FAQs

Java answers

I seem to have answered a lot of questions on Quora about Java, which is strange because Quora is really a poor choice of place to ask questions like this. Stack Overflow is better because the voting is done by people who demonstrably know what they're talking about. On Quora, people who have a very poor understanding can write a rubbish answer, and will get upvotes if they have plenty of followers.

However, given that people are asking Java questions on Quora, I sometimes feel like helping them by giving a good answer.

In a few cases, I've found the act of writing an answer helpful myself, because it's forced me to get my own thinking clearer. More often, I've found satisfaction in simply giving a full and correct answer, communicated clearly - a job well done on my part (and rarely taking more than a few minutes). This is probably what keeps me answering technical questions on Quora: the possibility of doing a really good job, quickly. So many of the other questions I answer on Quora are so much more subjective.