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Andy Piper
Andy Piper

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What do you do when Stack Overflow is down?

Looks like Stack Overflow might have some unscheduled maintenance right now - I know it’s a site I spend a lot of time on!

I guess it is Friday, and the weekend… what are your plans?

(much love and respect to the SREs over there - outages are honestly, never fun)

Top comments (16)

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cmarker profile image
Christian 🇳🇴 • Edited

How about using the official documentation for the framework/language you are using and implement the feature in your own way?
Don't rely on others to write your code for you. That way you'll never learn and the stack overflow spiral continues

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lionelrowe profile image
lionel-rowe

If you're using it to search for specific answers, you can always just Google <your query> site:stackoverflow.com, then click > Cached next to the result.

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andypiper profile image
Andy Piper

This is a super useful hint / response! Thanks for sharing this one :-)

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cubikca profile image
Brian Richardson

While comments to the effect of "Write your own code" are correct to an extent, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. If there's publicly available code, why not use it and save yourself some time? The error only comes when you don't read and edit what you paste.

That all said, the question is what do you really use StackOverflow for? Certainly for me it has been a source of wisdom about obscure error messages and strange snippets. But I don't feel like I couldn't live without it. Search engine still finds the obscure errors, and there's plenty of strange snippets elsewhere.

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elobdog profile image
Amarendra Godbole

I prefer man pages and official documentation. SO is like Wikipedia, "mostly" accurate. I rarely prefer my implementation to be "mostly" accurate (if that happens it is better to be purely out of my incompetence than a CCPD*).

CCPD = Chronic Copy Paste Disorder.

(this is my first post here, and of course written on a lighter note, so please try and interpret it as such).

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femolacaster profile image
femolacaster • Edited

I wait...lol. I also noticed it was down yesterday too.

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murdercode profile image
Stefano Novelli

Copilot 🥳

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andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

I use GitHub discussions.

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andypiper profile image
Andy Piper

I’m a fan of Discussions, as well - I think as more folks start to use them they will become more useful (and they tend to be more specific to individual projects of course, which is a helpful way to focus the content).

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hq profile image
HQ

I call my wife and tell her I love her.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Mild inconvenience intensifies 🥲

Probably the biggest problem is the interruption of routine. There's always another source of information, but that slight disruption can hit you hard.

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andypiper profile image
Andy Piper

Yes, this! I get into a habit of checking out a couple of the tags that I have an interest in, and when things are unavailable, it is an interruption for sure. I also go over there to get help when I can’t remember how to do something (that’s what happened yesterday, as I was looking for a “quick fix” to a MicroPython challenge I was hitting) - it was a good way to broaden my investigation to some other sources.

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thisbevibhor profile image
thisbevibhor

I always wonder what stackoverflow's devs do when their site is down.

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melvyn_sopacua_afcf30b58a profile image
Melvyn Sopacua

Erm, code like normal? Deleted account last year, just in time before the sellout. Not enough value to stay there.

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andypiper profile image
Andy Piper

I find it useful for discovering how folks use our API and the kinds of things they get stuck on, which is helpful for making improvements, and identifying samples and documentation to build. Understand the frustration about the commercials - it is not clear to me what the future plans are.

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asiist2 profile image
Asiist

you will soon be able to head to asiist.com :-)