The problem for me is that generally the highest ranked answers are the oldest, and in a fast moving tech stack this leads to really outdated advice.
I do a lot of Python programming and some of the answers only work in 2.7 for example.
Same as you, these days I'll just look at the official docs.
Back when python 2.7 was out, the top-rated answer was a really great, python 2.7-specific solution. Now that python 3.9 is out, the top-rated answer is still a really great, python 2.7-specific solution.
The painful thing is there seems to be a large body of people on SO who are trying their hardest to fit any question into the scope of a previously asked question and then marking it duplicate/downvoting it. Some tags are worse than others on this about this, but I have one or two which are painfully policed by people who seem to want no question to be answered at all, ever.
That depends. If it is a popular answer, people sometimes edit with latest version answer. For example, I answered something about Python/Flask many years ago which became a very popular answer at the time (simple stuff). Now in Flask's latest version, you don't need to do it that way necessarily and the answer was edited accordingly.
