I loved it when I iterated on my question so much that I accidentally solved it before I got to posting.

I have engaged with some younger devs who don't even bother turning the thought into a question. They make statements and expect you to do the work of inferring the question. Which I feel like they got from chatbots since it's faster and LLMs don't care if you make them jump through hoops.

> The better my questions got, the fewer responses I got.

There is a sweet spot of providing just enough detail but not too much in asking a good question. And even the best only “bat 300”. I've posted answers to my own questions plenty of times when I got no response.

I hear you on the hostility. Also a lot of people didn't experience how bad things were BEFORE stack overflow. The first time I tried asking a question on IRC I got mocked so bad I logged out and never tried again. Most forums were like that.

I gravitated to Ruby back then because it was one of the only forums people would be patient and empathetic with me.

▲

ChrisMarshallNY 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have heard great things about the Ruby community. I don't use the language, myself, so I wouldn't know from experience.

Hear you on Ye Days of Yore. I never did IRC, but I did try UseNet, and it was basically a public toilet.

Everyone bitches about the Eternal September, but, in my opinion, it actually reduced the hostility and barbarism. Clueless dolts were a welcome break from the malevolent assholes.

▲

cowlevel 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I suspect that prior to Eternal September you could connect an online identity to a real life one. You might not know the guy but you knew it was J.Smith at MIT and if he acted bad enough your admin could ask their admin which idiot gave him a computer terminal.

	▲	noosphr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You can easily read posts before 1994, what you're saying definitely did not happen.

▲

usedtobegood 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I loved it when I iterated on my question so much that I accidentally solved it before I got to posting

I have repeatedly had this experience in trying to craft The perfect question for a consultant who was also a mathematics professor, in finding the essence of the question the answer becomes clear and I never even have to send the email