It's suprising somebody gives 70k answers, but asks no questions. I wonder why that is. Does he know everything about his area and not interested in other areas?
I haven't asked a python or C++ question in probably 5 years because the existing answers are all excellent and I can glean what I need from one or more of them.
SO really shines once you've cleared the minimum bar in terms of computing knowledge. From what I hear it's not super great for people that haven't cleared the minimum bar yet (students, absolute beginners, etc.), but it's truly a gem of the internet (I didn't use it as a student because I didn't learn about its existence until I already graduated college - plus, it launched when I was a sophomore in college so it really hadn't built up a good answer base until later).
In other words. To post a question: I'd have to do my own research, followed by prototyping, testing, debugging. Be unable to reach anywhere, unable to get help by talking to peers directly. The topic should not be domain specific. Gather my thoughts, experience, etc. write them down and post a question. There has been a single case where a colleague of mine asked a question and it never got any attention whatsoever. We found the issue/solution few days later.
This is less true for answers - even with old questions with accepted answers you can gain points by providing a better answer. Not necessarily better in terms of pure information but maybe better edited or explained more clearly.
And obviously you can still rack points by quickly answering the bad questions (before they get deduped or closed).
Disclaimer: this is only about my experience, not implying anything about Gordon Linoff - I have zero knowledge about his record on SO.
and your old very simple answers to common questions continue to rack up the most points
you get points on stackoverflow by answering common problems. not much from contributing more nuanced indepth things
I've pretty much found github issues to have the newer up to date discussions
Usually, I can just dig in and find the answer myself, but I was trying to get a solution quicker with search.
Of course, I've only answered one question too, so maybe it's just not my kind of site.
Quora has different incentives for asking questions and answering them. I am also connected to a community of people who mostly ask questions and don't write answers.
It is hard to ask a good question to which I can't find an answer. I ask questions for which there are no good existing answers and usually outside my realm of expertise. This is true for most other top contributors on Quora. Most of us ask very few questions.
Mere speculation: Maybe he enjoys the asymmetry, and has some other accounts on which he asks questions.
That has always been a real put off at SO. They actively don't want me to answer.
A lot of people seem to get their start by suggesting edits that later get accepted.