tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post2137388217291027328..comments2024-03-13T12:21:27.016-05:00Comments on The Programmer's Paradox: My Stack OverflowethPaul W. Homerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02349253120538728302noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-17921593871671869872008-12-27T11:32:00.000-06:002008-12-27T11:32:00.000-06:00Hi Jan,Thanks for the comments. I guess people flo...Hi Jan,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the comments. I guess people flow towards easy answers in the same way that electricity flows towards the shortest path. We all want the fame and fortune, but most of us would prefer to get there easily ...<BR/><BR/>Paul.Paul W. Homerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02349253120538728302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-45268332172725981462008-12-25T10:01:00.000-06:002008-12-25T10:01:00.000-06:00We still get the same panorama we had years berfor...We still get the same panorama we had years berfore.<BR/><BR/>Web is full of kiddies, full of people trying to impose patterns and stuff.<BR/><BR/>Here in Brazil people like to "show up" and that's why Orkut is so popular here (I think it is the greatest Orkut public). <BR/><BR/>Just put a reputation-system and your users will fight for fame rather than knowledge. Too volatile.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-80634529094800221362008-12-23T23:13:00.000-06:002008-12-23T23:13:00.000-06:00Hi Michael,Thanks for your comments. Oddly I think...Hi Michael,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your comments. Oddly I think you answered your own point. There have been lots (hundreds?) of Q&A sites started over the years, they just degenerated beyond the point of usefulness that's all. Now would be a good time for SO to figure out how to avoid that same fate.<BR/><BR/>Our industry is proud of the fact that the success rate has improved to 30% from 15%. For any other 'constructive' discipline, that would be a huge embarrassment. I know it's nicer to blame management or global warming or something bigger like that, but most of the problems start with programmers flailing at their keyboards, and just get worse from there. <BR/><BR/>Sure, some of the people seeking fast answers are just looking for a quick fix, they already understand their problems, but many of them are routing around having to learn something. They are depending on luck more than skill. There will always be a need for a good clean Q&A site, but there is a much bigger need to dispense knowledge, not just information. We live in an era were people don't want to fix the real problems (or even know about them), they just want quick band-aids, so they can get back to their iPods. <BR/><BR/>We definitely need a programming messiah to come along and change our industry. Someday people will look back at what were doing now -- in the same way we look back at those early programmers toggling switches and punching cards -- with a disbelief that anyone could have used such crude methods and get anything accomplished.<BR/><BR/>It's some type of cruel modern joke that micro economics has become the key justifier for poor quality. The market feeds us cheap merchandise because people by into the selfish delusion that more stuff will make them happier. Hopefully its just a phase we are going through (and people return to their senses). <BR/><BR/>That doesn't apply to SO (it's just an observation about the madness of our current world), I just think they got half way to excellent, but could go a lot farther. We shouldn't be afraid to analyze things even if they appear to be mostly working (nothing is perfect). There is always room for improvement. There is always room for discussion.<BR/><BR/>Paul.Paul W. Homerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02349253120538728302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-5438356624189226312008-12-23T16:28:00.000-06:002008-12-23T16:28:00.000-06:00StackOverflow was started for a specific purpose, ...StackOverflow was started for a specific purpose, to answer cut and dried programming questions and make them easy to find. Your questions intended to get people to think were instead only a boring waste of time. Just because people want some place to go to quickly find solutions for (usually) clearly definable problems does not imply that those people need a programming messiah to break them out of their narrow-mindededness. It also doesn't imply that they don't recognize the value of deeper discussions about programming that StackOverflow doesn't provide. It does suggest that they have adequate common sense and realize that StackOverflow isn't the place for those discussions.<BR/><BR/>Someone earlier in the comments suggested StackOverflow is a nice idea but implemented badly. Really? Please direct me to the site that does what StackOverflow explicitly intends, and does it better. There's a tendency among programmers to say that stuff that isn't perfect is bad. Mostly they say this about other people's stuff. It's strange because programmers in general have extremely high IQs and tremendous analytical skills, but a disproportionate number of them seem to be very poor at economics.Michael Terryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05651598767759195674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-31780219815307063872008-12-23T13:44:00.000-06:002008-12-23T13:44:00.000-06:00Wow that was long. Read the first part about your...Wow that was long. Read the first part about your questions that got shut down. Think about it like this: Do I really want to go to stack overflow to read about questions on what people think, or about usual hardware things? No, I want to go there to see how to do something tricky in the code I'm writing. If I wanted to talk about something like that I'd go to proggit.Maxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10128548902346094251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-68824811171908604832008-12-23T13:25:00.000-06:002008-12-23T13:25:00.000-06:00@Danish Munir,"You talk and talk but I do not see ...@Danish Munir,<BR/><BR/>"You talk and talk but I do not see you saying anything useful"<BR/><BR/>The usefulness is in the analysis, in digging into the details to get a better understanding of both the good and bad issues. If I just re-iterated a bunch of meaningless facts about the site would that have been better? <BR/><BR/>There is nothing wrong with the current site other its scope is too narrow to possible survive in the long run. I wasn't being condensing, I was trying to objectively analyze the different elements in play. The conclusions drawn are up to you, not me.<BR/><BR/>My only real advice is to widen the scope early before the crowd moves onto the next location. SO has collected a good audience, now they just need to keep them.<BR/><BR/>@Al,<BR/><BR/>One problem as I see it, is that little bits of information grow at a massive rate. Unless it is mined and summarized, it quickly grows beyond its useful potential. As it gets larger it will be just as hard to search for answers on SO as it is on the Internet. The site's simplicity is an artifact of its small size.<BR/><BR/>Paul.<BR/><BR/>BTW: Google docs; it doesn't check grammar and doesn't notice duplicate words. If you want well-edited polished works, it's best to stick to the major media outlets. Sure it's spun, but it's their day job, as opposed to something done at irregular intervals, late in the evening.Paul W. Homerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02349253120538728302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-44029135651256472992008-12-23T12:12:00.000-06:002008-12-23T12:12:00.000-06:00I think the worry about the consequences of easily...I think the worry about the consequences of easily available answers is a red herring. No matter how much theoretical knowledge some software developer has he or she will always, when writing real code in real-world environments, run into snags and bugs in APIs and confusing specs. This is where sites like stackoverflow will be a tremendous boon.<BR/><BR/>I like that the SO team is trying to come up with the best solution to this kind of problem, and not getting distracted by trying to solve all the problems in the world of software development and computer science, which is what the author seems to be wishing for.<BR/><BR/>StackOverflow is a very nice, useful tree and a forest that needs more of them. Let's be glad it's here and use it for what it is best at, quick answers to questions that more often than not are about little things that used to take hours of searching to find out.alhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06800505504147841246noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-15093692803579969882008-12-23T12:06:00.000-06:002008-12-23T12:06:00.000-06:00"You talk and talk but I do not see you saying any..."You talk and talk but I do not see you saying anything useful"<BR/><BR/>I think that captures my reaction to your article very well. Paul, you raise some very genuine concerns. <BR/><BR/>What are your proposed solutions other than adding a few extra sections to stackoverflow?<BR/><BR/>How do you propose solving the problem of 'Juniors' or 'Intermediate' programmers being the heaviest dispensers of advice, rather than the so-called 'Senior' ones?<BR/><BR/>How do you propose programmers who have just joined the trade and are still learning, find answers to IMPLEMENTATION issues, beyond just api documentation, in a way that is better than what StackOverflow provides?<BR/><BR/>I challenge you to propose a model that is better than the one Jeff and Joel have come up with, rather than dismissing their work in a condescending manner as being merely 'fun' and 'amusing', and later saving grace by conceding that they have put in hard work in a comment.<BR/><BR/><BR/>I also challenge you to next time use a spelling and grammar checker. Surely a post as long as this was not written inside of simple text editor?Belltown Flood Relief Dessert Mixerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02032740305804454712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-18474969096240857352008-12-23T10:14:00.000-06:002008-12-23T10:14:00.000-06:00@Hans-Eric,Thanks, I try to shorten them, but the ...@Hans-Eric,<BR/><BR/>Thanks, I try to shorten them, but the ideas just flow together (I guess I am just long-winded by nature :-)<BR/><BR/>I find that many of the modern tools, like Ant, miss out on the significant of their predecessors like Make (no builtin dependency checking, turns my XP box into an XT at compile time). My new IDE based programming environment, NetBeans, is way less flexible and automated than my vi, grep, find, UNIX, X, twm one from twenty years ago. Subversion dropped the ability to easily combine multiple resources together that CVS had in its module file. As well, my tools are now littered with all sorts of pretty buttons and things that I don't understand and will never use. <BR/><BR/>And that's just my technical software, I don't even want to start on what is wrong with the newer versions of Word, Office, Email, etc. Too much badly organized functionality, that is too hard to utilize properly. Eek.<BR/><BR/>I figure, because we spend all day in logic, programmers have an above average tendency to reduce everything to static black and white issues. I keep having to remind myself that it is a gray, gray world :-)<BR/><BR/>@everyone,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the comments. Don't be too hard on Stack Overflow, they did an amazing job building the site, and it's still in its infancy, so there is plenty of room to grow. In many ways it's our modern culture that is too blame for all of the Internet's informational junk food, SO is just reflecting the world around it. <BR/><BR/>Paul.Paul W. Homerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02349253120538728302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-41429256805690300082008-12-23T10:10:00.000-06:002008-12-23T10:10:00.000-06:00"...as a professional it was my duty to understand..."...as a professional it was my duty to understand how people were going to use the information, before I was to give it out easily."<BR/><BR/>I have found this to be very true. Asking background questions before dishing out the answer is essential, especially when in a mentor role.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-58310501720454678102008-12-23T08:55:00.000-06:002008-12-23T08:55:00.000-06:00I came across a link to this post on SO. Great art...I came across a link to this post on SO. Great article.<BR/>I just wish more people who manage programmers read stuff like this instead of whatever crap they are reading.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-13917412942262884212008-12-23T08:39:00.000-06:002008-12-23T08:39:00.000-06:00Big post, well written but way to big for its cont...Big post, well written but way to big for its contents.<BR/><BR/>I think stack overflow is an blow of fresh air, and something that should have come up a long time ago. <BR/><BR/>We have this famous sentence spoken by a very known comedian in Portugal that goes like so :"Falas falas mas não dizes nada" and that translates to something like: "You talk and talk but I do not see you saying anything useful"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-6006211702756181022008-12-23T08:28:00.000-06:002008-12-23T08:28:00.000-06:00Excellent article - coherent and cogent. Right on ...Excellent article - coherent and cogent. Right on the money.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-79305265198962373312008-12-23T08:17:00.000-06:002008-12-23T08:17:00.000-06:00I could not agree more. Stackoverflow is a nice id...I could not agree more. Stackoverflow is a nice idea implemented poorly.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-77268072504275605412008-12-23T08:09:00.000-06:002008-12-23T08:09:00.000-06:00Great article.Great article.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6104420435021904082.post-9770424634504597382008-12-23T03:46:00.000-06:002008-12-23T03:46:00.000-06:00As usual Paul, great post. For some reason you man...As usual Paul, great post. For some reason you manage to capture my attention over and over again dispite the fact that your articles are insanely long. :-)<BR/><BR/>"some strange memes like MVC become sacred cows, while other more significant ideas get lost and reinvented poorly."<BR/><BR/>I'd love to see a follow-up on that statement. What significant ideas would you say we've "lost and reinvented poorly"?<BR/><BR/>"but programmers always fall back into defensive positions, thus making it nearly impossible to really discuss things."<BR/><BR/>I would say this is a property of humans, not particularely programmers, but I know what you're talking about. And I too have been guilty as charged although I get more and more humble for each year in the business (18 and still counting).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com