Experts Exhange... Any good?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I can of course find out by having a look round, but it’s normal to get the opinions of people you know (dopers) that know it well.

And I am far more comfortable asking questions here than anywhere new.
If for example I have something I want to do, but don’t know where to begin, I pose the question on EE. What then?

Would the following be too basic a thing to ask?..

I have borland C++ Builder. I have an app that uses files. If I double click on a folder I want the following to happen. The app should create a file-based database (store it in the folder clicked on), create one table in that db, and then insert into one of the fields of the table the file names of all the files in said folder including subfolders. When the app closes the DB will be left (just reconnect to it upon load unless there isn’t a db, in which case the app will create it)

2

I don’t actually see a question there, so I’d say it’s not a good thing to ask :slight_smile:

That said, I’m not a big fan of Experts Exchange, because it’s a constant bait-n-switch thing in Google. I Google the question I want answered, it lists it on EE, I click the link… and they want money before they tell me the answer.

Given that I have never once not been able to find the answer I’m looking for on a free board, I don’t see why I would pay for EE.

I have high hopes for Stack Overflow, Joel of “Joel on Software”'s solution to a lot of the problems with web-based tech forums. It’s pretty new, so it doesn’t have all the answers, but it’s filling up fast.

3

No matter what you think about it, expertsexchange.com is a hilarious URL. Just sayin’.

4

Heh. It’s actually www.experts-exchange.com. But I like yours better.

5

I’ve had good luck hitting the google cache of the page. I haven’t been there in awhile - dunno if it still works that way.

6

Really? That sucks. I am more sad now.

7

If you scroll past the obfuscated answers to the bottom of the page, the actual answers are down there.

8

Experts Exchange is a crappy for-pay site, populated by imbeciles who couldn’t program their way out of a paper bag.

You know what’s a cool (and very new) site? Stack Overflow. Answers are voted upon in such a way that stupid shit gets filtered to the very bottom. And they don’t fill up the Google index with useless crap that may or may not have an answer, and they don’t charge money to join.

9

Well hell, when did that start happening?

Yeah, I used to do that, too, but it stopped working. Probably around the time they put the answers at the end of the page. :smack:

10

It was the “I want the following to happen” bit.

I’ll take a look.

11

I use E-E all the time. Very, very useful.

12

For its first few years, the URL was indeed expertsexchange.com

13

I’m starting to wonder if they target their pages somehow. It’s always been like that for me and I’ve never understood why other people complain about not being able to see the answers, then for the first time this morning it did for me what it does for everyone else - doesn’t have the answers at the bottom of the page. I had to use the Google cache, which brought up the page as I usually see it, with the answers at the bottom.

14

I’ve had an account there from before the pay-to-play days began… somehow I’m grandfathered in, at least enough to view the pages/answers.

15

I have never got an answer from that site, and it pisses me off every time it comes up in my Google searches.

16

I’ve gotten a lot of answers from that site, but the way they now attempt to hide the answers frustrated me enough that I dont worry about them any more.

I wonder if them not showing answers will lower the level of traffic and “new blood” so much that the site won’t be as useful any more?