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Have you taken the 2020 Stack Overflow survey?

Jess Lee on February 25, 2020

For some reason, this survey didn't hit my radar until just now. I'm usually on top of it! Looking forward to the insights from this year. If you ...

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Dominic Duffin • Mar 3 '20

I haven't taken it because I am on a 99% boycott of Stack Overflow and have been for a couple of years now. This article by April Wensel gives a good overview of why: medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-st...

I realise, though, that things change and the culture problems highlighted might have improved - if people here think that they have I'm keen to hear about it in case I should consider re-engaging with the site.

leob • May 4 '20 • Edited

I have the feeling that I couldn't afford to boycott Stackoverflow even if I wanted to - there is so much useful and indispensable info there, I'd seriously hurt my productivity big time. Stackoverflow is just collective crowd-sourced knowledge to the max, I couldn't live or code without it.

I do obtain answers from blogs or github issues as well, but Stackoverflow gives me an order of magnitude more. In many cases the only alternative way to get answers would be to study ALL of the docs of software products from begin to end, which would be nigh impossible and prohibitively costly for a solo freelance dev like myself ... in other words SO is a lifesaver and indispensable.

Regarding the toxicity, it could be me but I haven't seen it that often ... I think in those cases when people really cross a line I'm pretty sure they get called out by others. I've seen others mention this, but I have the idea that it's a tad overblown (but I hasten to add that in every single case where it does happen it's of course unacceptable ... bullying is unacceptable, always).

Tim Downey • Feb 25 '20

Thanks for the reminder! Totally would have missed it this year.

Julia Flash • May 13 '20

I'm getting a 'its closed for 2019' message. Might be one of those moments where someone just reuses or points to that page they used last year to show for when the survey closes this year, aka 2019 reference. I am guessing.