Jason, I particularly agree with your observation that the answers are getting less good. I'm not as embedded in the community as you, so I can't speak to the reasons, but I now often have to scroll down to the third or fourth-ranked answer to find the "best" answer. I most often use StackOverflow to look up syntax... My workload has me coding less than 50% of my week in a wide array of languages and while I could write pseudocode to do everything I want, we know that doesn't fly in the real world. So, I often know exactly what I'm looking for, I just need a syntax refresher and now, that answer is often buried under answers for previous versions of the language (Python 2.x vs 3.x), answers that answer the wrong question, overly simplified answers and worst, answers that don't answer any question but instead ridicule the OP for not knowing the answer in the first place. I still use it, but it's not the resource it used to be!
Jason, I particularly agree with your observation that the answers are getting less good. I'm not as embedded in the community as you, so I can't speak to the reasons, but I now often have to scroll down to the third or fourth-ranked answer to find the "best" answer. I most often use StackOverflow to look up syntax... My workload has me coding less than 50% of my week in a wide array of languages and while I could write pseudocode to do everything I want, we know that doesn't fly in the real world. So, I often know exactly what I'm looking for, I just need a syntax refresher and now, that answer is often buried under answers for previous versions of the language (Python 2.x vs 3.x), answers that answer the wrong question, overly simplified answers and worst, answers that don't answer any question but instead ridicule the OP for not knowing the answer in the first place. I still use it, but it's not the resource it used to be!
For syntax, you could just bookmark the reference sites for the language, and then you don't have to wade through all the half-baked answers on SO.