Stack Exchange

Finding the right answers and the right people is hard nowadays. That’s why you should invest in finding a good community for your needs.

What is Stack Exchange and for what I use it

Stack Exchange is just a platform for Q&A, a forum you could say (a person asks a question, an uncertainty or opinion about an idea and the persons in the community answer to that). It contains more sub platforms for different topics: maths, physics and even gardening. (Check chapter How I got to use Stack Exchange).
I mostly use it for programming, maths and sometimes for desktop settings (site: ask ubuntu). Mostly for geek stuff.
When I got any kind of question I something on Google (I use DuckDuckGo for privacy and no ads) then if in my results I see anything from Stack Exchange I open that one first (I mostly open from Stack Exchange, again because I am a programmer and I always search for programming stuff).
Inside the answer page I check the question of the person, I check the comments and then I check the answers. At the answers I look for stars (whether or not any answer got the “best answer” indicator).
If I find anything useful I try it out and I give a like if it was useful for me (you get points for giving likes, check next chapter for details).

How I got to use Stack Exchange

The need for answers

As a programmer and computer science student I faced lots of tool issues, problems, misunderstandings of concepts and any kind of hard to handle alone things.

The almighty Stack Overflow

The solution was simple. Start finding answers online. So I wrote text in the searching tool from Google whenever I had a question. After multiple such experiences I found out many of the Google results were coming from StackOverflow, a place where programmers, questions and answers come together and party.

Then Stack Exchange came

At a live presentation at CodeCamp Cluj-Napoca there was this guy who was talking about the same platform I’ve been talking about. He showed me some new cool features I never knew about: points you get for comments you leave, badges, possibilities of getting more involved in the community an contributing even more. But the juicy part was when he practically said “we are not alone”. After Stack Overflow’s success, the platform grew into Stack Exchange, a bigger entity that contains Stack Overflow and many more other platforms: Math Exchange, Physics, Android Enthusiasts and even non geeky things like Parenting, Gardening and Landscaping, and the list continues. Here is a full list of all sites under the Stack project. Please take some time and check them, I guarantee you will find useful stuff.
You can read more here about: Stack Exchange.

Why using Stack Overflow

It’s been here for more than 10 years (here you can see the year of launch, the number of questions asked and answered, the number of users and some more indicators about each page under Stack Exchange) so it has a vast experience and has improved a lot compared to other forums out there.
The community is big and energetic, lots of good willing people are answering questions really better than some teachers at university. And that is only because users love the community and love to share their knowledge. (This is a heaven where all people are good and willing to help each other)
It’s free. You don’t even need to have an account in order to read other people questions and answers.
Aaand it has this big number of sub platforms all which have the same user interface and share many of those energetic community members.

Conclusion

Find a place where you feel good, find the people which boost your energy and enthusiasm
Find the community to which you belong and start see that people can help you.