Software Developer Community Stack Overflow Sold To Tech Giant Prosus for $1.8 Billion (wsj.com) 106
Prosus said it struck a $1.8 billion deal to acquire Stack Overflow, an online community for software developers, in a bet on growing demand for online tech learning. From a report: Based in New York, closely held Stack Overflow operates a question-and-answer website used by software developers and other types of workers such as financial professionals and marketers who increasingly need coding skills. It attracts more than 100 million visitors monthly, the company says.
Prosus, one of Europe's most valuable tech companies, is best known as the largest shareholder in Chinese internet and videogaming giant Tencent Holdings Listed in Amsterdam, Prosus signaled its appetite for deal making when it sold a small portion of its equity stake in Tencent in April for $14.6 billion. The Stack Overflow deal ranks among Prosus' biggest acquisitions. Prosus invests globally across a range of online platforms focused on areas such as food delivery, classifieds and fintech. It also maintains a more than $200 billion holding in Tencent. Prosus' parent company, Naspers, acquired the Tencent stake in 2001 for $34 million. Official press release.
Prosus, one of Europe's most valuable tech companies, is best known as the largest shareholder in Chinese internet and videogaming giant Tencent Holdings Listed in Amsterdam, Prosus signaled its appetite for deal making when it sold a small portion of its equity stake in Tencent in April for $14.6 billion. The Stack Overflow deal ranks among Prosus' biggest acquisitions. Prosus invests globally across a range of online platforms focused on areas such as food delivery, classifieds and fintech. It also maintains a more than $200 billion holding in Tencent. Prosus' parent company, Naspers, acquired the Tencent stake in 2001 for $34 million. Official press release.
Here comes the paywall... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, stack overflow "was" the alternative. When they paywall, another alternative will appear. It's curious that the suits never learn that.
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About as much as geeks realizing that all that constant chase takes up everyone's time. Alternative don't grow on trees.
Re:Here comes the paywall... (Score:4)
whose time?
as a technical solution stackoverflow is pretty simple, could be set up in record time and only would need traction, and any such attempt could get that traction in record time if stackoverflow were paywalled. not a time waste but actually an excellent opportunity since i really can't see any sizeable portion of the audience paying a premium.
for the "geeks", querying stackoverflow is convenient but is not really a necessity, just a more focused approach than querying google directly.
which is why i highly doubt it gets paywalled in the first place. afaik with some bumps it has been profitable at least 2019, at least enough for someone to cough up 1.8 billion dollar for it, so i don't see why it can't continue to do so, or even do better with additional services and revenue models that aren't that drastic. the buying company literally swims in money so i'm sure they can spend some time trying a few ideas before going all nuts.
besides the actual content is cc licensed so can be shared anywhere, it has actually already leaked to many other sites. just test: find any question with reasonable amount of content/upvotes, do a literal google search of any portion of that content, odds are you'll get multiple identical hits. belongs to the internets already!
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Yes, and then we'll all have to start blocking expertsexchange.com all over again.
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for the "geeks", querying stackoverflow is convenient but is not really a necessity
Oh yes it is. If Stackoverflow were to go offline, programmer productivity would drop by 95% when it came to solving awkward programming issues. Or even non-awkward ones in some cases where "programming" means "copy and paste from Stackoverflow".
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More likely it will be advertising supported.
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Maybe Linux Questions [linuxquestions.org] is a useful start. The community is much narrower but a level of focus isn't a bad thing.
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Maybe Linux Questions [linuxquestions.org] is a useful start. The community is much narrower but a level of focus isn't a bad thing.
For general programming questions? Most questions I think are repeats in some form that you can cross reference and get pretty close to "your" solution if you know what you are seeing. You may get lucky on a message board but do they have the archives to be more than just lucky? Most programmers do not want the answer to the question they asked because they don't understand the question?
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Re:Here comes the paywall... (Score:5, Informative)
Gotta monetize this thing somehow... What's a good stack overflow alternative?
https://meta.stackexchange.com... [stackexchange.com]
Re:Here comes the paywall... (Score:5, Funny)
Closed as duplicate, and the alleged duplicate doesn't answer the question. Classic Stack Exchange.
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Creating an alternative will take time, so there is a window where some scheme can be developed to charge. I wonder who owns the content, and if it can be moved to a m
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I don't know if it's changed but everything on the site used to be CC licensed. Maybe time for a fork.
An open site like Wikipedia could work. Fix the rules so the usual Stack Exchange BS doesn't happen, and decent answers rise to the top.
Re:Here comes the paywall... (Score:5, Funny)
But IMDB wasn't the cornerstone of knowledge for millions of businesses.
I mean, it's not like most IT departments can function without stack overflow. Especially now with Yahoo Questions gone, I would think this would count as a core business technology, and IT departments would be working to download everything or otherwise ensure that they have access to the knowledge to do their jobs.
This could be a more dangerous vulnerability to a lot of businesses than any ransomware that's currently out there! Its one thing to have to cough up some bitcoins. It's a whole different thing to have to fire an entire IT department because they can't do their jobs anymore.
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well, usenet actually still works, but apparently installing a newsreader and finding a server is too geeky for the current average geek.
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This is true, and at one time it was as active and moderated as Stack. Two thing I think: one is that you have to pay extra for access to a news server, and two, it's text only. So no cool fonts etc. Another bonus is that it was the place to get movies, music, and porn before there was torrent, or napster, or pornhub etc. But again, very old fashioned. I wouldn't doubt if someone said there are still computer groups still operating on it.
yes, while distribution of binaries was a cool unexpected application (just conceptually, regardless of the legality of content) it did tax the system that wasn't designed for such high volumes and bandwidth. also spam became a notorious problem, nntp being a protocol mostly intended to be used in good faith.
today p2p filesharing has taken over the binary distribution, and spam needs still to be dealt with in any communications appliance, so usenet could still perfectly work.
indeed, the ubiquity of "web 2.0
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well, usenet actually still works, but apparently installing a newsreader and finding a server is too geeky for the current average geek.
Because "Open" communities do not work...
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Experts exchange...
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Being that it is Ad-driven there is probably money from that. However being it is sold to a European based company, I think Prosous needs Stack Overflow more than Stack Overflow needs Prosous. Europe, doesn't have much success in Software Services They often more rely on American and Chinese based services.
Prosous may need the Good Will from Stack Overflow to help drive its other businesses, as it would give them a name known outside of just their corner.
Re:Here comes the paywall... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time, everyone used Experts Exchange. Then Stack Overflow came into being because Expert Sexchange went paywall.
So Experts Overflow is presumably the next generation.
XML side topic (Score:1)
Re sig: "XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more."
For certain uses there isn't a significantly better alternative. The industry has a decent choice between CSV, XML, and JSON. At least one should be good enough for a given need. (However, CSV needs a reliable multi-table-per-file convention added to it.)
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CSV needs a reliable multi-table-per-file convention added to it.
At one of my previous employers, our software exported multi-table backups in a format based on TSV, where each table consisted of a name (1 column), 1 row of headings, 0 or more data rows, and a blank (0 column) row. Each row was tab-separated, using the same quoting rules applied by Python's csv module in "excel-tab" dialect.
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I can't resist the urge to bump up this old comment [slashdot.org].
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I'm personally not a fan of tabs as delimiters, as being invisible makes them trickier to troubleshoot, at least for my head.
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I'm too lazy to change my sig. The world is less xml-centric than it used to be, but at least once upon a time the only answer to 'I need to serialize or interoperate' was 'xml', and further if your xml was too manageable, then you'll need to toss in a boatload of namespace bloat.
Not to mention all the 'fun' features with malicious !ENTITIY tags...
But xml is not so popular anymore and so I rarely see it used in awkward ways, so I'm not as cynical about it anymore.
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That's my next sig! Thanks
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I dunno, I think Sexchange Overflow has a nicer ring to it. Make a good band name too.
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After they betrayed their volunteer moderators (Score:3, Informative)
https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
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The same moderators who are usually assholes on Stack?
Owning expertise. (Score:2)
Prosus, one of Europe's most valuable tech companies, is best known as the largest shareholder in Chinese internet and videogaming giant Tencent Holdings Listed in Amsterdam, Prosus signaled its appetite for deal making when it sold a small portion of its equity stake in Tencent in April for $14.6 billion
Owning the mindshare.
Great a fucking paywall (Score:5, Insightful)
If the WSJ doesn't want to put things behind a paywall, they can take it off the internet and hide it in some shit apps. I am not paying $500 a year to access a shitty website that is 15% ads.
The meta-story (Score:1)
Great a fucking paywall
Well on the other hand it makes sense that a story where StackOverflow might get put behind a paywall, they illustrate what that might be like by putting the story itself behind a paywall...
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Well on the other hand it makes sense that a story where StackOverflow might get put behind a paywall, they illustrate what that might be like by putting the story itself behind a paywall...
Yo Dawg, I heard you like paywalls...
Good Bye Stack (Score:1)
I'm calling it: within two years it will have a recognizable change away from developer focused and advertising constrained. Within 10 years it'll be ruined.
It was nice while it lasted.
Within ten years it will be ruined? (Score:5, Insightful)
Time enough to do it a different, decentralized way that no one can buy or sell or steal.
Dare I hope that the 20's will be the decade of decentralization? The decade of the decline and fall of gratuitously centralized control? The end of client server as the only model, or even as the preferred model?
Forget the cloud. I want the mesh.
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Rather than reinvent the wheel, modify a wiki engine. Keep all original (non spam) posts under a tab to keep people honest, but let editors factor and clean questions and responses.
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There are already some alternatives. A web search of "stackoverflow.com alternative" has links. One I've seen is on https://www.codeproject.com/sc... [codeproject.com]
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Dare I hope that the 20's will be the decade of decentralization?
Well agreed. Stack Overflow already decentralizes the questions, the answers, and the ratings of both. Kudos for that. Now I'd like a service that also decentralizes the scoring system, the curating algorithms, and the presentation (the wheat from the chaff thing). Then someday maybe the rewards and punishments and other incentives.
The last hope for an antidote to corruption is decentralization.
WCPGW (Score:2)
'nuff said. One can only hope Prosus implements a true "Hands-off" approach.
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At least DICE didn't buy them!
To Paraphase Spaceballs: (Score:2)
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/b... [getyarn.io]
Well shit, there goes the community!
Yo Grark
I hope they fix SO (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope they make SO less annoying. They work hard to invent reasons to boot one's comments and questions off. It should be more like Slashdot whereby a ranking system is used to virtually "hide" (allegedly) poor content which can viewed if one explicitly wants to see it by setting view thresholds and/or clicking "more" links. SO is too all-or-nothing.
However, unlike Slashdot, people should be required to give a clear reason for downvotes. Without clear feedback its hard to correct poor behavior or ideas. "It sux" is not useful. Down-vote reasons ideally should also be graded.
Re:I hope they fix SO (Score:4, Insightful)
They also need to do something about "early upvotes" outnumber late ones. I just came across a problem (like, literally, just now) where I Googled for an answer, the top result was a Stack Overflow answer, the question itself was closed as a duplicate of a different question, and the most-upvoted answer was wrong.
The most up-voted answer on the question that was listed as the earlier duplicate was not only a more thorough answer, but it was also a right answer. So there was that, I guess. Too bad Google linked to the question with the wrong answer as the most relevant result from Stack Overflow.
It would be nice if Stack Overflow did something about the "first mover" advantage, where earlier answers get a boost from being seen by more people. There's a reason Slashdot caps posts at +5, although this doesn't really prevent there from being a "first mover" advantage on Slashdot as well.
(Also fun is when a question is closed as a duplicate to a years-old question where the original answer used functions that have since been deprecated and removed, or used libraries that were actively maintained at the time but no longer are and no longer work on modern versions of whatever platform they ran on.)
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The voting is broken too. On many sub-sites there is massive trolling and gatekeeping. It's a lot like Wikipedia, with rules created just to stop people contributing.
A great example is on the sci-fi site. They decided to ban questions asking for identifications and examples. Those questions were very popular and the decision was quietly and quickly made on the meta discussion site. Once the decision is made they make sure it can't be reopened. A trick leaned from Wikipedia no doubt.
story-identification still on-topic on SFSE (Score:2)
I know Movies & TV declared story ID off-topic, but since when did Science Fiction & Fantasy drop it? There are still open questions in [story-identification] from the past day [stackexchange.com], the tag's description doesn't say anything to the effect "DO NOT USE", the on-topic page in Help Center [stackexchange.com] still mentions story ID as on-topic, and it's still recommended instead of Movies for this purpose [stackexchange.com].
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Last time I tried to ask a question like that on SciFi/Fantasy it was closed with a link to an obscure post on meta. The meta post was also closed to prevent further answers, and had exactly one answer that unilaterally decided no more "what are some" type questions.
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Questions asking for lists are indeed off-topic because they cannot have a definitive answer [stackexchange.com]. Those aren't the same as story ID.
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It wasn't asking for a list. I was asking if any stories covering a specific idea have ever been published, or if it's something that has never been explored. Specifically a hard sci-fi superhero story with beings like Superman. Given the known laws of physics a being with powers like that would interact with the world in very interesting ways.
Anyway, they hate popular questions and the decision making process to stop taking them was a joke.
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Thanks. I'm more interested in the physics involved when someone can travel that fast, hit that hard etc.
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...virtually "hide" ...
...reason for downvotes...
Well agreed. One man's trash is another's treasure. And reasons matter. Also negativity should have nuanced costs.
Heyday already past (Score:5, Interesting)
About 8 years ago it was quite hyped; some people actually bragged about their rep* in real life and/or included a profile link when job hunting. That's in the past now, I've even seen some colleagues caution others about trusting StackOverflow answers. It unfortunately has attracted a lot of me-too Dunning Krugers - first with useless answers. They should have stuck to blogging about Hello World in Angular, might have gotten a few cents more out of advertising that way.
It won't be easy to fix every problem, because some are structural, e.g.:
- Technology renewing and answers becoming obsolete
- Upvoting/moderation by people that are not experts either - have seen some BAD practices...
- Egos in a gameified system...
- and then there's Monica, still seemingly casting a shadow.
*=Top 5% here but I've not posted in like forever.
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That's in the past now, I've even seen some colleagues caution others about trusting Internet answers. It unfortunately has attracted a lot of me-too Dunning Krugers - first with useless answers.
Duh. On to the other points.
Technology renewing and answers becoming obsolete
Upvoting/moderation by people that are not experts either
Egos in a gameified system
Duh. Duh. Big DUH.
The problem with StackOverflow is the Internet, reality, and humans. Got any other insightful nuggets, totally legit +5 Interesting in first 30 minutes Anonymous?
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It unfortunately has attracted a lot of me-too ... with useless answers.
I have noticed recently that often the top voted answer is not the one that works out for me. Often the second or even third highest is what sends me down the best or even correct path (at-least for my situation and based on my judgement).
Weird!
Stack Overflow (Score:2)
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For novices, by novices.
Um ... No ...
Many of the people that answer are experts with decades of experience [myself included].
And, sometimes, I do a [google] search looking for an information/answers to a problem I have and the best results frequently are from SO.
That was how I found out that the site even existed [5 years ago]. After a while, I just signed up [because, being an "old" programmer, I wanted to mentor younger programmers].
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In my experience, it's almost always right. It's certainly far better than Experts Exchange where you'd find your exact question on Google, go to the site and find the answer is paywalled.
Also, if you keep finding wrong answers on SO, there are mechanisms that allow you to provide feedback - even provide right answers. If you don't want to do that, fine but it's only because other people give back to the SO community that it works so well.
Anecdote != data
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Different experience (Score:2)
And, sometimes, I do a [google] search looking for an information/answers to a problem I have and the best results frequently are from SO.
Most of the time, when I search google it is for a specific purpose/feature for which I am sure there should be a function or an option in the library I am using. Or an issue with a specific error message triggered by a library.
Usually the type of question whose solution should be in the API documentation, and/or mentioned on an issue on the repository of said library or of some other software that uses the library similarly and runs into the same kind of problem.
If not there it is probably going to be disc
Stack Overflow? (Score:1)
Sometimes the easy answer IS the right one. (Score:4, Interesting)
With that said, I grew up learning to program before the Internet was a thing and I believe I have an advantage now because I learned to think through a problem and not just rely on finding easy answers.
Great...work in a single language and single platform?...then you have a point. The farther I go in my career and the more I earn, the more I am expected to get familiar with technologies and breakneck speeds and integrate unfamiliar solutions and platforms. I'd love to get paid to just work with familiar technology all day, but most of big tech expects you to be very flexible and adapt to changing environments constantly. Also, the more you're thinking through a problem, the more I suspect you are trying to solve something someone else has already solved.
There's a huge disconnect between academia and business. I had to spend months studying sorting algorithms, but have never even heard of someone writing one this century, just as an example. Good engineers are "lazy" in that they integrate well tested solutions rather than reinventing the wheel at great expense to their employer. I have to shoot down pull requests every other week from some smug guy with a high opinion of his computer science skills because he didn't bother to read the docs or check stackoverflow to find out he reinvented some feature that was already implemented, much more professionally, into the frameworks already on the classpath. Sometimes this thoroughness is not a sign of quality, but of ignorance and being too lazy to push yourself to learn how other people have solved the problem, so you do things in the way that is familiar and comforting to you.
Sorry, you're paid to solve problems for your employer in the most cost efficient manner possible. Thinking through a problem more than you need to is just wasting their money. It's macho and cool to say things like " I learned to think through a problem and not just rely on finding easy answer," but unless you can demonstrate a need to be that thorough, you just wasted their money and pushed back their release schedule. Sometimes you need to have holistic knowledge as you advocate, but sometimes the easy answer is the best one.
If you don't need it,you're not trying hard enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who still has to use it more than once every few weeks is not learning solutions, just copying solutions.
OK boomer!
If you don't need to use StackOverflow, you suck at your job. You're not pushing boundaries or trying anything new. Here's the thing about software. If we knew EXACTLY how to do it, it would have been done already. If you have all the info you need in your head + the manual to get the job done, you're just repeating yourself.
For context, I am an expert in Java and Oracle RDBMS and a few other technologies. I know the main APIs by heart. That's the easiest part of my job. The hard part is taking familiar frameworks like Spring, JPA, JAX-RS, etc and integrating them with niche or obscure technologies. I never have to look up how to use Hibernate, but some certificate error authenticating with an obscure 3rd party solution, yes, I'm on it all the time for things like that...or confirming what I think is a best practice is one.
If you make fun of people using stackoverflow, I am guessing you write in really old code. You're probably one of those dicks still writing Java code in Java 7 because 8 is too new and you don't want to crack open a book an learn how to use lambdas.
I don't know about you, but in 25 years of being a professional software engineer, I have never stopped or even slowed down learning. I am having to learn all day. I go to stackoverflow and various blogs often. I am a high end developer...they don't hire me to add validation or an extra field to a workflow. They hire me to do difficult things and integrate various systems and design complex applications, always across unfamiliar technologies, and sometimes even across languages I never use. I need help from any source I can get and few sites have helped me get through errors (almost always not my fault) than stackoverflow.
Most open source frameworks have piss poor error handling and throw useless an obscure errors. I can either do a deep dive and spend a day tracing through their source code for insight into the cause and solution to an error thrown or I can leverage someone else's work posted on stack overflow.
I suppose it's fun to feel superior to other and piss on those who use the site, but for those of us who actually know what we're talking about and how to do our job well, anyone making fun of stackoverflow sounds like the clueless one.
Super cool story bro (Score:2)
"Professional software engineer" who settles for Java?
Cool story, bro.
We do what we're paid to do. You want to fuck around, write in whatever language YOU find fulfilling. You want to get paid?...you have to play well with others.
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Ha ha, yes.
Writing code in whatever language the project mandates is pretty much a core part of the definition of "professional software engineer".
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Well said. In the past couple months I had to tackle Ruby and Groovy. They're not hard after years of C++ and Python, but I'm searching for 101-level stuff pretty regularly. SO is a good source for that.
Re: If you don't need it,you're not trying hard en (Score:2)
Couldn't agree more. My expertise is live streaming and just for the 'what the hell does this error code really mean in exoplayer' it is invaluable.
With over 25 years in IT error codes still just as shite as ever. But another issue...
Software Developer Community (Score:3)
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Half of the community leaves, and what was once a unified group of knowledgeable people is scattered across smaller, harder to find and search across communities. Not to mention rotting of previously posted information as the maintainers and posters of the information abandon the site, leaving out of date and incorrect information still drawing searches..
Billions (Score:3)
That's a lot of money for a voluntary database run by snots.
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so? wait until tik-tok sells, and it's mainly retarded videos.
Get their money out of China (Score:2)
Any western company with a large investment in China would be wise to diversify ASAP. China is changing again, and fast. If there is real trouble with the west, then those investments might turn out to be worthless.
I'm not that optimistic (Score:2)
Just my two cents. But I'm not overly optimistic about this buyout. It seems pretty... proSUS.
Okay I'll go ahead take my long walk off the short pier now.
And what about Monica? (Score:3)
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I was wondering if anybody was going to mention the Monica controversy [which being a regular SO responder, I'm familiar with].
Perhaps, the acquisition will allow for the reinstatement/apology/exoneration. It has been difficult for the present management to admit that they may have over-reacted or that guidelines need to be revisited/refined, possibly with a more formalized/open [less opaque] review process.
Some of the guideline/help pages are unchanged/static over time and too generic/vague. And lacking in
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As a regular SO responder, I check for both my kidneys before going to sleep at night and upon waking in the morning ...
Thank you for your concern about my well being. I do appreciate the love ...
Only $1.8B? (Score:2)
And nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sorry you've had such a negative experience.
But, there is more review/moderation to actions than you might suspect unless you've spent some time on the site.
Unfortunately, it can be all too common to get "knee-jerk" downvotes or [less common] votes-to-close, usually by people that don't have the domain experience to know whether a question can be improved/fixed (e.g. a python programmer downvotes/closes a C language question based on a cursory examination of the question--it happens).
I'll upvote questions that have been DV'ed if I see "itchy trigger fingers". A DV is -2 rep points, but a single upvote is a +10. So, not as big a deal for rep points. But, users without sufficient rep can only see the net total of upvotes/downvotes and not the number of upvotes vs downvotes. So, you might see a net count of -1, but not know that it got 3 downvotes but got 2 upvotes (i.e. there was a disagreement amongst the voters). OP's rep points would actually go up: ((-2) + (-2) + (-2)) + ((+10) + (+10)) for a net gain of +14.
If I see a question that has been closed, as a dup. Or "lacking in detail" and the question is perfectly answerable by someone with specific domain expertise [e.g. I can answer it], I'll vote to reopen. And, fight to get an answer for the OP (original poster).
While there isn't a review queue for downvotes, there is a review queue for close votes [particularly, if someone has voted to reopen the question].
And, I'm perfectly willing to flag snide comments to moderators. I did that for a commenter that was unfairly hammering an OP with abusive comments. I checked the commenter's profile immediately and, again, next day. Apparently, there was a history of such abuse as the commenter got a one year suspension from SO within that 24 hour period. This is the maximum penalty short of account deletion, reserved for repeated offenses. The commenter would have been warned multiple times, both on the site and in email, and have received shorter suspensions in the past.
If a question needs work (it is missing necessary code or needs a better statement of the problem that the code is trying to solve, etc.), I'll frequently post comments with edit suggestions or ask clarifying questions (always politely), rather than downvote/close.
If a responder posts an incomplete/invalid/bad answer to a question, it gets the same [or worse] scrutiny/process as the question, including comments, downvotes, forced edits, and [sometimes] deletions. Mostly a comment under the answer and the responder will fix/improve the answer.
Frequently, with a bad answer, there is a comment pointing out the error, and the responder will voluntarily delete the answer if they feel they can't fix it.
Or, the responder [after rereading the question] realizes that the answer they gave doesn't answer the question or doesn't answer it "well enough" and they will self delete the answer. Sometimes within minutes of posting it.
Without sufficient rep points, most viewers can't see these deleted answers, but there are more of them than you might believe.
Not all OPs are created alike. And, sometimes this can be frustrating for [potential] responders.
Some OPs respond and edit their questions and provide the needed/requested info. I (and many others) will repeat the process until the question becomes good/answerable and the OPs do get useful/valid answers [sometimes in comments if the solution is simple enough]. It is [can be] a collaborative process between OP and responders to improve the question and get OP the answer they want/need.
However, some OPs just go "radio silent" when they are asked for clarification.
Some get argumentative (e.g.):
What do you mean I need to post more code? The three lines I've given you are enough to answer my question!
Although I remain polite and continue to try to be positive/helpful, there are times when I'd like to say: "If you knew
Coding w/o SO is like math without a calculator (Score:5, Interesting)
...and we let him go. Why? He fucking sucked at his job. He was so smug and confident in his knowledge, but would take 4x as long to do everything and about 3/4 of what he wrote, we'd throw out because he would rather write his own than use functions built into the JDK or Spring or Hibernate. If you were unfortunate to catch him in the hallways, he'd brag about his good old days of punchcards and obscure pre-UNIX systems no one has used for 40 years and how people who rely on stackoverflow don't understand how to do their job. Needless to say, his pull requests were the biggest and he had the most bugs and most PRs rejected. Often, we'd take a large 1000 line PR and replace it with a single call to a built-in function. He was not well liked by anyone, especially QA, who had to file bug after bug for his many mistakes.
There's no doubt an assembler programmer in the 80s was 10x as smart as I am. However, I get a LOT more done in a shorter amount of time and generate a lot more value for my employer. I am not as impressive, but I am worth a lot more.
Bragging about not using stackoverflow is like bragging that you can do your taxes in your head without a computer or calculator. If I saw my accountant do my taxes in my head, I'd be impressed at his acumen and quickly hire someone I could trust to do the job correctly.
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I have to wonder if he even tried SO. I wrote a lot of code that is in use today that part of it came from SO or the ideas came from there. I thought it was indispensable for help. To say he doesn't use it is like saying you don't need to read about history. You already know it, except you don't.
Good that you fired him.
Software Developer Community Stack Overflow... (Score:2)
FTFY
Bulletin board Stack Overflow...
The people who use Stack are the community. But Stack is really just a mature bulletin board with a lot of nice features (OK not just, but you know what I mean). If Stack doesn't stay friendly to the community, the community can always move.
SO is a toxic environment (Score:1)
Seriously the mods there are on a power trip beyond even Wikipedia mods.
Also, the answers are often wrong because they're posted by idiots that for some reason get no mod attention. Meanwhile helpful questions, answers, and moderation get banned.
What an idiotic place [google.com] that is.
StackExchange has more interesting sites than SO (Score:4, Interesting)
But StackExchange (the company behind StackOverflow) has many more interesting question and answer sites, such as for worldbuilding, SciFi, code golf, puzzles, you name it. Most of those other sites don't generate revenue though, so I wouldn't be surprised if the new owners decided to shut them down. That would be unfortunate.
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