Some people find difficult problems more rewarding to solve. Given that internet points are meaningless, someone interested in learning a language better could spend their time regurgitating documentation (and hopefully learning along the way). Eventually, one of those regurgitated responses gets picked up by Google and becomes the top answer, and nobody even needs to go to the SE forums to ask.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive - there are multiple reward structures for multiple types of players. Both should be encouraged.