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Comment by maccard | Hacker News Reader

Why is this better than stackoverflow? For example, [0] vs [1] (writing to a file with python). If I want to write to a file in python, I do'nt care what options there are in ruby or JS.

Is there a way for me to flag something as incorrect? As an example, in [0] the python implementation should really be the SO link (using `with open() as f` rather than manually closing it)

Finally, and most importantly, there is no mention of the licensing of the code snippets here. StackOverflow [2] makes it excruciatiangly clear what the license is. Anyone who is using this for work purposes shouldn't touch this with a barge pole without a very clear disclaimer on the license of the code.

[0] https://howtoxwithy.com/how-to/b35668da-7cbe-456f-8db5-0d645... [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34204523/how-to-write-to... [2] https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

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> Is there a way for me to flag something as incorrect?

THat's the problem with these types of sites (and the problem with SO), most of the answers and submissions are by people who don't know what they are doing.

I think these sort of sites always need a big disclaimer on every page (PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS IN PRODUCTION CODE). It's the blind leading the blind.

I guess it depends on your domain, language, type of question, etc .. but in my experience you get a good amount of correct answers in SO, buy clearly YMMV.

I do find answers that are marked as correct that are no longer the best answer, what i find less of is obviously wrong answers marked as correct

> ... are by people who don't know what they are doing.

I wouldn't agree with that. However, answers might get outdated.

Definitely, I still don't have a good answer for this issue.

Hopefully something reasonably organic arises where good answers are upvoted highest. Or there could be a way to mark things as using an old version.

Just a flag that says "This answer was submitted N years ago - it might still be valid, but please check compatibility etc...."

I'm genuinely curious to hear your suggestion on what to do instead? How can one get a free answer online that is guaranteed to be the actual best solution to the problem?

Just out of curiosity, if SO examples shouldn’t be used and these type of sites should be avoided, where do you suggest someone learn the proper way to do something in x lang?

My understanding was that SO is basically the modern day O’Reilly cookbook.

This comment/poster reminds me of the verge’s pc build fiasco aftermath.

‘ThAts nOt HoW YoU aPpLy TherMal PasSte’

That was just piling on, the dude called a livestrong bracelet “anti-static,” made stuff up about how to install a psu... the list goes on but that was a legit fiasco on TV’s part and their handling of it showed they strayed very far from their original mission statement.

Of course Stack Overflow is great. It has a wealth of information, experts and allows for larger questions to be asked than "How do I write to a file", like, "how would you design this database schema".

The idea is that anyone can submit alternatives, the one with the highest number of votes will be most prominently displayed. I personally am not a Python developer and just seeded some initial snippets, but hopefully someone who is submits new ones.

That's a great point re. the licensing, I will have to look into it.

> Of course Stack Overflow is great. It has a wealth of information, experts and allows for larger questions to be asked than "How do I write to a file", like, "how would you design this database schema".

Googling questions brings me to stack overflow which has years worth of information, and answers to all of these how do I do X with Y questions, along with links to the documentation. Why would I want to use this site rather than stack overflow, what does it do differently? If SO has everything your site has plus more, (and lets be honest, SO has answers for those questions), I don't see the benefit here.

> I personally am not a Python developer and just seeded some initial snippets

While I understand why this is done, this is exactly the issue. The code you have right now is wrong, but stack overflow's is correct.

For an amateur like me, who’s more concerned with getting his code to actually work, something like this is actually less daunting than stack overflow.

The problem with stack overflow (again, for someone like me) is that issues posted on there get abstracted to oblivion, resulting in posters proffering a million different, mostly correct, mostly complicated, solutions. Also, I believe OP’s product has a way narrower scope than stack overflow.

SO is not going anywhere anytime soon. I just don’t see why it has to be the end all resource.

Assuming OP can find a good way to deal with duplicate entries, it seems like a more “to the point” version of SO that can be referenced before having to deep dive SO’s massive sea of information.

Just a layman’s two cents.

Agree with all this. I still use Stack Overflow all the time, when I google some strange issue I'm probably not going to land on howtoxwithy.com, but Stack Overflow.

The issues that get generalised into oblivion aren't the sort of issues that will end up on howtoxwithy though. You can't really abstract "concat two strings" any more, and both howtoxwithy and stack overflow both have the same answers for python: x + y

> SO is not going anywhere anytime soon. I just don’t see why it has to be the end all resource.

I don't think SO has to be the end-all resource, but to me it seems that this site is just a subset of SO's functionality, and doesn't provide anything different.

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