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Comment by rpedela | Hacker News Reader

I personally like the "how to open file" questions. Even though I have been developing software for ~15 years, I often forget basic file I/O syntax when I need to switch languages which is rather common lately. I remember how file I/O works, how to make it efficient, etc. But the syntax? Yeah I forget that, and I find StackOverflow to be a great reference manual. Often the official manuals are verbose which isn't what I want in this case. I just want a quick example to remind myself of the syntax.

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That is where we disagree - I don't think of StackOverflow as a reference manual. Admittedly I am mostly a C# developer and Microsoft does a really good job when it comes to documentation, at least in most cases. If you never saw it before and even if you hate Microsoft, have a look at their documentation. Here is the System.IO namespace http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx and the reference manual part is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is actually a really great demonstration of your parent's point. I think the link you posted actually leads naturally to the question "ok, so how do I put all that together to actually open and read a file". Sure, you can figure it out by reading API documentation, and the more times you do it, the easier that becomes, but a resource where somebody has demonstrated how to actually use that API to open and read a file is valuable. There are lots of various "cookbook" books for this sort of thing, but the QA format also works really well for it because it publicizes problems that lots of people have had, not just the authors of a given book. Maybe SO isn't or doesn't want to be that kind of resource, but I think it is one valuable use case.

Find File.ReadAllLines() [1] or whatever fits your needs and scroll down to the example section. Java has similar documentation, too. jQuery documentation has thousands of examples. It's all there, no need to ask. And if you can not figure out how to put together 3, 5 or 10 library or API calls then get a book about the basics of your technology and read and learn it. Asking stuff that is already out there is just wasting the time of other people, time that is better spend answering questions without an existing answer.

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2tte0y1.aspx

Asking stuff that is already on StackOverflow I agree, otherwise I don't. On SO people vote, and the answers can be edited, so a very good answer among any documentation anywhere is often near the top of the SO question.

At least in my opinion it is not and it should not be the goal of StackOverflow to duplicate the documentation of programming languages, libraries or what ever - there is just no value in that. It is of course something different if there is no or only bad documentation but this is just not the case for a lot of questions asked. I have absolutely no sympathy for people that are to lazy to look at the documentation and instead make other people do it for them copying or restating the relevant parts on StackOverflow.

I understand your position.

Presumably SO wants to maximize its readership. What I've seen is that they allow any programming question, even of trivial nature, as long as it's objective not subjective. I like that and think it's a good way to maximize readership for objective stuff, because I often google for trivial things. For example, Powershell if/else/elseif syntax, if I haven't used Powershell in a while. I just found the syntax on SO within 10 seconds, with an example I can copy/paste/modify. I bet a lot of other developers use SO like that too, and I bet it's largely the reason people put trivial questions on there. My motivation is efficiency. Being efficient can be construed as lazy I guess!

I do the same - if the first search result is on StackOverflow I will of course just look at that. But if the first result is not on StackOverflow I will read whatever is there and not ask a question on StackOverflow unless the answer to my problem is not or hard to find. So in essence I am uncomfortable if people don't try hard enough to find the answer in existing sources. How long hard enough takes obviously depends on the context. For something I am an expert in I can conclude after a few hours that I have to ask. If you for example start learning your first programming language I would expect you to try at least a day, probably even a couple of days to find the solution by reading manuals, tutorials and books before you ask a question.

Agreed, I don't ask trivial questions myself.

I really don't understand your apparent point of view that redundancy in documentation is somehow a bad thing. It's great that you like good canonical API documentation, I do too. But it's also great that some people find easier solutions to common problems more quickly using the Q&A format of SO.

There is value in duplicating documentation even wholesale and unmodified, if different duplicates are easier for some people to find and use, but there's even more value in "duplicating" documentation by presenting it differently, which is what SO is doing, even for many questions that you believe to be trivial. The more the merrier, if you ask me.

Now, of course, it would suck if you felt lazy people with already-answered questions were wasting your time. Then I would understand your point of view. But the fact is that you just don't have to answer their questions. If somebody else does answer it, well then that person probably didn't feel like it was a waste of time.

> Admittedly I am mostly a C# developer and Microsoft does a really good job when it comes to documentation, at least in most cases.

I too use StackOverflow as a reference manual. Often the #1 answer is the concise example I'm looking for. MS documentation is a last resort for me.

Why that? I consider the MSDN library one of the best documentation out there.

It's great when you have time to spare, to learn every nuance of a thing. It's worse than alternatives when you quickly want an example to copy/paste, which is usually my case.

For instance, compare googling for "c# run sql query msdn" vs. "c# run sql query stackoverflow". The latter has the better example and it's closer to the top.

From that I assume that you are not a professional developer, right? I never thought about in from that perspective but I think we should actually discourage copying and adopting code. It will probably solve your current problem in shorter time but I am quite confident that really understanding what you and your code are doing will benefit you in the long term way more, for example when you have to fix bugs, make changes or solve a similar problem.

Agreed! Been developing for a looong time. I switch between languages and OS's a lot. Say I'm switching back to Powershell after a hiatus and I can't remember if it's "if (this) {" or "if this {". StackOverflow may be my fastest way to find the answer and also get an if/else/elseif block to copy/paste/modify. Non-trivial code I copy/paste gets understood thoroughly and often heavily modified!

I think his point is that there should only be one "how do I open a file in Python" type of question/answer. Not 30 like there are today.

Yeah I agree with that. However Google usually does a good job of finding the "best" version of a particular question and making that the first or second result.

Your comment is quite pythonic. There should be only one question about the only one right way to do something in python.

So your using SO to have other people read documentation and regurgitate the contents for you.

Ya, that's not a way to make the site useless.

Useful, I say. It's documentation regurgitated into an efficient Q & A format.

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