"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed" - Napoleon Hill
If you've ever been interested in programming or anything related to, and been around the net long enough, you've came across Stack Overflow, accidentally or on purpose.
Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming
It was almost four years ago when I asked my first question in Stack Overflow (as a guest), got down-voted and my question was closed. Back then, I didn't know why was that; all what I asked for was a solution for my homework, and by saying "solution" I mean a full solution. I didn't expect comments like:
- Solve your own homework!
- What have you tried?
- Be more detailed
It was easy question for professional programmers who live in Stack Overflow (SO), why are they being offensive?
After leaving the community, disappointed, for couple of months, I decided to take another risk and ask another one. It was practical and detailed question. Some senior member edited my question, fixed some typos and reformatted it, making it look really good.
Not only that I was up-voted, got detailed answer, learned how to ask and got some points, I was also encouraged and informed that I was really close to the solution.
I began visiting SO on a daily basis, just to check if my question has new answers or comments. While hanging out there, I saw a very similar question to mine, I knew the answer! But just before I posted it, I had to verify it's good by opening my IDE, running the code and validating it - By doing so, I was more confident about the subject being discussed and I better understood the problem!
"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes" - Peter Drucker
By navigating through SO, I get exposed to new fields and keep atop new technologies, I can choose what subjects I'm interested in and filter questions accordingly.
Everyday I learn something new through reading more posts from users. Sometimes I find myself investigating questions that I came across because I was curious about, I challenge myself to find a solution for that problem. By doing this, I do research, I try new things, I dive into other fields and not only that I'm helping the original poster, but I'm learning new things. I can get comments to my answers and improve them, I can comment on answers, edit answers and questions, vote on them and more.
SO is THE place for programming questions, it's an endless source of knowledge, use it.