3

Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?

Like most respondents, I am horrified that anyone would think this is a good strategy. But that doesn't make the question unconstructive or off-topic. It stimulated a good discussion of development strategies for slow target platforms, and of the difference between development and test. Pros and Cons for the strategy were suggested (and the cons clearly won out). It was the 2nd highest voted question on the site, and near the top of the view count too.

What makes that an unconstructive question?

(Disclaimer - I neither wrote nor answered this question - I am just suprised to see it closed)

5
  • 4
    "It stimulated a good discussion" answers your question. This is not a forum. SE is a Q&A site. You post a question, people post answers, not discussions. That question turn on a forum thread. This kind of question should be post on a forum. I don't know why it's so hard to users understand this. High vote counts doesn't say anything about the quality of the question. Indeed most of high voted question it's about discussion or polls. For me, a high vote count almost implies the low quality of the question for a Q&A site. It can be great for a forum, of course.
    – Maniero
    Nov 24, 2010 at 17:11
  • 1
    Pr.Se still the worst question of whole SE. Pr.SE doesn't attack the best users of SO. I'm pretty sure that they can collaborate a lot here but they get scared by low quality of questions. Unfortunately Pr.SE is the black sheep. I'm trying to change this, but it's almost impossible to do almost alone and with many users wishing take this site as a forum. The ease way is let the "community" do what they want and destroy the site. Unfortunately people who disagree with the direction of Pr.Se took simply stay away of the site. They're community too, but they express its disagreement with disdain.
    – Maniero
    Nov 24, 2010 at 17:19
  • 3
    We're supposed to be encouraging questions with longer answers, that draw on people's experiences and get them to back up their opinions with reasons. This is a specifically programming question, asked in a reasonably neutral manner. I'm at a loss to see what's wrong with it.
    – David Thornley
    Nov 24, 2010 at 18:49
  • 3
    " You post a question, people post answers". Isn't that what happened? Yes, there were several variations of the "No" answer, each with it's own reasoning. That doesn't invalidate the question.
    – AShelly
    Nov 24, 2010 at 21:49
  • 4
    @bigown, I also want to raise the quality of questions on the site. But I want to do that by encouraging the good ones about the practice of programming, and discouraging the ones about the preferences of programmers. The "forum-ness" of a particular question's answers matters much less to me. This question is a good example of one where a question about best practices in programming was asked, and a clear answer emerged.
    – AShelly
    Nov 24, 2010 at 21:55

0

Reset to default

Browse other questions tagged .