The Keepers of Answers
The basic currency of the Internet is human ignorance
–Christian Rudder
read a very nice blog post along these same lines
Last year, John D. Cook posted a short, yet poignant post that rings true with some ideas that I’ve had lately. That is, although I have used “answers sites” like StackOverflow and Quora from time to time, my feelings about these sites have over time become fatalistic. While I can certainly appreciate a site that allows me to start on the path of understanding the answers to esoteric questions, I fear for the state of our industry when confronted with the aforementioned “problem solving sequence”. People will likely howl that they are too busy to figure things out on their own and answer sites help them to deliver quality to their customers, but I don’t buy it. Ask yourself this question — what benefits your client/employer more: reflexive superficial code copying or true understanding?
I’m not one to advocate starting each task from ground-zero, but the growing propensity for turning to answer sites in lieu of any preparatory research is troubling. Granted, this activity has always been the bane of Internet forums and mailing lists, but whereas previously reputation was built on vitriolic responses to such inanities, today’s Internet rewards the patient doling of common knowledge with “reputation” and specious promise for future rewards.
Many people however are driven to help others, and I admire their conviction. However, there are many others whom turn to and engaging in the business of answers out of reflex or baseless hope for reputation and reward. These people are selling their natural ability to reason and solve for expediency and mere baubles.
We can do better than this.
We owe it to our industry, our employers, and ourselves to do better than this.
To do otherwise reduces us to live as puppets on a string.1
:F
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And nevermind should SO and Quora suddenly decide to shut the gates to their walled gardens. ↩
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
Bill the Lizard
I think you’ve built yourself a false dichotomy here. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I can ask a question on Stack Overflow, get an answer, then take the time to understand it and I’m still ahead on time.
So, do we want to go back to that? Do we want to go back to a time where people “prove” they’re smart by calling other people stupid? Or do we want to go forward and build our reputation by actually answering people’s questions?
You do have one thing right, though. We can do better, and many of us are trying. The key is to encourage people to ask better questions, and Stack Overflow has features in place to try and do just that. See the Meta Stack Overflow post Can we prevent some of the low-quality questions from entering our system? and the very recent Stack Overflow blog post Are Some Questions Too Simple? for more details.
Feb 28th, 2011
fogus
Thank you for commenting. I hope that I can address some of your points.
I tried to make it clear in my post, and perhaps I failed, that I was not talking about someone like you. I highly respect someone who is willing to learn their craft to the best of their ability. Let me be clear, I do not think that there is something magical about SO that causes motivated programmers to become dunces.
Hmmm, that is a good question. I am not sure. I’ve never felt offended being called dumb on the Internet. It seems to come with the territory.
I realize that, and I suppose I failed to establish that point.
:f
Feb 28th, 2011
Jason
The fact is that I virtually never go to an answer site to design a solution. I think that most people use answer sites as code translators.
How do I say some thing like “var t=timer.getTimer().interval=5000;t.Start();” in c#, java, javascript, actionscript and perl? Me spending time to memorize all the subtle little language tweaks from one API to another gives my employer zero additional benefit. I look it up on the answer site and move on with my day.
The fact of the matter is the most employers need code-mechanics more than they need code-designers. They need modifications and upkeep, but usually don’t need full new products. That’s just how the world is. It’s great that we as developers get to do more design than a car-mechanic for example. And car mechanics get paid pretty descent money. But you’d never expect a car mechanic to memorize every single engine and in-engine-computer-code for every make and model. You’d expect them to use reference materials. Answer sites are no different.
Feb 28th, 2011
fogus
I’m not sure that I’ve ever had the need to make so many cross-translations for a piece of code, but I imagine that SO might be helpful for that kind of use-case.
I would posit that the world is that way because that’s how the world is currently.
Feb 28th, 2011
F_D
Putting “answer sites” aside for a moment: it sounds to me as if you’re rankled more by the Question Askers–the “answer sites” merely expose them wholesale. But simply asking is not the crime–and one can almost never infer from the Asker what level of expertise she has in the subject, nor how much experience in the field (in a more general sense), nor how much time she may have already spent on the problem.
I think we could all agree that someone pasting a project requirement into Stack Overflow and asking “how do I do this?” is being lazy and reckless.
But at some point, you move into… well, if not the esoteric, then certainly into the frontiers of your own knowledge. How long do you spend trying to work out a problem on your own before it is too long?
You said it yourself that the problem is not in the Asking, nor even the Answering–the problem is in how the answer is consumed. True, blind copy/paste serves no one well (and may in fact harm)–but it’s been my experience that these sorts of things are exposed in code reviews.
“Interesting solution.”
“Uh… thanks?”
You can imagine what comes next.
Mar 1st, 2011
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