It sounds like what you're mainly describing is that it's hard to ask a question
that isn't already answered on the site. (You can't close as a dupe unless the duplicate has answers.) From a "helping the most people learn" perspective, this sounds like a champagne problem: There's so many answers that it's hard to find something to ask that's not already covered.
From a community perspective, we do want all devs to be able to get involved in the site, so it's not ideal if the solution set is actually so comprehensive that it raises the bar for getting involved.
But I'm not too worried. SO still gets over ten thousand questions per day, which gives devs who want to contribute to the programming community a ton of opportunities to share answers and help. Plus, and new languages like swift leave a lot of blue ocean for asking new questions.
Don't get me wrong, our two biggest product priorities are focused on how we can make it easier for new users to get involved, and how we can ensure that more active users continue to feel appreciated and find it rewarding to share their knowledge on SO, where so many others can benefit from it. There's plenty more we can do on both fronts, but I'm not too worried that we're running out of ways for devs to contribute if they want to.
Disclosure: I work at Stack Exchange. I love Stack Exchange. I am not an unbiased observer of Stack Exchange. My mom says I and my company are special, and I believe her.
From a community perspective, we do want all devs to be able to get involved in the site, so it's not ideal if the solution set is actually so comprehensive that it raises the bar for getting involved.
But I'm not too worried. SO still gets over ten thousand questions per day, which gives devs who want to contribute to the programming community a ton of opportunities to share answers and help. Plus, and new languages like swift leave a lot of blue ocean for asking new questions.
Don't get me wrong, our two biggest product priorities are focused on how we can make it easier for new users to get involved, and how we can ensure that more active users continue to feel appreciated and find it rewarding to share their knowledge on SO, where so many others can benefit from it. There's plenty more we can do on both fronts, but I'm not too worried that we're running out of ways for devs to contribute if they want to.
Disclosure: I work at Stack Exchange. I love Stack Exchange. I am not an unbiased observer of Stack Exchange. My mom says I and my company are special, and I believe her.