• MrOxiMoron@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    In desperation you click the link to the old docs, change the version to the latest version and pray you don’t get a 404

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Oh, that stuff happens all the time. The one that really pissed me off was Microsoft 404-ing basically their entire KB system.

      That thing was standing for so long you could still find Windows 9x stuff on it, and it was glorious.

      Around the time they stopped supporting windows 7, they bricked the entire thing up and started a new system. Overnight, all the Microsoft help article links went dead. Find a good forum post about an issue that you’re having and someone replied with a link to the MS KB saying little more than “this should work” followed by a sea of commenters saying thanks, that worked, but when you follow the link, it goes nowhere.

      What a fucking waste.

      • refalo@programming.dev
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        7 months ago

        entire KB system

        And right before they did that, they started removing footnotes from KB articles that only dealt with older OSes, so if you ever needed to go back and find something, it just wasn’t there anymore. For example certain RGB packing formats were only supported on newer OSes and the footnote used to tell you that, but then it disappeared. I have been directly affected by that multiple times.

    • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Been there. Done that. FML on searching for programming help some days. Versioning is a nightmare as the way you “used” to do things is no longer relevant and the rest of the results are some asshole saying it is a duplicate question that was answered 10 years ago…that is no longer fucking relevant!

      Sorry. Yesterday sucked. I hope today is less frustration and more things working like they are supposed to.

      • theparadox@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        As someone who is trying to teach themselves a few new things this year by diving to projects using them… I seriously, seriously feel you. It honestly makes me question whether I should just abandon each project I start, both professional and personal.

        All the relevant hits are from years and/or 2+ versions of whatever ago or forum posts with dead links to an alleged solution.

        I feel like in the past I could just dive into something and search my way through it. Now I feel like that era is over and I question whether it’s me, my niche project idea, the disappearing community, or just the search engines.

      • refalo@programming.dev
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        7 months ago

        Multiple times I have searched for a question and found a single SO answer from years back that was my own, with no replies.

        I hope something nice happens to you today :)