Sometimes what you think is an absurd hack is still what I want to do after having thoroughly considered all other options. It's infuriating in those cases to end up on a Stack Overflow question where someone wanted to do exactly what I want to do, and the only answers are redirecting them to other solutions that I've already considered and ruled out.
The huge majority of people asking questions on SO are noobs and most likely haven't thoroughly considered all other options.
If they did, they should say so in the question.
The majority of people answering questions are also noobs, and this should be taken into account. Experts in their domain don't need SO, and so don't go there at all.
When I was writing my thesis, years ago, SO was already basically useless to me because nobody could solve any of the problems that I was encountering then.
I just use it when I can't be bothered to look up stuff in the documentation, but I see it mostly as a resource for people who are learning or are very early in their career.
This feels like you're saying "SO is and should remain useless". SO is populated mostly by inexperienced developers because the community is hostile towards experienced developers, and part of that hostility is this XY-ing. I also don't find SO to be useful, but I wish it were.
> If they did, they should say so in the question.
You're operating on the assumption that the purpose of SO is for an asker to get an answer. The extremely strict duplicates policy suggests the opposite: the goals and motives of the original asker are essentially irrelevant, because only one similarly-phrased question is allowed ever. If their question doesn't get answered this time, it will never be allowed an answer.
Once you become an expert you spend much less time on SO because you just don't need it. So what are the chances that when you do need it, another expert in that specific thing (of which there are maybe 20 in the world) will also at the same time need to use SO, and stumble upon your question?
It's like using tinder in a sparsely populated area.
