As a developer we always tend to open stackoverflow(SO) more than any other site while writing code. And I must say stackoverflow never disappoint us. In some cases even though we don't find the exact solution to our questions we get enough idea to work on the solutions.
So during this lockdown period because of Covid-19, I thought why not to start helping others instead of just using SO, let's start answering or helping in any way possible. Initially when I started it was lot difficult to understand questions that are being asked and even now they are difficult 😅. I have seen people posting answers of 200 lines with tons of description and that's great but that really takes lot of experience and expertise in that domain, so I started with watching #javascript tag and on SO till you don't have 50 reputations you can't comment, so reaching 50 reputation mark was the first target and it took efforts for me to get there by editing questions or answering...
I knew about Bronze, Silver and Gold 🏅 badges that users have but the way this badges are earned is what I found very interesting like every badge is a challenge so to earn that particular badge you'll have to complete whatever the listed requirement is and that way I found it very addictive and challenging to work on those challenges to earn new badges.
StackOverflow helps at
- Improves debugging skills: Just by reading question and given example code you need understand what is the issue and most of times you can't reproduce the error at your end so just on the basis of reading you need to find out the errors. It really improves your debugging skills when you'll work on your project as well.
- Answers with code: Sometimes users explain their idea and then you get the chance to help them improve their ideas by your experience or you can post example code for them to understand your thought process.
- Import-export of ideas: When your giving an answer to any question there answers from other users too by which you can understand what are the other ways you can achieve same result vice versa for other users. So now you know more ways to do same thing.
- Pleasure of helping😀: The feeling you get once your answer gets accepted by the user who questioned and 'Thank You' comment is really something very inspiring and motivating for me to try and help others wherever I can.
- Boosts confidence: StackOverflow is THE site in the world known to each and every developer and earning reputations on it boosts your confidence. You can also include reputation count on your resume👌.
This is the first article I have ever written, I don't know how well and how helpful it would be for dev community but I always wanted to do it. The day I'm posting this article is my 99th Consecutive day on Stackoverflow that means tomorrow I'll get my First Gold (Fanatic) badge and I'm so excited. Every day I spent some time on SO to help community by any means possible.
I would really suggest you to join stackoverflow and try your knowledge and grow your knowledge by helping others, You'll love it.
Comment and let me know about your thoughts.
Stay safe.
Thank you.
Top comments (5)
I found that answering on Stack Overflow is an excellent way to learn some new technology! Often the questions help you figure out how to research a topic or find something out by yourself. They also often shed light on interesting or unusual corner cases of technology, that you'd most likely not find by simply following tutorials or working on simple proof of concept apps.
At least in my case, I found it worked for me very well and really helped me learn stuff I wanted to learn.
While learning Pandas (data science library in Python), I found Stack Overflow had quite a few interesting questions that served as practice as I was learning or reinforcing the concepts. For example, here is one of my answers, that addresses an interesting question I wouldn't have had to solve wasn't it for S.O.
Later on, I found my home in the Vi & Vim StackExchange, where I went from zero to hero in Vim, in big part thanks to the Stack Exchange questions pushing me to discover interesting corners of Vim! Here's an interesting technique for aligning lines in Vim, without plug-ins, that I developed and polished to write as an answer here.
Since joining Vi & Vim, I became one of the most active contributors and actually became a moderator of the site earlier this year. I really feel like I belong in that community and feel that it helps me both practice and learn more, every week!
So, in conclusion, yes I would strongly recommend answering questions on Stack Overflow! It's a great opportunity for growth. Cherish it.
Absolutely true about finding unusual cases which you would either never come across.
That's really inspiring about your achievements on Vi & Vim StackExchange platform.
Thanks so much for the article!
I had been thinking about this for a while, so it's always great when someone else puts it in words as well as you did!
But they could change language in editor for comments and answers to markdown. This current is terrible and it’s the reason why I don’t write often in Stackoverflow.
I agree.