Stack Overflow

brian_d_foy on 2008-09-15T18:03:54

Stack Overflow, the programmer's question site that Joel Spolsky helped design this summer, is now public. It looks like a cross between reddit and Perlmonks.

It does mix all of the questions together, so you'll see a VB question next to a PHP question next to a Perl question, but it also has tagging. To see the Perl questions, listed most recent first, just go to the the page for Perl tags.

It also looks like it might have the unintended consequence of becoming a Web 2.0 version of IRC: despite the FAQ saying that subjective questions (favorite X, etc) should not be asked, the subjective questions seem pretty popular. Along with that, I think the voting will go pear-shaped if they get the wrong community, which I already think is happening. It's actully depressing that someone can build a good tool or service and have it go awry for reasons totally out of their control. It's predictable even, but there's really not that much that you can do technologically to prevent it.

John Siracusa has been doing a good job, and the way to avoid disaster is to get more good people there. You just need an OpenID account.


Poke the Bear

jk2addict on 2008-09-16T19:36:09

FAQ Schmack. Sometimes you have to poke the bear just to see what kind of attitude it has.

My prediction: Programming Subreddit. It doesn't matter what you try.