<story><title>How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?</title><url>https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/04/19/how-often-do-people-actually-copy-and-paste-from-stack-overflow-now-we-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>henrikeh</author><text>Is it just me or is this also a symptom of Python&amp;#x27;s documentation being really strange to navigate and generally having a massive impedance mismatch with Google?&lt;p&gt;When I search on Google for &amp;quot;python reverse list&amp;quot;, not a single link is to the official Python documentation. Not even if I search for &amp;quot;python reverse&amp;quot; does the documentation page show up. Searching for &amp;quot;python reverse documentation&amp;quot; leads to the second link to the Build-in Functions page (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.python.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;functions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.python.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;functions.html&lt;/a&gt;), which is what I &amp;quot;need&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Excuse the comparison, but &amp;quot;matlab reverse list&amp;quot; has the top three to the official documentation (all of them relevant, but slightly different semantics). Why can&amp;#x27;t Python be better than that?</text></item><item><author>arduinomancer</author><text>IMO its not even that we&amp;#x27;re copying people&amp;#x27;s logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages.&lt;p&gt;For example if I forget the name of a function for something in a particular language I don&amp;#x27;t even go to the docs, I just google something like &amp;quot;python reverse list&amp;quot; and click the first SO link.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jollybean</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not you - Python docs are very comprehensive but organized in a very odd way and miss a lot of marks. If you have time to &amp;#x27;read everything&amp;#x27; you&amp;#x27;re fine but it&amp;#x27;s somewhat less suited as a raw reference.&lt;p&gt;Although I don&amp;#x27;t mind the informal voice of the docs - there&amp;#x27;s clearly not much in the way of editorial oversight and pro technical writing. It makes one reconsider how much actual effort goes into putting together docs from corporate backed efforts.&lt;p&gt;That said, I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone does it perfectly well, and that we could do a lot better in terms of providing information - to the point wherein I would consider it a little bit of a failure that SE has to be consulted for smaller problems. One would hope that &amp;#x27;good docs&amp;#x27; would provide clear and concise answers to such things, rather than have the crowd cobble it together and vote on it.</text></comment>
<story><title>How often do people copy and paste from Stack Overflow?</title><url>https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/04/19/how-often-do-people-actually-copy-and-paste-from-stack-overflow-now-we-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>henrikeh</author><text>Is it just me or is this also a symptom of Python&amp;#x27;s documentation being really strange to navigate and generally having a massive impedance mismatch with Google?&lt;p&gt;When I search on Google for &amp;quot;python reverse list&amp;quot;, not a single link is to the official Python documentation. Not even if I search for &amp;quot;python reverse&amp;quot; does the documentation page show up. Searching for &amp;quot;python reverse documentation&amp;quot; leads to the second link to the Build-in Functions page (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.python.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;functions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.python.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;functions.html&lt;/a&gt;), which is what I &amp;quot;need&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Excuse the comparison, but &amp;quot;matlab reverse list&amp;quot; has the top three to the official documentation (all of them relevant, but slightly different semantics). Why can&amp;#x27;t Python be better than that?</text></item><item><author>arduinomancer</author><text>IMO its not even that we&amp;#x27;re copying people&amp;#x27;s logic, its just that stack overflow acts as a weird sort of crowd-sourced centralized documentation for programming languages.&lt;p&gt;For example if I forget the name of a function for something in a particular language I don&amp;#x27;t even go to the docs, I just google something like &amp;quot;python reverse list&amp;quot; and click the first SO link.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kevin_thibedeau</author><text>Python documentation is a static Sphinx site with no need for JS to render content. That&amp;#x27;s the easiest possible design for search engines to index. It&amp;#x27;s Google&amp;#x27;s fault that their algorithm can be gamed by low quality seo sites.</text></comment>