How to learn from Stack Overflow without asking questions

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Stack Overflow is great for finding answers to programming questions.

But did you know it’s good for learning even if you don’t ask any questions – just answer them?

You may be familiar with Code Katas – basically small programming challenges – which I’ve seen pop up a lot lately.

To solve a Code Kata (I never bothered ;)) you need to exercise your knowledge and maybe learn new things.

Heck, to solve any programming problem you have to exercise your knowledge and maybe learn new things.

This also applies to answering questions on Stack Overflow. You actually have to think about the problem at hand and come up with a good solution – assuming you actually want to answer the question properly.

You could even go as far as pick tags you want to learn more about and try answering those questions.

So one more thing to keep everyone using SO. It’s great for finding answers, somehow addictive and you even learn things by just answering!