I have basically the exact same experience with SO as the author. I was in the beta group, I currently have moderator permission levels, and I hardly ever use the site.
It's great finding specific answers to highly specific questions that a large number of devs can help with. It's terrible at keeping many of the most experienced devs interested in answering questions. And it's not great as a general learning resource either. The site just stalls out at a low to moderate level of sophistication in terms of the level of knowledge that can be found there, for all of the reasons the author described.
Edit: after some reflection, here is a stronger critique of SO:
SO leverages a huge amount of effort from developers for very little real benefit. Some of the site has value but a lot of it boils down to moderately experienced devs spoon feeding answers to beginning devs, which I think could be more detrimental than helpful. By doing so such beginning devs avoid the hurdle of having to RTFM, which stunts their growth. They avoid having to level up their skillset and they know that they can just return to SO when they have their next problem, so they are discouraged from acquiring the skills to solve their own problems, they will stall out at a beginning skill level forever. Meanwhile, as many people have pointed out the true point of crisis in skill/project development lies not at the beginning but after the initial hump, after years of work. And here devs are not well served by SO because they need more than just an answer to a specific question, they need guidance, they need mentoring, they need encouragement. SO's nearly pathalogical lack of community makes it a very poor place to seek out assistance during that phase of personal development.
In short: SO may be helping the wrong people and discouraging folks who are more in need of assistance and for whom being helped would have a vastly greater positive benefit on the industry as a whole.
It's great finding specific answers to highly specific questions that a large number of devs can help with. It's terrible at keeping many of the most experienced devs interested in answering questions. And it's not great as a general learning resource either. The site just stalls out at a low to moderate level of sophistication in terms of the level of knowledge that can be found there, for all of the reasons the author described.
Edit: after some reflection, here is a stronger critique of SO:
SO leverages a huge amount of effort from developers for very little real benefit. Some of the site has value but a lot of it boils down to moderately experienced devs spoon feeding answers to beginning devs, which I think could be more detrimental than helpful. By doing so such beginning devs avoid the hurdle of having to RTFM, which stunts their growth. They avoid having to level up their skillset and they know that they can just return to SO when they have their next problem, so they are discouraged from acquiring the skills to solve their own problems, they will stall out at a beginning skill level forever. Meanwhile, as many people have pointed out the true point of crisis in skill/project development lies not at the beginning but after the initial hump, after years of work. And here devs are not well served by SO because they need more than just an answer to a specific question, they need guidance, they need mentoring, they need encouragement. SO's nearly pathalogical lack of community makes it a very poor place to seek out assistance during that phase of personal development.
In short: SO may be helping the wrong people and discouraging folks who are more in need of assistance and for whom being helped would have a vastly greater positive benefit on the industry as a whole.