I recently made a post on Twitter regarding how I am finding myself using StackOverflow a lot less, with things like GitHub issues and good documentation replacing it.
With this overwhelming response, I thought I would look into why so many people have a similar point of view.
So what did I learn?
- Getting better as a developer means you stop using StackOverflow
- New technologies are not covered as much on StackOverflow
- Lots of libraries exist on GitHub now with direct answers from the developers
- Better answers are provided on other forums like GitHub issues and Reddit
- People have more confidence an answer will be provided on GitHub
- Good documentation means less need for StackOverflow
- The community is no longer that positive on StackOverflow
- A lot of questions get closed without an answer on StackOverflow
- CEO of StackOverflow promised an overhaul of the website but it never happened.
- StackOverflow answer date isn't very easily seen. It could be very old or new
- Not many people vote on StackOverflow anymore, making it less useful.
Here are some tweets responses I found that related to these topics.
Oldest comments (24)
I still find most of my answers on StackOverflow but I just go where Google leads me, so sometimes it's SO, sometimes GitHub or the Microsoft forums (for .NET stuff). I've found that GitHub questions are often closed without an answer (or a good answer...) Varies a lot.
Gotta be very careful with dates on StackOverflow. I was looking for help on EF Core and found solutions that looked kind of awkward (but worked) and then I found another question that pointed at a better solution based on something new introduced in EF Core 3.0. Same goes for JavaScript. You may find an answer that made sense in 2009 but there are better solutions now because JavaScript has changed quite a bit in the past few years. Basically, don't jump on the first answer you find. But you guys all know that. :)
Yeah, the date was a common thing that came up on twitter too. Having a good version and dates means people can get better solutions.
I saw that it depends on which language or framework you use. There is more information on Android and say PHP on StackOverflow, while newer stuff like React Native isn't represented as much on there.
So I this you have no Life!
I still find useful answers on Stack Overflow, but my experience of posting my own questions there goes something like:
That's really unfortunate, I have heard this echoed a lot on twitter too!
I'd hate to imagine a web without both those resources. Stack Overflow is based on the idea of finding wisdom in crowds, and GitHub (or Gitlab, etc.) is based on the idea of going directly to the source for answers. I like a both/and approach to figuring things out, and getting by with a little help from my friends.
I think it's a side effect of the toxic community that SO's staff have consistently refused to address. The site is not welcoming to beginners, the moderators are way too serious and their actions sometimes border on censorship, and for every great question there are ten terrible ones. I spend my time here now, and sometimes on Reddit.
Yes, I strongly disagree with this first conclusion.
It's the fact that more and more projects have their documentation and issues in a place you're already familiar with.
It's not that SO is less useful, it's that you're using more projects which have their base on GitHub. Any source repository that got popular would see this effect. Before this, people would have to search for the package they were having trouble with and then look on its website to see what VCS or issue tracker it might use, and in many cases, learn how to use it. Now lots and lots of people use git, and - for better or worse - lots of these projects have their home on GitHub.
People have the same problems they did before. It's not that you're "getting better as a developer". I mean, that might be true but it has nothing to do with the migration to GitHub.
Most developers will have a GitHub account and be familiar with the basics of how to search for an issue.
Problems which are purely programming related or which might involve a different package than the one you thought you needed - these are questions for SO. Asking how to do something that's slightly off-topic on a project on GitHub will usually get you shut down with a "not our problem" response.
This is my flow a few times a week: type "how do that thing?" in Firefox's search bar which opens DuckDuckGo which 80/90% of the time results in a link to StackOverflow being at the top which leads to DDG rendering the answer in a sidebar and me copy-pasting it or clicking on the link to read the various answers.
For example, today I searched for this:
My problem with StackOverflow is that I've never ended up with a question to ask, which hasn't already been asked... So I can't contribute! I've also found the editor to create content harder to use than expected and a bit of a barrier to quickly getting content added.
Yeah in the last 5 years I’ve never actually submitted a question.