You are also underestimating how sites like SO really helped a new generation of programmers learn. Anyone could search and learn things, whether to take a serious approach or just for a bit of fun.
Before they pulled up the ladder. There is NOTHING more frustrating than looking up a problem, getting the exact question you are looking for, only for the answers to say the question is locked and given a link to another malformed question which tell you to rtfm, and that this is no longer supported., try to do something else with a completely different software in a completely different way. All in an attempt to keep the question pool pure. I do not mourn SO.
I think you’re underestimating how badly it taught them. I see a lot of developers (when interviewing) that are unable to reason about code.
Lot’s of people learn how to cook by following recipes, but they don’t try to get work in catering or running restaurants. That requires a different level of understanding.
SO was the coding recipe book. It was fine for hobbyists. Not professionals.
Honestly SO fuelled the rise of the cut and paste developer. I won’t be that sad to see the end of it, and the LLMs that scraped it soon after.
You are also underestimating how sites like SO really helped a new generation of programmers learn. Anyone could search and learn things, whether to take a serious approach or just for a bit of fun.
Before they pulled up the ladder. There is NOTHING more frustrating than looking up a problem, getting the exact question you are looking for, only for the answers to say the question is locked and given a link to another malformed question which tell you to rtfm, and that this is no longer supported., try to do something else with a completely different software in a completely different way. All in an attempt to keep the question pool pure. I do not mourn SO.
I think you’re underestimating how badly it taught them. I see a lot of developers (when interviewing) that are unable to reason about code.
Lot’s of people learn how to cook by following recipes, but they don’t try to get work in catering or running restaurants. That requires a different level of understanding.
SO was the coding recipe book. It was fine for hobbyists. Not professionals.