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Coding Communities - What Works?
drDugan asks: "There is a resurgence in interest lately in information-based systems and websites for data sharing, structured data, and enabling communities to work together better. I'm working a contract for a new business that is trying to build a community to support people who write software. What communities are you a part of now that help you write and develop software? I mean this question in a general way, including both online communities and offline interactions (your office, LUGs, etc.) -- where do you find connection with other people to get information, answers, and inspiration?"
Sourceforge is a pretty good model. It works for a lot of open source software out there. There are a few similar communities out there. I'd start by looking at their features and figure out which ones meet your needs.
As for Q & A, I generally find usenet newsgroups are about the best source for programming questions. Depending on the particular newsgroup and topic, I can usually get answers inside of an hour and when it involves my business, time is usually pretty important.
My only offline resources are my co-workers who fortunately, are all quite talented.
I would suspect that most of what you'll want, code-wise, is probably largely available in parts and can be pieced together.
I'm in Grad school right now (Computational Engineering)... and I don't think I would survive if not for my awesome fellow grad students.
We all help eachother out... and the types of ideas generated about the way to do something are _way_ above any google search. Sure, google is good for a quick syntax check (or a man/info page... or doxygen)... but those places don't give you understanding about how to properly address a situation.
If I could suggest anything about a community site it would be this: Make sure that you make it easy for people to communicate. Do whatever you can to get the website out of the way, and make it as easy as possible for people to transfer ideas.
Friedmud
It's completely dependent on what language I'm coding in.
When I was coding in PHP... php.net was an absolute godsend of being both a reference to all the functions and objects and a repository of user's experiences and tips for the items... almost all of my php issues were solved via that site.
When I've been doing Javascript code (which isn't a huge amount I'll admit), then I've found W3School's reference pages to be invaluable.
Now that I'm doing my coding in the open source language Laszlo I've found their included documentation that comes with the developer install (web based and with live examples to tinker with), and the community coding forums to be an enormous help, and have made learning and getting a lot out of this language really not that hard.
I really think that trying to localise coding support isn't going to work... the coders should just make use of the best forums and resources for the language they're using. Each time I have to use a new language I have a new folder in my bookmarks for reference pages and forums for that language that I find on the web... you find almost everything you need that way really.
And know how to use Google damn well!
I've been a member there for a while for mapping in UT and learning to texture, map, and more. They offer more then just support forums. The makers of the site do tutorials (mostly video) and offer them for download. Some are paid, some are free.
Also back when I was doing my co-op for programming (they used VB) the Visual basic Programmers Journal by DevX released a 101 programming tips. Little routines that did specific things, like auto complete for drop down boxes and the like. I found that to be invaluable. So to summarize.
- Community forums
- Tutorials - both from members and you guys.
- Tips and tricks - Maybe done like a code database
It's a start and you can build from there.DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
I myself am an Oracle DBA. I have been dependent upon Oracle's metalink system for quite sometime. Here is what I think makes it work:
1) Forum - Ability for users to post questions where responses can be made by both Oracle or other members of metalink. Forums, in there case, are broken down into categories and/or application Groups..eg. Database Server Administration, Backup and Recovery, Performance, etc..
2) Bulletins or Notes - Ability for privileged oracle reps to post information in regards to ways to do things that many had questions about or had confusion about.
3) Bugs - Ability for Oracle to post Bug messages to describe a bug, the test case, ways to reproduce, and solutions.
4) Mass Search - Ability to search any of the above documents types in one universal search engine.
5) Bookmarks - Ability to bookmark any of the above document types (Bulletin/Notes, Bugs, Forum Message).
6) Save Searches - Ability for users to save prior searches
7) Patch database - ability to search for software patches
The above is how Oracle and its users can leverage knowledge in a very efficient way. I suppose many IT companies could utilize a system such as this.