Millions of programmers probably close to all of us use Stack Overflow to find solutions from previously asked questions.
So if you answer a question, you are helping many people in addition to the original asker. That just feels good. The numbers are made up and depend on the sort of person pursuing answers. But this rough estimate illustrates the economic reason for Stack Overflow questions.
The best strategy when you have a programming problem is to search for the solution already posted somewhere on the internet. Before Stack Overflow, the time and hassle costs of searching were greater than they are now, by the way.
But if the answer doesn't exist or you aren't using the right search terms, you gotta switch to a new tactic. Finding your own answer tends to be time consuming, involves some hassle, but does make you feel pretty good about yourself assuming you succeed. You can also ask the programmer in the cubicle next to you who may very well know the answer off the top of her head.
That saves time, but can also be a bit of a hassle and should impose a small integrity cost for bothering her. Or you might throw money at the problem and hire a consultant. Notice that you need to pay these costs even if you don't get a usable solution. If you spend a day trying to solve it on your own, you don't get those hours back.
Same thing with bothering your co-worker. Also, notice that I don't specify the hassle or integrity cost of posting a question because that's highly individual. If you don't mind bugging some stranger online, the cost can be very low. It could even beat the cost of asking the person sitting next to you in some cases. So for many programmers, asking Stack Overflow has a pretty low cost. Now we can get back to the detailed answer of why people answer questions and, just as importantly, why they stop.
People will answer questions as long as is relation holds:. The signs get confusing. Time and hassle are the costs an answerer pays in order to gain "integrity". Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What motivates people to answer questions in Stack Overflow? Asked 12 years, 4 months ago. Active 3 years, 9 months ago. Viewed 11k times. Improve this question. PolyGeo Delirium tremens Delirium tremens 1 1 gold badge 5 5 silver badges 8 8 bronze badges.
This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll question. ShaWizDowArd - That means primarily opinion-based?? Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Hamish Smith Hamish Smith 4 4 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges.
Hmm, although I pretty much agree with you, would anyone suggest an evolutionary reason for this? I mean, why would one wish to increase the size of their ego for things that are almost trivial or which have subtle materialistic value e.
Of course NOT! I answer, to give back to the community, that it helped me so much! I have an inferiority complex which SO helps to alleviate. Jon Skeet Jon Skeet C'mon, Jon, don't be too hard on yourself. Just repeat after me. GalacticCowboy You don't? After a thorough psychological evaluation, the good news is, you don't have a complex!
However, the bad news is, you are inferior. The big number next to my name is totally awesome. Oh, and that warm fuzzy feeling that I get when helping people through their problems.
Funnily enough, the ponies next to TXI's name are the reason I stick around. He goes right, I go left. Go figure. Feckmore Feckmore 1, 8 8 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges. The project i'm working on won't give me real satisfaction for months yet and it's been running for almost a year. An accepted answer is, exactly as Traples says, like a nano-project, with a tiny hit of satisfaction at the end.
Rhys Jones Rhys Jones. Apparently they discourage link-only answers :P — user Someone told me that once you hit 50K, you can trade it in for a pony! Going for the necromancer? It was only transferred an hour ago. Perhaps it retains the creation date — juan. That info is wrong. So my usage statistic will throw off some of the main use cases.
If a mod thinks a question needs clarity, but it is 2 years old with 80k views and 8 responses, then it does not need clarity. If a mod thinks a question needs clarity, but it already has an accepted answer, then it does not need clarity. This is very concerning from a licensing standpoint. Instead, you seem happy with millions of license violations. In Croatian, the proportions behind that saying are totally different.
The copy events by post score graph is so satisfying. The example quoted of frequent copies of an unaccepted answer is hardly surprising! I think it would it be interresting to publish the Top X of the most copied code. I dont know much about statistics but for me it seems a bit obvious that a little more non-accepted answers are copied just because there are more than accepted answers, or am I missing something here? We could be seeing here old high-score answers that have had their share of copying in their time, but still attract traffic.
And new answers that are still hot and in their frst wave. A multifactor analysis is called for! While command-C is one copy technique, did this capture users who select, then right click and choose copy?
Or those who have an Xstyle of desktop environment where merely selecting some text is enough to copy that into a clipboard? One question remains : What percentage of the code on the Stackoverflow site comes from copies of answers from Stackoverflow? Could you share how you captured copy events, or maybe I missed that in the post. Did you attach the event to the question body or something more broad? I think tracking my behavior like this is creepy.
But this just points out the problem with web apps these days, as compared to the good old days of static HTML… user privacy is dead. Generally SE is a hint, not a solution. And just like that, Stackoverflow lost me as a member. They now know what programmers are copying what code fragments. This could easily give them insight into, e. What a shame. Any inputs on how they are able to know what is copied? Although this is interesting, I have my doubts about how accurate this data is.
You probably do not account for a portion of the developers out there who use Linux. I sometimes just highlight with the mouse the text I want to copy, then use the middle click button to paste into my development environment.
And I am sure I am not the only one. My most downvoted questions are the ones I personally consider to be my best contributions. No surprise these are the ones that I copy first, to make sure the material survives deletion. I frequently copy code to see if it still works, especially if the post is more than a few years old.
I frequently get messages that many items used in the code have been deprecated. However, I would like to add that I do not copy and paste into my code. I usually copy and paste into a text editor window where I will heavily edit it. I also frequently copy and paste portions of the code into a Google request so that I can find related articles. Finally, the demonstration code found in Stack Overflow frequently has items that are highly inappropriate, such as a number of malloc statements with no free statements.
Sometimes people copy code to a repository of their own for future reference on how to go about something. Or they might refactor it in place — adding null checks, dependency injection, making it more reusable, etc. I often wonder when copying code, do people actually know what they are copying. The understanding of what it does the copied code is the real benefit for me as it helps me learn to code. It often gets fixed or enhanced based on subsequent comments. How is this not the most ingenious thing in the world?
It is all organized so I can find a clever algorithm when I need it. I also copy posters code that I intend to answer. I have to look at it in VS and get rid of all the blank lines. But seeing that in small font across every SO page would be too much truth for sensitive trolls and orcs.
It is often more difficult than it should be to select a code block and copy the contents scroll bars, etc. This could be made so much easier with a tiny copy button. Just a minor nit-pick, but this post assumes the reader knows what the April Fools joke was.
Am I alone in finding it questionable that you should be monitoring my behaviour in this way? We are being watched all the time -more and more — and just think what AI, ML, and DL can do with information, what we humans are not very capable of — that makes me really frightened!
Very interesting topic! Personally I admit having done this too, but I always review the code to understand what it actually does!
So please keep up the good work — we need you just as much as you need us!! First thing I do when I check-out the answer to a problem is to test it in an isolated environment… This equates to a copy and paste to an isolated html, php etc. I find it difficult to find out which is comment and comment as the web browser does not move to that comment. Google Chrome 90, macOS Sierra Wait— What if the user copies from the right-click menu?
Uses ctrl-X? Got a custom copy key in the browser via extension settings? Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Latest Newsletter Podcast Company. You are not alone One out of every four users who visits a Stack Overflow question copies something within five minutes of hitting the page. The data Using our homegrown web tracking tool, we created custom events to capture when a user copied from the site.
Questions Ben already mentioned some of the high-level stats that quickly proved what people had long joked about: everyone is copying from Stack Overflow. Are higher rep users copying more?
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