Spolsky's Software Q-and-A Site 187
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.
Expert sex change, again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Would it be any different from expertsexchange.com?
I.e. is it going to be _really_ useful?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Expert sex change, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
i prefer ugly and functional over pretty but unusable any day.
the fact that it doesn't require a paid subscription and implements collaborative editing already puts it way ahead of the competition.
all that's left to do is to promote the site properly and build up a healthy community of knowledgeable users.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Shh, don't tell anyone, but "Expert sex change" IS free, you need to scroll way way way way way way way way down past the answers that seem to make you have to register and login, and past the intentionally boring nonsense, and then you'll find the same responses but this time the complete answers are there. Presumably the site is designed that way to get it googled while still making it seem as though you need to register.
Re: (Score:2)
Put this in userChrome.css:
Skip all their cloaking bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Expert sex change, again? (Score:5, Informative)
Whoops, except I meant userContent.css of course. As a mea culpa, here's a version that also takes out their 7-day trial banner and some links to other random crap, and that won't affect other sites that happen to use the same class names for something.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm.... Doesn't seem to work for me. Just hides the adverts. Oh well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Knowledgeable programmers don't hang around sites like Experts Exchange or Stack Overflow answering newbie questions. They read sites like arxiv and LtU and subscribe to groups and mailing lists specific to their interests.
This site has no chance of getting expert programmers to hang around long because it doesn't foster discussion on topics that are interesting to experts. At best you'll get mediocre programmers answering relatively basic questions. Look at the questions and answers on the first few pag
Re:Expert sex change, again? (Score:4, Funny)
Correction in terminology (Score:3, Interesting)
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 exper
Re:Correction in terminology (Score:5, Insightful)
i would also add that teaching others is one of the best ways to teach yourself.
while i'm not a math wiz by any means (got a C in AP Calculus--though i did pass the AP test with a 5), i was involved in an after-school library tutoring program my junior and senior year. this was an excellent program, not only because it was a great resource for struggling students, but also because it was a great learning experience for the student tutors as well.
tutoring other students is a great way to review old knowledge, and sometimes you even learn alongside the students as you try to help them understand difficult concepts. there's no better way to gain a genuine grasp on challenging material than having to explain it to someone else. it really challenges you to look at, analyze, and break down difficult concepts in new ways in order to convey the concept to the person you're tutoring. and in this process, you yourself also become much more familiar with and gain a better understanding of the material.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm happy to help anyone, newbie or not, but I ca
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Expertsexchange is free via google cache.
Just use the google cached version of the page, highlight the text on the page and the answers are there for anyone.
google++
Re: (Score:2)
that's more or less what ExpertsExchange was (Score:2)
I'm not going to say it was perfect, but it was a fairly minimalist site, completely free, that had people answering questions, in a not unreasonable percentage of the cases actually good answers. I'm not actually sure what happened in the meantime, only that I forgot about it entirely, probably around 1999 or so, stumbled upon it a few years later (2003? 2004?), and sometime in between it had morphed into total crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate the Yahoo Answers site, and this looks like its going to be a version of that for computer related questions.
"Best subversion client for Mac OS? [stackoverflow.com]"
(how bout svn you dope)
"What is the single most effective way to keep from getting Slashdotted [stackoverflow.com]"
(I won't even comment on this)
Personally I can't wait until the relationship questions come up. "How do
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are making a question and answer site, why would you make the questions and answers the least prominent thing on every page?
A fixed width site? You have got to be kidding me. We are developers with 30" monitors.
Re: (Score:2)
A fixed width site? You have got to be kidding me. We are developers with 30" monitors.
Speak for yourself. Where I work I just went from a single 19" to ..... a single 22". I'm not joking.
As far as the look is concerned, I have to admit I didn't spend a second of my time there earlier today noticing the aesthetics. I was occupied studying the system surrounding the questions and answers. That is the point of the site, after all.
Whether it'll become what Joel wishes it to be will be up to the community and future tweaking of the site. Personally, I think it stands a chance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Expert sex change, again? (Score:5, Informative)
Valid point. I did scratch my chin over that one for a few seconds. Then clicked "learn more" and discovered I already had accounts with at least four of the listed sites. I just picked one and that was it.
Re: (Score:2)
A fixed width site? You have got to be kidding me. We are developers with 30" monitors.
I agree about the fixed width thing being silly, however... are you running your browser fullscreen on a 30" monitor? you know, it's a browser not a fucking IDE.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean... no piles of JS or worse and loads/renders quickly? Sounds like a winner to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you fix it? http://userstyles.org/stylish/ [userstyles.org]
CC.
Re:Expert sex change, again? (Score:5, Funny)
www.experts-exchange.com
You probably don't want to go to expertsexchange.com
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
It's better than going to amateursexhange.com.
Re: (Score:2)
You probably don't want to go to expertsexchange.com
It's better than going to amateursexhange.com.
Either way, if you wake up all groggy in a Bangkok hospital with extensive bandages and local anesthetic from the waist down, you're probably about to have a very, very bad day.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Far more useful (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Expert sex change, again? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's his goal. (To be useful, not to be like EE.) Joel has written about the development of S-O several times on his site and mentions this almost every time. From the most recent post: [joelonsoftware.com]
Basically, he (and some others) said "this could be better" so they went ahead and made it. And no, he is absolutely 100% against experts-exchange style trickery. He just saw a need he wanted to fill, saw something that he wanted to exist so he made it. He's got the money to run it ad-free forever.
high quality? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:high quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
Questions and answers can be rated, so that helps. As your rank increases (by posing good questions and helpful answers) your abilities on the site increase, up to the point where you virtually become a moderator. The algorithm for determining this may need some tweaking--right now, you need 6000 points to achieve the highest rank, and you get 10 points for a being modded up (losing 2 for being modded down.) If it's anything like other moderation systems, a bunch of people will get together to mod each others questions and answers up enough to become Stack Overflow gods.
Re: (Score:2)
Not Joel Spolsky's Site (Score:5, Informative)
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 [codinghorror.com] 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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean experts exchange results? (Score:2)
I hated them for a long time, but it wasn't until after I was out of school that I even realized that they actually had the answers (but ever since I've I've ignored the minor annoyance and generally appreciated the slightly higher quality of response).
Anyway, it's pretty us
Re: (Score:2)
You can just sign up as an expert. You don't ever have to post answers, but you can still read them all without it costing anything.
Re:Not Joel Spolsky's Site (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
This doesn't work unless you have referer from google, try opening the url in a fresh browser and instead of answers at the bottom of the page you get "View this solution now by starting your 7-day free trial. Setting up your free trial is quick, easy, and secure. We will return you to this solution, unlocked, when you're done." message at the bottom.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They're still there.
But only if you link to the site from google. If you try to browse the site yourself, you get nothing.
Initial thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Initial thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Initial thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a "Homework" tag, and anyone with enough rank to tag questions can apply it (even if the student didn't.)
As for the GP's point, if SO wants to become the source of all good bits it would *need* to duplicate the questions that can be easily Googled so that it has all of the answers. A lot of the information on Wikipedia could have been Googled as well, but the people who added that info added value to Wikipedia regardless.
Re: (Score:2)
Being "the source of all good bits" is neither feasible nor optimal. If the question being asked is how to use a particular function, then a search engine should take you to the API refer
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't disagree with you, but there's a category of questions between your two examples which is (I think) where SO is aimed. API references sometimes tell you everything /except/ how to use a function (or at least they don't cover more than one or two standard cases). And your second question would be more suitable for SO phrased as "how can I stop Firefox from doing [x]".
I'm still on the fence as to whether their concept will work or not. I've gotten a couple of excellent answers to very specific questio
important programming question (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That question is used as the example of what not to ask, so instead there's this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35809/why-are-vi-and-emacs-popular [stackoverflow.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OK, I'll ask.
Why is vim so much better than emacs??
Nice /-vertisement (Score:2)
But really, what's the point? What do I get from this site I can't find with usenet and Google groups?
With the issue of researching a question regarding foo v3 and getting burried with out of date data on foo v1, what is being done here to resolve that issue?
For the moment I expect the site to have details of the latest and greatest, but only because it is a new site. If it lasts a few years, it will be full of the same stale information as other sites.
Will they remove any questions/responses regarding ol
Editing will keep it up-to-date (Score:2)
Nope. You didn't RTFA. It has Wikipedia-like editing of questions and answers. If you get enough reputation in the site, you can edit and update things as needed.
Re:Editing will keep it up-to-date (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
C FAQ is gated in ways StackOverflow is not (Score:2)
The C FAQ is the result of content being gated through a few very high level C users. If a particular question becomes too obtuse on StackOverflow, then a new one will be created - but in reality what would happen is that you would get some simple answers, some complex answers, the good ones from both sets would be modded up and the reader could choose. It's not like just anyone can edit, there are rules around who can edit what when designed to bring more control than Wikipedia has but still allowing an
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with C is that it requires a decent explanation of computer architecture to understand; no other language is quite this bad. This leads to explanations about the stack versus heap and other technical considerations that no other language FAQ needs to explain. Meanwhile, beginners become frustrated, angry that you're lecturing them on some boring low level details that they're certain don't matter, because they never have elsewhere. This is why the best way to learn C is to learn assembly first,
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, to a point. I am a self taught C programmer. My formal education followed my learning C. I can definitely agree that C is far more low level than most people care to understand. However, the problem with the FAQ is not the low level nature of C. The problem with the FAQ is that nobody who uses C partically can understand it. The only people who understand it learn it, and teach it, and related theory at university 24/7. They don't use it day in and day out in the real world. There is a schism bet
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with C is that it requires a decent explanation of computer architecture to understand; no other language is quite this bad. This leads to explanations about the stack versus heap and other technical considerations that no other language FAQ needs to explain.
If you ever even read CLC, or the C FAQ, you'd know better than to refer to stack/heap - the C experts get, well, vexed when hearing things like "stack" and "heap" in a C context, and with good reason. You see, saying that C actually has those concepts is misleading, because it doesn't, and trying to learn C when keeping in mind "stack" and "heap" leads to bad practices. So they maintain that no C problem (in CLC and the C FAQ) should ever mention these things, as the C standard itself makes no mention of
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I admit I've never read the C FAQ. But I'd love to see the contortions one must make to explain why you cant return pointers to auto variables. These are the same sort of people who get angry when people confuse "pass by reference" for "passing references by value".
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I admit I've never read the C FAQ. But I'd love to see the contortions one must make to explain why you cant return pointers to auto variables.
Let me try a contortion :-)
You cannot return pointers to variables with local storage duration, as the C standard calls this "undefined behaviour"[N869, 6.2.4.3, 6.2.4.4, 6.2.4.6].
These are the same sort of people who get angry when people confuse "pass by reference" for "passing references by value".
Well, it's true, they do (or rather, we do :-), because it leads to all sorts of misconceptions - you obviously know what you are talking about, but saying the same thing to a pascal programmer would make them think something else entirely.
Re: (Score:2)
I had a couple of XSLT questions that hours of Googling had failed to answer. I posted them on SO and a Finnish gentleman answered them (correctly) within 30 minutes. I was impressed.
Now that it's out of private beta, I don't know what'll happen to it. And I'm still not sold on the whole hybrid forum/wiki format. But regardless of what happens to the site going forward, it was a huge help to me last week.
Re: (Score:2)
But really, what's the point? What do I get from this site I can't find with usenet and Google groups?
There used to be a time, many years ago, when Googling for something, or looking on usenet might actually find an answer to a technical question.
Just last week we had a tech issue with MSIE 7 and the "Operation Terminated" popup.
Out of all the top 10 pages of supposed "tech forums" listed on Google where this issue had been encountered, the responses are overrun with cockroaches with nothing more constructi
Re: (Score:2)
I've been using the site for a few weeks now, and I can confirm your doubts. Its a fairly nice s
What idiot designed the input formatting? (Score:2)
"to linebreak use 2 spaces at end"
Who ordered that? That's a huge headache if you want to paste in something.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like reST [sourceforge.net].
Reputation System (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
Re: (Score:2)
I have one word for Stack Overflow: Cliques
Teenagers with too much time on their hands will kill this thing in a week unless they adjust their scheme.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's possible, but the site has been in beta for a while, and bored people have been trying to manipulate it already. They've put a lot of mechanisms in place to encourage good behavior, and hopefully community monitoring will continue to stop this.
What you're saying should be pretty easy to detect, right? Like, these 10 people all post crappy answers and vote each other's crappy answers up? Those users could be penalized, and meanwhile, if the answers are truly crappy, other people can be voting them dow
Re: (Score:2)
The site is not yet popular. A popular site has to worry less about poor posts from particular users, but rather an overall community developing that takes a dim view on new users. The PROBLEM with this sort of clique is that the type of people who band together into cliques are usually the least knowledgeable. So they will end up working in concert to drive off those who know things rather than promote those who do.
Oversight is a key issue with ANY community. If there is no oversight here, the community wi
Re: (Score:2)
This exact sort of system has been in place for years at PerlMonks [perlmonks.org], to excellent effect. These guys just took it and applied it to programming questions in general.
...is very off-putting (Score:2)
My experience so far has been that the majority of moderators are not equipped to judge answers on correctness (else they'd have answered themselves), so they score based on tone.
So if you google the question and post a 2-para precis of the top hit in a friendly tone, you get lots of points. Post a correct answer in a curt tone, and you go -ve very quickly.
Well I like helping people out as much as any geek, but I'll be buggered if I have to suck up while I'm doing it. And if you think karma-whoring is bad o
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Great. Level grinding :(
Knowledge RPG? (Score:2, Interesting)
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...
Re:Knowledge RPG? (Score:5, Funny)
It'll be like Slashdot; people will post good comments until they have good karma and then use the good karma to troll.
Faggot.
Re: (Score:2)
I dread the day somebody makes an ASCII art goatse that is also a valid perl script.
Re: (Score:2)
So I imagine that would be some sort of injection attack...?
Pun intended.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll paypal $5 to anyone who creates a valid perl script that when shown in an editor with a monospaced font it represents a good look alike for the stinger photo AND when executed generates a string which can be posted into a web form to perform a SQL injection attack. The SQL injection attack need not be functional against a known website, just something that would work on unsanitized input.
$10 if you give me one that will work against a website that properly sanitizes input, but takes advantage of somet
I was a beta tester (Score:4, Interesting)
And devshed? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
OpenID problems (Score:2, Informative)
The openID authentication isn't working for me. Anyone else having problems?
The differences: (Score:2, Insightful)
Quick, but wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Stack Overflow (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Has *anybody* paid money for expertsexchange?
I'm always in amazement that they still manage to be indexed by Google.
Re:Stack Overflow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Example... (Score:5, Funny)
Which is better? i++ or i+1?
It's i=i+1 or i+=1 you idiot! Who's the muthafuckin' genuis NOW?!
Re:Example... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
. Although, I'm sure he's a frequent contributor to the user submitted php manual notes.
This hasn't stopped you... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
True that. Idle is like Slashdot's answer to Matrix Reloaded: the original is great and we all agree that the other does not exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? I don't know, but my guess is it was just too advanced for ubuntu gurus.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
How is this any different then daniweb.com?
People have actually heard about stackoverflow.com
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know of it because I end up Spolsky website so many times when search for weird bugs. I'm actually suprised by the number of times I find answers from him, very useful fellow.
Re: (Score:2)
People are probably trying to avoid mentioning this in order to make the site look more inviting.
Re: (Score:2)
... so instead of debating about it, why doesn't someone just post the question on the site:
"Is this site good, or crap?"
"What is the best way of gaming the stackoverflow.com reputation system?"
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe that is why he and Jeff have made this site where users, not them, answer to questions.