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Spolsky's Software Q-and-A Site
guzzibill writes "Joel Spolsky has announced the beta release of Stack Overflow, intended to be a high-quality source of answers to software questions. Post a software question and watch the answers flow in. Popularity voting is very much woven into the site, where both questions and answers can be edited for clarity and voted up or down for correctness. Correctly posed questions and insightful answers float to the top. This site has reached critical mass." From Joel's description, he was envisioning a source of technical Q&A about programming. So far, many of the questions are broader and less technical, such as advice on the best book about software development. It will be interesting to see where the community that's forming takes it.
Would it be any different from expertsexchange.com?
I.e. is it going to be _really_ useful?
How do they ensure high quality? Meaning, how does this not evolve into just another programming Q/A web forum?
As as aside, the no-registration-required attribute is nice.
To be fair, Joel had very little to do with the actual implementation or development of the site. The majority of the credit for the idea and actual creation should go to Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror.
Personally I think it's a great idea, if for no other reason than to put the screws to Expert Sexchange. Their stupid referrer sniffing and page layout designed to make people pay to see answers has gone on long enough.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I've been using it for the past day or so, and although there are lots of decent questions, there are also a lot of people who post things that could easily be answered by with Google or RTFM, a lot of students posting homework questions (and getting answers!), and a lot of people posting bad code as answers. Time will tell whether they can build a community that can resolve these problems, but in my experience, the quality of these types of communities only goes down.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
vim or emacs? Has anyone asked *that* yet?
Do you have ESP?
Answers sites are extremely useful when trying to figure out relationships between two things which may not be easily translatable into a concise search query. They're also really handy when you're not quite sure what your question is - and someone else is gracious enough to solidify the thought and answer it.
I'm a big fan of yahoo answers, and I'd love to have a free site for in-depth tech stuff like this. (I've never ponied up the money for experts-exchange)
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Which is better? i++ or i+1?
It's i=i+1 or i+=1 you idiot! Who's the muthafuckin' genuis NOW?!
Have you ever looked at the C FAQ? It's full of exceptionally useful information and tips but no beginners can comprehend it.
This will turn into the same thing. Absolute declarations of: You must do it -this- way, followed by an explanation only the converted can understand.
I think the most interesting thing about StackOverFlow is the reputation system. The more good questions and answer you create, the more power you get. From the FAQ:
Like many sites, you are given geek powers the more you use the sight and the more helpful you are, ultimately giving you lots of mod powers. Addictive, but will the people that attain the powers use them for good?
Only time will tell...
The site is now out of beta. I was one of the original beta testers and I can attest that this application is truly revolutionary from the other BBS/Q&A sites that exist out there. First off, it is totally free. Secondly, all of the stupid answers and questions get voted down and disappear very quickly. (Like the guy wanting you to "send me teh codez for class assignment"). Thirdly, the user interface is superb for a web-based app as well as the search functionality. It takes all of the new fangled web features and combines them into this site. You can even get 'badges' sort of like slashdot karma. Way to go Jeff and Joel!
I've used Devshed for more than a decade. Usually I've been able to at least find people to point me in the right direction. Okay, layout and ads are a pain, but it's free.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
...from posting on slashdot.
Seriously, looks aren't everything. In fact, unless the content is compelling enough even the prettiest design won't keep people coming back. Look at sites like craigslist.
And it's not like their competition (experts-exchange) is setting the aesthetic bar that high, ya know?
The openID authentication isn't working for me. Anyone else having problems?
- Reputation system that actually matters (see Nerdposeur's post above) - Specific focus on functionality to drive user behaviour patterns - wiki approach to QnA - focus on community-driven content. - focus on keeping it free Experts Exchange has maybe 2 of the above, and nobody is really doing it the way that this site is doing it. Listen to the Stack Overflow podcast to understand a lot more about what they're doing that makes this site significantly different from the "other" answer sites.
Content s not hidden behind a gated wall, and is community edited - by responsible community members, in that there are complex rules around who can edit what to keep things open but still controlled from random vandalism.
In addition, despite the layout being sort of ugly, it has a really great feature - badges. These are Trophies or Achivements, that make it fun to keep using the site and reward you for improving things in various way.
Even just in the beta period there were a lot of pretty good questions and answers. It's harder to see that now that the general public is in but there still are good questions and informative answers, and searches should yield some pretty useful results there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
can you summarize?
Easy. Post a coding question, such as "how can I write a query to do x when the tables are y and z?" or "I've got this piece of code, and it's doing x when I want it to do y", or even "I need some obscure functionality with the win32 api. how can I do this?" You know, the same thing people used experts exchange for, only now it's free.
I asked a moderately hard Perl question (there's a problem in Date::Manip that seems to be configuration dependent), and within two minutes, I had a wrong answer. No useful replies yet.
Has *anybody* paid money for expertsexchange?
I'm always in amazement that they still manage to be indexed by Google.
Knowledgeable programmers don't hang around sites like Experts Exchange or Stack Overflow answering newbie questions.
I think rather than saying "Knwledgeable Programmers" you meant to say "assholes".
Because the experts I knw are happy to help newbies on occasion. And the reason you'd otherwise hang around stack overflow at other times is to see the more interesting and difficult questions, and answers. And to develop a public reputation for expertise. So at any time there is a helthy enough set of experts aorund willing to help newbies that questions get answered (or they get told where to look if they had just used search, also an acceptable response).
And the truth is Experts Exchange did have some very good content, it was just hell to get to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Semi-Column? I don't know if anyone should be taking the advice of a moran that doesn't know how to spell 'semicolon'.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.