Don't you think that 99% of problems you are trying to solve every day are already solved many times?
What do you do when you have troubles with some algorithm, language, framework? You go to google or stackoverflow. And guess what? There is almost 100% chance that you will eventually find (sometimes not easily) the exact same problem as you have and maybe even a solution.

Try to remember last couple problems you spent time trying to solve. Do you think you were the first in the world who solved them? I don't think so. Do you think you were the last one who had to solve the exact same problem? I guess not.

So don't you think that we all are spending our time solving exactly same stuff over and over again instead of concentrating on something that really has not been solved yet? 

The problem here, as I see it, is that computer science is lacking some central knowledge database that stores solutions to all common tasks (and the majority of our tasks are common). Why this has not been done yet? Computer science is not some abstract art, everything is pretty well structurized and could be well organized.

Look at Wikipedia for example, thousands of people are happy to contribute their knowledge. Why can't we have our own "ITpedia"? Is it only because programmers are lazy?


You may say: hey, that's what stackoverflow is for. I think it should be something completely different. Stackoverflow is only trying to minimize path from a new question to an answer, it doesn't try to organize questions and answers (tags are not enough for that). 
Don't you think that 99% of problems you are trying to solve every day are already solved many times?
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What do you do when you have troubles with some algorithm, language, framework? You go to google or stackoverflow. And guess what? There is almost 100% chance that you will eventually find (sometimes not easily) the exact same problem as you have and maybe even a solution.

Try to remember last couple problems you spent time trying to solve. Do you think you were the first in the world who solved them? I don't think so. Do you think you were the last one who had to solve the exact same problem? I guess not.

So don't you think that we all are spending our time solving exactly same stuff over and over again instead of concentrating on something that really has not been solved yet? 

The problem here, as I see it, is that computer science is lacking some central knowledge database that stores solutions to all common tasks (and the majority of our tasks are common). Why this has not been done yet? Computer science is not some abstract art, everything is pretty well structurized and could be well organized.

Look at Wikipedia for example, thousands of people are happy to contribute their knowledge. Why can't we have our own "ITpedia"? Is it only because programmers are lazy?


You may say: hey, that's what stackoverflow is for. I think it should be something completely different. Stackoverflow is only trying to minimize path from a new question to an answer, it doesn't try to organize questions and answers (tags are not enough for that). 