I’ve been using Stack Overflow for a month or so now and I’m a bit concerned.

I’ve seen some questions from contributors with quite high reputations that I’ve been able to answer by either a quick Google or just experimenting in Visual Studio.  Therefore, I wonder, why didn’t these people do that?  What’s in it for them to post such a question?

Is it so that their friends can answer and gain reputation?

It also implies that the level of experience of people contributing to Stack Overflow isn’t as great as I thought it might be.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Stack Overflow is a great idea for spreading knowledge and understanding around the developer community.  I also think it has the potential to be a great place to go if you’re moving into a new technology, but it just doesn’t seem quite right at the moment.

I’ll have to monitor it for a while and perhaps post again in a few months time.

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