Is SO the best code Q/A resource available? Absolutely yes.
Remember what was used before SO? Pure shit. Open-ended help forums scattered throughout the web that had little/no moderation and no indication of where the solution could be found in the discussion, or if a solution was ever found at all. SO's aligned everyone's incentives to post the solution & the site's formatting makes it trivial and find the best solution provided.
I've personally experienced times where my questions/answers have been affected by wikipedia-esque moderation, but at the end of the day I still click on SO results first in Google & and I still visit from time-to-time to see if I can help anyone out.
Does it reward what the article's author calls "obsessive twerps" more strongly than it does anyone else? Arguably yes.
Can it be substantially improved upon? Almost certainly.
Is it nonetheless an enormous qualitative improvement on its predecessors? Good God, yes!
The article's author brings up the old saw about giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish, and that's well and good. But sometimes you just need a fish.
Is SO the best code Q/A resource available? Absolutely yes.
Remember what was used before SO? Pure shit. Open-ended help forums scattered throughout the web that had little/no moderation and no indication of where the solution could be found in the discussion, or if a solution was ever found at all. SO's aligned everyone's incentives to post the solution & the site's formatting makes it trivial and find the best solution provided.
I've personally experienced times where my questions/answers have been affected by wikipedia-esque moderation, but at the end of the day I still click on SO results first in Google & and I still visit from time-to-time to see if I can help anyone out.