Stack Overflow = Programmers’ Best Friend
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. ~ Edward V Berard
Hello friends, being a programmer we all sometime or other get stuck with our approach to solve problems. It can be as small as understanding how to declare a variable in a particular language to as big as how to get into coding complex application frameworks like app or web or even network development. Therefore, programmers also need someone to guide them on their journey to completion to various task. Stack Overflow has stood up in helping people on the long run and guided them to great extend.
Over the years, it has become very much user friendly. Earlier, there was a lot challenges faced for installation of new framework and people with skills are not able to communicate with each other, the bugs where not solvable. People were forced to search through undocumented features and they would land up with a smaller pool of resources to get help from.
Now, it has even paved way for answers to new programming languages and the implementation features which were previously unknown.
Therefore let’s understand What Stack Overflow is;-
#1 Why Stack Overflow can be useful for you and your team searching for different code or rare problem
Stack Overflow( SO for short) is a question-answer sight which is one of the most trusted online community for developers. It has over 50+ Million visitors every month, 51000 registered reputed developers and over 19 million answers. You can find help from some of the best developers in the industry and expertise in their domains.
Even if you ask very simple and common questions which holds a value to a lot of developers irrespective they are beginners or advanced level, you will get a refined answer for it.
Apart from programming, even theoretical questions receive a lot of importance and consideration.
Sometimes, if you have questions or doubt related to a framework, the creator of the framework might answer the questions himself/herself. This will result in high quality and highly accurate answer.
#2 Why people send so many reputation points on Stack Overflow
Often it has been seen that developers sometimes have a tight deadline to solve a particular problem and they don’t have a clue or are not able to manage the problem. Sometimes the bugs are very peculiar to detect or rectify. Thus they invest a lot of stack overflow points as you can see + 500 points in the below one for answers. This helps them to get a quick response from stack overflow team.
Note: Some points I would like to tell my readers before posting a question on SO.
- Google — Search for your solution in the Google first. It shall be quick and easily found.
- Documentation — Framework Documentation, it is always helpful to locate the error in former documentation or present a solution. For example: https://ionicframework.com
- Breakpoints — Stepping through the arrangement of the code lines. Chromedev tools are used most of the times.
- Stack Exchange— It’s new and similar to SO itself but it has other features too apart from IT/CS questions.
- Ask a colleague — Go around ask for people in your friends/colleagues/mentors.
These are some other ways, you can go for in order to get help.
#3 How to gain confidence to ask question and answer questions on Stack Overflow
If you don’t have an account, I recommend you to do so. It’s really interactive with developers in the worldwide.
Many a times, it has been seen that the developers, who join stack Overflow are not properly following the guidelines to properly frame a question and get heavily down voted by the community members.
This can be seen daunting or sometimes discouragingly. Therefore many developers planned up to document for How do I ask question on Stack Overflow:- https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask
It not only helps in optimizing the question but also helps you to understand the question in depth. Many a time, you may land up with answer to your own questions, so do give a reading to this documentation.
Similarly, when it comes to answer a particular question, there is a section for how to write a good answer:- https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer
This will help in giving good results with lot of up votes!!
Now you can signup or if you already have an account you can use it to improve your stack overflow points.
Guide through the website
When you open Stack Overflow for the fast time you will come across the following page:-
This will give a complete way of representation of the questions and answers format.
The green tick mark represents the answer has been accepted by the developer who asked the question.
The red triangle represents the best possible answer and the answer deserves more up voting.
You can see above, the list of details that are represented and classified for a good and bad questions framework.
The new tagging feature which is missing in many Q&A websites make this website more friendly for better user experience. The people commonly in these domains can easily come here due to tagging and are able to answer a more befitting answer.
Then we have something called up-votes, this is really encouraging.
- +5 represents that the question raised has significance.
- +10 represents the answer given is accurate.
- +15 represents the answer is accepted by the developer who raised the question
- +2 represents if any better editing is represented for the answer.
Note: This helps in establishing the developer as a better community member.
Comments are encouraged in order to provide a clear understanding of the problem faced or the answering is accurate to the statement provided. This might even result in getting more reputation points.
Reputation points :- Do go through this page for more detailed understanding:- https://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-reputation
Apart from gaining a lot of reputation points, you get badges which makes your profile much better and it helps you to increase you reputation in the developer circle.
Clear definition of what to do, this feature helps to clearly take a stand at a time to answer or question.
I would by saying:- Stack Overflow is a part of Stack Exchange, you can directly use Stack Exchange also for the doubt clearance and exchange of information. So if you have doubts in programming, you know what to do:-
Now I hope I am able to explain to you why SO is best friend of the programmers in the current generation. Do comment below if you have any good or bad experiences with stack overflow.
You can keep in touch with me by:-
Email: omashish@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/om-ashish-mishra-41aa20136/
I love to make new friends, eager to here from you!! Thank You for the reading!!
