Software developer career boost
365 consecutive days on Stack Overflow - what I have learned from this experiment
A few days ago I have reached 365 consecutive days on Stack Overflow. In the beginning of July 2017 I have decided to run an experiment - visit Stack Overflow every single day and do something useful to other community members (answer a question, review one of the queues, edit and improve existing questions and so on). Now it is the best time to summarize this experiment and share my thoughts with you.
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Motivation
Let’s start with "why?". I enjoy learning new things and getting better in stuff I already know. Someone could call it a pursuit of mastering programming skills. I have heard a few years back that if you want to learn something precisely, you have to know how to explain it to others.[1] There is this very popular quote attributed to Albert Einstein[2]:
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Even though Einstein unlikely said that, it still sounds smart enough to give this quote a try and apply it in the real life.
So I have decided I will be watching a few tags[3] on Stack Overflow and I will try answering questions to solve people’s programming problems. I wanted to achieve this by providing clear and detailed explanation of a solution (and problem as well). I’ve focused on stuff I knew something about - things I wanted to explore deeper to get a better understanding about how things work.
Starting point
My Stack Overflow account exists since March 2013 and between 2013 and 2017 I was not very active user. My profile in the end of 2016[4] looked like this:
I couldn’t get a snapshot from July 2017, but it didn’t change significantly comparing to snapshot from December 2016. Anyway, I was pretty passive SO user as you can see - I have asked a few questions, I have delivered some answers, but I wasn’t very consistent, especially if we take into account that I was a member for 4 years already.
Execution
Now when you know what was my starting point, it’s time to reveal what my Stack Overflow daily routine looked like for the last year:
I have created a tag query like
[groovy] or [spock] or [java-stream] or …that lists only those questions I am the most interested inI have ignored tag
[android]that shows up pretty often with[gradle]tagI reviewed newest questions to find something I could give an answer to
If I’ve found a question I found useful to other people - I upvoted it and if I was able to answer it - I tried to deliver the best answer I could give at that time
If I’ve found a question that was not expressed clearly - I asked for clarification and I tried to help improving the question
If I’ve found a question I found completely useless[5] (like I have a homework task…) - I downvoted and voted to close it
After reviewing newest questions I went through the review queues or I scheduled doing it later that day
I have repeated most of these steps every single day
What have I learned from this journey?
During the last year I have participated in hundreds of Stack Overflow questions (answering, editing, commenting, voting and so on). Here are my thoughts about the things I have learned from this journey.
1. I don’t have to chase the rabbit
Many people say that getting involved in SO community these days does not make much sense, because all popular and interesting questions were already asked and it is almost impossible to earn high reputation based on questions that show up nowadays. If your goal is to chase people like Jon Skeet or even anyone who reached 100k reputation - you’re in trouble. Many highly reputable users gained their reputation with a snowball effect - they have delivered valuable answers to popular questions a few years back and they are constantly rewarded for that. I have heard that this is a blocker for many newcomers. I have no problem with that, because I have realized that I don’t have to compete with anyone. I focus on delivering valuable answers instead. And I won’t lie to you - I love being rewarded with reputation points or badges, but I have accepted the fact that this is only a side-effect of doing a good job, not an end in itself.
2. There are many people waiting for my help
I guess you have heard about impostor syndrome.[6] I’ve found it pretty hard to overcome, especially if you are competitive by the nature and you constantly compare yourself to people that are more experienced and skilled than you, just like I did. Stack Overflow helped me hold my horses and look in the opposite direction. It became clear to me that I can learn more effectively if I help other people reaching my current level of experience. Sharing the knowledge, digging deeper in the areas I’m already familiar with and explaining these ideas with the simplest possible words boosted my learning process. And to give you a concrete example - I work with Groovy[7] for more than 6 years already and I always saw myself as a experienced Groovy developer who knows pretty much about how things work behind the scenes. Thanks to Stack Overflow and tons of questions about different things in Groovy I have learned even more - each time I saw a question that required some sort of research from my side I jumped into it and explore it deeply enough to fully understand what’s going on. A good example of win-win situation - I have helped solving an issue and I have learned something new or I just understand the idea better.
3. There is nothing bad in being wrong
It happened to me a few times to give a wrong or partially wrong answer to the question I’ve found interesting. The good thing about Stack Overflow community is that there are people who will kindly tell you that your answer is wrong and what you can do to fix or improve it. Of course, there are a few jerks out there who will try to prove you’re stupid - simply ignore them.
4. Small actions repeated consistently produce great results
A few months ago I have finally completed my first Stack Overflow milestone - gaining 10k reputation:
1st milestone completed 🙃🏆👨🏻💻 #soreadytohelp #so #10k https://t.co/0IX3efaN4T pic.twitter.com/SjxMLthAKZ
— Szymon Stepniak 🧔🏻 (@wololock) April 10, 2018
When I was starting my one year of day-to-day Stack Overflow challenge I had problems in estimating how much time will it take to reach this 10k reputation barrier. It looked to me like something that is far far away - this is why I have focused on the next small step, the next question I can answer and learn something from. Points, badges and other digital rewards don’t matter. Improving yourself and other people matters the most. Your reputation grows with its own pace.
Conclusion
It’s July 18th, one year and a few days later since I started my experiment. Why have I wrote this blog post? To brag about my progress? No. Nothing like that at all. I just want to summarize my experiment and show you that you can still actively participate in Stack Overflow community in 2018 and have a lot of fun while learning new things and mastering current skills. And many many people can learn from you writing better software every day.
Next steps
My Stack Overflow journey is not done. I continue answering questions, improving existing ones, helping people solving their problems and making software developers community a better place for all people - experienced developers and newcomers that come to Stack Overflow every day.
Before this post ends - what is your Stack Overflow story? What have you learned from your experience? Does participating in this community in 2018 make any sense to you? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. I would love to hear it from you.
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