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I have started answering on Stack Overflow two months ago, and I'm giving up a lot of my free time.

What benefit I will get on a personal and professional level by answering on Stack Overflow?

Does it at least improve my knowledge?

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marked as duplicate by Dukeling, PolyGeo, Ward, Robert Longson, Rory Alsop Sep 18 '18 at 13:56

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    Helping others is its own reward. Whether answering improves your knowledge or not is something you'll have to judge yourself. – Magisch Sep 18 '18 at 12:06
  • @Magisch I see productivity If had spent same amount of time reading and learning my self . – kiran Biradar Sep 18 '18 at 12:09
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    The better question is what do I get from voting to close things. – Dukeling Sep 18 '18 at 12:24
  • @Dukeling What did you get? – kiran Biradar Sep 18 '18 at 12:26
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    @kiranBiradar The occasional complement about how good I am at finding duplicates? The occasional complaint about how my close vote is wrong? Frustration? Existential crises? The feeling that I'm helping the site go... absolutely nowhere? – Dukeling Sep 18 '18 at 12:28
  • @Dukeling If you can understand the title's of two questions you might think both or not duplicate? Not a good finder of duplicates? – kiran Biradar Sep 18 '18 at 12:32
  • Any explanation down voters ? – kiran Biradar Sep 18 '18 at 15:14
  • Not my down vote but to guess, this was down voted due to looking like "SE should give me money" type of post. Reading your comments though, that seems to not be the case, just try to be a bit more careful with your wording to avoid it. – Mark Kirby Sep 19 '18 at 15:04
  • @MarkKirby I'm sorry my question meant that way. I always think helping on SO is holy work. – kiran Biradar Sep 19 '18 at 15:57
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You'll get an addiction to the green badge (+x reputation) on the achievement inbox in the top bar.

No, seriously, I've learnt countless things

  • while searching for the answer to another person's question.
  • after reading a 'competing' answer with a much better approach than I thought of
  • by browsing the Hot Network Questions to 'relax' after working hard on an answer
  • while writing a detailed explanation about some code I posted as an answer. Writing good code is one thing; being able to explain the principles behind it is another, which can help in transfering the code you write at work to your colleagues.
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  • Yes, I'm addicted to same pleasure as of now :D – kiran Biradar Sep 18 '18 at 12:11
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Many things, most of which are dependent on your values as a person and if you see the benefit in them.

  • You help others, which is a reward of its own. (People like being altruistic.)
  • You help expand and maintain the knowledge base that you yourself probably used a fair bit.
  • You learn to articulate yourself better (useful for technical writing and if English is not your primary language).
  • You learn tools to research problems on your own (knowing how to read documentation is important for a developer!)
  • Teaching has a strong learning effect on its own. I learned a lot about SQL by answering questions about it, for instance.
  • That intangible, yet rewarding, feeling to have made your mark on the world and to have left it a little better than you found it that day.
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