July 11, 2015 @12:28PM
(#9870380)
We're not talking about scientific discovery, we're talking about programmers typing questions into google. If you start from 'I want to use sun.misc.Unsafe but I don't know what for - let's see what Google comes up with' you are clearly up to no good.
This question is useful as a place for blogposts to link to, not as a primary answer to a question you might Google. So it's 'wrong' for stackoverflow in that sense. But no, I'm not agreeing that mods should have closed it, and I didn't say it should have been purged from SO. Luckily, it hasn't been, so we can stop worrying.
Re:StackOverflow modding itself out of existence
by mistermann on Saturday July 11, 2015 @02:02PM
(#9870867)
> If you start from 'I want to use sun.misc.Unsafe but I don't know what for - let's see what Google comes up with' you are clearly up to no good.
I completely disagree. If you are a new programmer who knows nothing about a certain topic/keyword/etc, googling "what would I use <x> for" is not only not being "up to no good", it's just plain common sense and curiosity. How else might one learn about entirely new things?
Re:StackOverflow modding itself out of existence
by mhink on Saturday July 11, 2015 @01:32PM
(#9870712)
I highly doubt anyone starts with "oh hay, I want to use sun.misc.Unsafe". More like "hmm, I think I need to use sun.misc.Unsafe, but I'm not sure if that's the right call. Since this is an uncommon API, it's going to take a bunch of research, which will be a waste of time if I don't need to use it. Let me look up the common applications and see if they pattern-match with the stuff I'm trying to do."
Either you're being sarcastic, or you have no familiarity with the history of science.
The rest of your answer shows another aspect of what's wrong with Stack Overflow: zealous mods who get an idea of the perfect question into their heads, and then who go out to purge anything that doesn't conform, regardless of whether others find it (and its response) useful or interesting.