Understanding the Consistency of Stack Overflow Code: A Cautionary Suggestion

Abstract

Community Question and Answer platforms (CQA) use the power of online groups to solve or gain information about problems. Since these websites contain valuable information, high-quality data must be given on these pages, so that consumers may trust the data. Given the widespread usage of data in all parts of contemporary society, this is particularly important for software creation. Stack Overflow is CQA 's leading programmer platform, with a community of over 10 million contributors. Although research supports Stack Overflow's popularity, doubts have been posted about the consistency of the answers provided to stack overflow queries. Application fragments have been examined often found in these answers; nevertheless, the accuracy of these objects remains uncertain. It may present a challenge for the software development world, as data suggests that samples from Stack Overflow are widely included in both open source and commercial applications. By assessing the consistency of code snippets on Stack Overload, this work fills the void. I have discussed various facets of the quality of code excerpts, including usability and accordance with programming standards, readability, efficiency, and protection. Outcomes indicate variability in the consistency of Stack Overflow code snippets for the various dimensions; but generally, quality problems were not necessarily dangerous in Stack Overflow snippets. Vigilance with anyone that duplicate fragments of Stack Overflow code is urged.