What happened?

Question

I remember coming here years ago and it was interesting because there were so many good coders and some of them were genuine professionals.

I was hoping to relive this kind of experience again and to learn from true experts.

My guess is that ChatGPT spoiled coding and destroyed the coding community maybe? Or did the community destroy itself in other ways? Please enlighten me.

Answer 1

I am still here, too, but I find it hard to contribute.

What drove me (many times) away from this platform, I suppose, were largely its users. Although I did not support all changes introduced to the app over time. But particularly the discuss section was increasingly filling with nonsense questions, not even intelligeable questions, do-my-homework questions, stolen answers, repeated answers, today AI generated answers, ungrateful OPs... I felt surrounded by idiot kids who never even bothered to try to think and solve a problem let alone to actually learn to code. Hence, there was nothing here for me to contribute. And that core problem does not seem to have changed.

Answer 2

SoloLearn caters to beginners. There are not any advanced courses so it's harder for us "pros" to stick around. Those of us that do stick around do so mainly to help others. But there are quite a few of us here. Maybe not like it used to be. But ask a harder programming question and you'll see responses. There are some brilliant folks around here.

Answer 3

Spoony Bard there are still several of us professionals and veteran user here just not as many as there use to be.
My drive on xp was a motivator for the community in general as well as my ongoing streak. I also showed while playing challenges, answering questions and so on that coding was my driver. Doing the courses were more of a quick refresher for the languages being taught at the time.

Answer 4

and maybe the assumption is the one rating everyone else is the best...

flaming people without provocation isn't good public behavior

we're not here to judge people. And there are better things to do than talk sh*t about other people and spread dissonance.

Answer 5

Constructive feedback yes, peer to peer ...
Do you like it ... (yes) if not constructive feedback as to why or what could've been better ...

but keep in mind that the user may not have as much experience or maybe hadn't thought of the method your experience brings to the table.

Answer 6

Who do you think Prometheus was learning from dating back to 2017 ?

Answer 7

Ok, that's a healthy attitude. But the key is how you present your ideas and communicate with people. Try not to impose your opinion or stand at a position of authority. It's a free world and It's hard to build a discussion if you start with a slap.

Respect is always a good opening move. Don't come in with guns blazing. We're all strangers here, from different backgrounds and circumstances.

Reactions, positive or negative, should be toned down or it might come across as brash or abrasive.

Say you come across a bad code and start flaming it. Wouldn't it be unfortunate if you caused a probably great coder that's just starting out to quit coding? Feedback and reactions should be constructive. Just saying something is bad is never helpful.

what I'm saying is being a good person is more important than being a good programmer.

Answer 8

Spoony Bard is there some reason you are targeting me ? This is the second time.

Answer 9

Spoony Bard how did I jump in on an open forum discussion ? AND all I said was ...

"Spoony Bard there are still several of us professionals and veteran user here just not as many as there use to be.
My drive on xp was a motivator for the community in general as well as my ongoing streak. I also showed while playing challenges, answering questions and so on that coding was my driver. Doing the courses were more of a quick refresher for the languages being taught at the time."

Where did your need to ... nvm ...
Anyway, you don't know me.

David Carrol BTW is one of my best friends and we've known each other personally and professionally over two decades

Answer 10

Bro, XPs dont make sense as the cause for this. Do you remember David Carroll? He never had his XPs up in the blue/platinum range, yet he was a very experience millionaire coder and business person and contributed a lot in this community. Believe me the XPs are not the focus.
Jason Stone is another example, all his codes are simply out of reach for 99% of coders (professionals or hobbyists combines). Jason's codes rarely reach above 50 upvotes. Yet there are lots of CSS coders out here who comment each others codes and upvote each others codes like they are something special and valuable. I mean all codes are valuable as an experience, but when you code 7 years and all you still do is same old CSS, time to let others their time to shine in my opinion.

Answer 11

Don't judge. There are things to be learned from bad codes....

Answer 12

Back to your original question, I don't think ChatGPT killed the community, but the community itself did. Interestingly, your replies demonstrate how a single member can fire it all up.

I don't know what your interest is. Maybe to engage a serious discussion about complex algorithms, do some advance projects?

There is an old saying in Chinese: Same kind of rice raises up hundreds kinds of people. In here, SL is the rice, members are the people, and each member is a different individual, no matter he is a pro or not. Even a pro cannot master all the skills. A pro can specialize in one area but lack in another. Therefore, there is no point to say who is not as good as another. And more importantly, conversation skill and openness are more important.

Since your profile is relatively new, yet you know many things about the pass, let me assuming you left SL for a while and come back recently. Let me ask you a question: What drove you to left SL in the first place?
Would it be the answer you are looking for?

Answer 13

Spoony Bard Some of them were frustrated about not getting credited for a draw anymore in a challenge. There might have been other reasons for a few coders to leave, but there was a huge discussion about that change in the XP system, and after that change, they left and deleted their account.

Answer 14

Many reasons why people left:
- Courses being removed by Sololearn and then focusing more on AI courses.
- The replacement of Moderators with paid moderators.
- Unclear, off-topic questions in Q&A.
- Addition of unnecessary stuffs likes "lives" and "bits".
- Never added support for languages like typescript or rust. Even the non web codes compilers have a lot of limitations (for example you can't import external libraries in node, go etc.) Apart from this codes have limited time to execute which seems to be lesser than 3s(way too low?). Not a suprise that web codes get all the attention while non web codes are barely seen.
- The XP system rework as pointed out but this mainly pushed away stormers like JOY and Prometheus and a few others.
- Stalkers or perverted people who keep DMing girls or minors.

These are some of the issues.

Answer 15

Agree with Bob_Li , we learn a lot from bad codes too or learn step by step. You don't go from beginner to proficient in a single day. It takes time and practice. Also learning is the main motto here.

Answer 16

"I like Prometheus as his codes were much better than....BroFar." That's not a fact, that's an opinion and an opinion that's aim is to belittle. You can praise people without trying to bring down others. The comment was completely unneeded.

I would also like to point out that it is ironic that you ask where are "the grown ups" that can take critism but you have gotten well thought out critique and counsel by several people in this thread but you are deciding to dismiss them.

If you're trying to be a troll, remember that you are contributing to your own question about the community destroying itself. Why would good coders and professionals want to be around someone like that?

Answer 17

I can totally understand that point 🤔 I had a similar experience early on when I "dared" point out and correct a mistake a then very popular member made. I received a total of one uptick on my reply, and it was by said member whose response soared into the 20ies in likes. It was... sobering, to say the least. I had successless attempts with my posts that aimed at trying to change that behaviour. People very well responded "you are right" and "absolutely true", but nothing changed. Yes, this is toxic and can be a drive to leave as it has been for me as well, I admit.

Answer 18

The world is a big place. Everything is transient. Making friends is better than creating enemies. And I quit trying to change the world a long time ago.

Answer 19

Spoony Bard It was because of the XP, because they were not able to earn the same amount of XP in challenges anymore as they were use to.

Answer 20

[page 2]

The quiz factory was neat, yes. But it led to too many questions just trying to get you to fail. Those were example codes that taught you nothing but bad variable name use and overcomplicated ways of solving a simple problem.

Harassment was unfortunately a problem even before the messenger came into existence. They played out for all to see in code comment sections. I was a moderator back then and it hurt me every time i found such a discussion perhaps only a few hours too late. There was no effective reporting system implemented at that time, hence Kubas police thread. While it was troubling, it wasn't enough to make me leave. The personal messenging was a feature whose necessity i also severely doubted. And i guess it exacerbated the problem with stalking and harassment. And now it was even hidden from moderators eyes. I take that as a minor event but may have led to people addressing the greats in a more direct manner rather than using the q&a.

[to be continued]