Re: What stackoverflow is good at

On 20 mai, 13:41, robu..._at_gmail.com wrote:
> On 18 Mai, 13:37, "Walter Mitty" <wami..._at_verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Where I think it doesn't work so well is at fundamental education, changing
> > the way a person thinks.
>
> Just my two cents... I think it does, but unfortunately not in the
> right direction…
>
> This is a general problem, roused by the Internet. Twenty years ago
> the main source of information were books, magazines and maybe
> discussions with coworkers. Today, anyone can write a blog or article
> (it is amazing how many people feel the need to publish every “gotcha”
> they learned).
>
> With no quality control at all, most of the Internet articles are at
> best “semi-coherent”. But there are reasons for which they are
> successful. First, it is far easier to google for something than to
> read a book. Second, over-simplification makes things easier to digest
> by beginners. Third, most people are not interested in doing things
> right, but in doing things fast.
>
> One may argue that someone will eventually demystify wrong
> information. However it is not so easy, to discover that something is
> wrong one needs to be educated. Since education is more and more
> substituted by the cookbook approach there aren’t many people who can
> actually correct things up.
>
> Again, one might argue that the vast majority cannot be wrong. But it
> is so? To a total ignorant an Internet article wrote by a semi-
> literate might look brilliant. Science it is not democracy, it is not
> the number of people sustaining a point of view that matters but their
> quality. Unfortunately there is too much garbage and too few people
> able to demystify it.
>
> Correcting information over Internet converges slowly, and wrong
> information tends to corrupt more and more minds until someone
> demystifies it. Before someone does it, it might be already raised to
> the rank of best practice (or even de facto standard). Even when
> someone will spot out something, his point of view might be too
> difficult to understand by most people and hence ignored (Fabian
> Pascal comes quickly into mind).
>
> Unfortunately there are some sad consequences of this state of facts.
> If you try to do something the right way, against so called “best-
> practices”, you are often looked as lunatic and even worst, as counter-
> productive. So one often has to pact with the devil to meet a deadline
> or even to save his job. This is really sad.
Yes it is. That's why Fabian Pascal has lost interest in the subject as he considers a lost cause. Received on Wed May 20 2009 - 16:53:33 CEST