> Mac OS X 10.9 (aka the last good version of macOS)
I think the author is exaggerating here. Mojave is quite fine now, and relatively well supported. I still can't switch to Catalina on all my macOS devices though due to various bugs and incompatibilities.
>> Mac OS X 10.9 (aka the last good version of macOS)
>I think the author is exaggerating here. Mojave is quite fine now, and relatively well supported.
It depends _why_ the author thinks 10.9 was the last good version of macOS. You seem to be referring to patches or stability. I suspect the author is referring to the UI. 10.9 Mavericks was the last one with skeumorphic conceptual design, and which used the Aqua look (gel buttons etc) rather than flat design. 10.10 introduced flat UI and removed most skeumorphic interaction.
I have to admit I'm sympathetic to their viewpoint. From both a UI and a UX point of view, I deeply miss older macOS.
I always find it odd when people answer their own questions, but this looks even odder than that. It appears that this person created the question with no intention of leaving it for someone to answer. They simply answered it themselves immediately after.
It's a neat solution, but it also seems like someone is trying to game StackExchange (and now Hacker News) to boost their rep with I really don't care for.
Isn't that behavior explicitly allowed on stackkexchange? Why wouldn't stackexchange want people to do that? Is it not a net positive to have someone ask and answer a question that people find useful?
It's explicitly encouraged, and why not? It adds value to the website. Not sure why you'd be concerned about people trying to "game" Stack Exchange - the founders have spoken publicly at length about the intention to gamify the site. This is the exact kind of behaviour they intended for.
Yep, I do it semi regularly myself. If I spend a bunch of time finding the answer to something that should be easy to access knowledge, I make a question and answer it. The questions page has a specific checkbox for doing this.
I find it morally OK if you ask, eventually learn without someone else having answered the question, and return to provide a valid answer / conclusion to 'the story'.
Sure, in general. But stack overflow's UI and culture explicitly allow for ask-and-answer all at once. It makes sense since it is not just a transitory question answering service, but a permanent record of questions-asked-and-answered.
If you had a difficult problem, didn't find a solution on stack overflow, but did figure it out before you had a chance to write up a question, put it up (with the answer) anyway. It might be useful to someone else.
> It makes sense since it is not just a transitory question answering service, but a permanent record of questions-asked-and-answered.
This is the key thing that newcomers to Stack Overflow don't realize. Not understanding this distinction between a Q&A forum vs a Q&A archive is why people get so pissed at SO being quick to close off-topic and duplicate questions.
The thing that conflicts with this goal is that they require that you show proof of previous failed attempts. Why is this at all useful for creating an archive of answers? There have been times where I can perfectly write up a problem and the expected inputs/outputs but it gets closed because I didn't paste in some non functional code with it.
> they require that you show proof of previous failed attempts.
That's not exactly accurate with regards to the current options for voting to close a question. But the general reasoning here is that it's an anti-spam measure. It filters out low-effort questions (eg. homework questions) and forces you to be specific and concrete enough with your question for the question to be suitable for SO.
Simply describing the task and providing sample inputs and outputs tends to be too open-ended and often strays into the territory of asking for someone else to write all the code for you, rather than help you solve a specific problem with your code.
I know this is why, but it goes against the whole point of SO. SO is meant to be an archive of questions and answers for future viewers. Who cares how much effort the question poster put in as long as their question is useful, on topic and can be answered objectively.
In theory, you're right. However there was such a bad problem of low-effort Homework questions a while back that the community decided to be a bit more strict about things.
I do this to document my findings in a place where Google will index it. I'm always forgetting things I've figured out in the past! I also like to help others.
I've asked and answered my own questions on StackOverflow before. It's great for documenting things in a way that lets others profit from your knowledge.
Indeed, and I've found that for trickier niche questions, it's not uncommon for there to be 3-4 answers which completely miss the boat, but to inspire you to dig even further. It does feel somehow wrong to snub all those who answered in good faith, but sometimes it's the best thing to do.
Lots of "I think this okay" type of answers here. Here's the authoritative answer:
> Can I answer my own question?
> Yes! Stack Exchange has always explicitly encouraged users to answer their own questions. If you have a question that you already know the answer to, and you would like to document that knowledge in public so that others (including yourself) can find it later, it's perfectly okay to ask and answer your own question on a Stack Exchange site.
but it also seems like someone is trying to game StackExchange (and now Hacker News) to boost their rep with I really don't care for.
It's not that one is late to the party. More like someone didn't know the parties were happening all the time, and finds out about them in retrospect when it comes up in conversation several years later.
> I always find it odd when people answer their own questions,
it happened to me more than once to get stuck on something for a couple hours without a solution in sight, start typing the SO question, think of something and tada !
This is explicitly allowed and by design. There's a checkbox for doing it right when you create the question, which allows you to enable an answer box to submit an answer directly with the question.
I think the author is exaggerating here. Mojave is quite fine now, and relatively well supported. I still can't switch to Catalina on all my macOS devices though due to various bugs and incompatibilities.