ishener 12 years ago

Million of developers worldwide stopped "writing" code

  • freditup 12 years ago

    Interesting question actually - assume I have some code for some specific problem I need to write. Is actually thinking the problem through and writing the code on my own more beneficial, or is it more beneficial to just find code on stackoverflow instead? There are legitimate pros and cons to each way, and I don't know how you tell which is better in some cases.

    • thangalin 12 years ago

      While writing ConTeXt code (similar to LaTeX), I will reference the StackExchange network:

          % @see http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/128858/2148
      

      Brett Victor asks, "How do you get communication started between uncorrelated sentient beings?" to introduce the concept of automatic service discovery using a common language.[1]

      Alan Kay had a similar idea: that objects should refer to other objects not by their memory space inside a single machine but by their URI.[2]

      When programmers copy/paste StackOverflow snippets, in a way they are actually closer to realizing Alan Kay's vision of meta-programming than those who subscribe to the "tyranny of a single implementation" -- or "writing" code as some would mock, expressing a narrow view of what they think "programming" a computer must entail.

      The StackExchange network provides a feature-rich interface to document source code snippets that perform a specific task. What's missing is a formal, structured description of these snippets and a mechanism to provide semantic interoperability that leads to a universal prototyping language for deep messaging interchange.[3]

      How else are we going to go from Minecraft[4] to Holodeck[5]?

      [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4#t=790

      [2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY#t=2940

      [3]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY#t=3125

      [4]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1h1U5jHh6U

      [5]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OCKDEdtWys#t=39

  • msoad 12 years ago

    I can't believe you said "million", do we really have millions of developers?

    • bmelton 12 years ago

      I had the opposite reaction actually. You posted that, so I went to find out how many developers there are in the US.

      According to wikipedia, there are approximately 457,000 programmers in the US, which seems like a smaller number than I would have guessed. For contrast, there are ~1.2 million attorneys.

  • gingerlime 12 years ago

    on a Sunday?

    • fs111 12 years ago

      the weekend is on Friday/Saturday in the Arab world, so yes, lots of people write code on Sundays...

  • CSDude 12 years ago

    You know, there is Google Cache.

  • qubyte 12 years ago

    I tend to procrastinate and troll stackoverflow for questions to answer. I'd be more productive, but now I'm trolling Hacker News instead.

anaphor 12 years ago

https://xkcd.com/1185/

"StackSort connects to StackOverflow, searches for 'sort a list', and downloads and runs code snippets until the list is sorted."

gesman 12 years ago

...so you can get a taste how it felt writing code in 2000

  • neals 12 years ago

    Time to dust of my old c++ reference book :)

  • vezzy-fnord 12 years ago

    There's plenty of other sources to get code snippets and solutions, besides SO.

    This isn't really that debilitating of an issue, although I guess copy-and-paste code monkeys will find it highly inconvenient.

    • gesman 12 years ago

      I personally find SO to be really great compensation for given technology vendor's crappy documentation.

mariocarvalho 12 years ago

Just search on google, click on the arrow next to link and next Cached. Voilá

  • rmchugh 12 years ago

    blazing fast it isn't.

amjaeger 12 years ago

too bad they can't start a thread asking for tips to bring it back online

carbocation 12 years ago

Interestingly, I am able to connect to SO when I VPN into the Southwest, but not from the Northeast. Availability zone-specific downtime?

  • kmontrose 12 years ago

    New DNS records propagating.

enterx 12 years ago

...and i've just collect my first +15 this week. Great. :)

Doesnt work in Europe either.

J-H 12 years ago

That was fast; seems to be back up now

mobman 12 years ago

i was hoping this would be most trending here and here we are !