I have been trying to be active in Stack Overflow for almost 3 years as an “answerer” and I just reached 5000 reputations last week which was my goal. I want to share my lessons learned and experiences so far:

— Most people are looking for a simple and most straightforward solution/answer instead of detailed and comprehensive ones. KISS is everywhere.

— References are so important! if you add references or links such as Official documents like MSDN to your answer, it makes your answers more reliable and people love it.

— Do some research and googling before asking questions. It does not look good if your question is marked as duplicate :)

— Not everyone has the same technical background or information, so be clear.

— Be specific! It is essential to focus on only one thing in a question. It is the difference between newcomers and experienced developers. Newcomers tend to ask more general questions like “How to achieve this?”. In contrast, Experienced developers ask more specific ones like “I have tried this and this but it does not seem to be working, since it throws the following exception. How to solve this?”

— You can even answer questions that you don’t know the exact solution to. You need to understand how to approach problems and how to research.

— Check random questions and Dirty your hands even if you can’t find an answer it teaches you much more than you think.

— Stack Overflow profile looks fantastic in your resume. (You might get a job offer just because you have a great profile)