I've harped on too eagerly turning to SO elsewhere in this thread, but I have to agree with this:
> I end in SO sometimes when looking for some discussion on general concepts i.e. advantages of X over Y, but even then it's not always very helpful.
SO can be useful when what I'm curious about is more theoretical and/or subjective in nature, and thus can't be readily attained from regular reference material.
Here's an example where someone (quite helpfully) points out the connection between monoids and monads: http://stackoverflow.com/a/3870310
I knew the definition of monoid and monad, but what I lacked was enough intuition to (readily) see the connection on my own. It's much more convenient to borrow someone else's insight, rather than sit indefinitely meditating on the nature of a given problem. In those cases a resource like SO (or any other forum, for that matter) can be quite useful -- even if you've read up as much as you can.
> I end in SO sometimes when looking for some discussion on general concepts i.e. advantages of X over Y, but even then it's not always very helpful.
SO can be useful when what I'm curious about is more theoretical and/or subjective in nature, and thus can't be readily attained from regular reference material.
Here's an example where someone (quite helpfully) points out the connection between monoids and monads: http://stackoverflow.com/a/3870310
I knew the definition of monoid and monad, but what I lacked was enough intuition to (readily) see the connection on my own. It's much more convenient to borrow someone else's insight, rather than sit indefinitely meditating on the nature of a given problem. In those cases a resource like SO (or any other forum, for that matter) can be quite useful -- even if you've read up as much as you can.