Comments on: Thoughts on Stack Overflow

By: Sean A.O. Harney

Sean A.O. Harney — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:34:47 +0000

I just started using Stack Overflow this week because I had a grails question. It is addicting to try and answer the unanswered questions. And also sort of a competition, I dislike when I am trying to write a response and somebody beats me to it which leads me to post as fast as possible, then edit my response to fill in the details!

P.S. you have a typo in this line: You need a critical mass of users that know what *their* talking about.

By: VaporWarning» Blog Archive » Generators and resource aquisition/release

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:03:41 +0000

[...] went to Stack Overflow and submitted a “feeler” question to see if there was some conventional Python wisdom I [...]

By: Midhat

Midhat — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:50:44 +0000

SO works very well for the languages more popular with its users. Theres a whole lot of .net folks there. For smeone like me, wanting occasional help with things like matlab, R etc, SO aint much of an attration. i am sticking with the good ol usenet

By: Christopher Leary

Christopher Leary — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:09:42 +0000

@Adam Olsen: Ah I see — I don’t believe that you get any points for commenting, either.

In one of the podcasts Jeff encouraged users who discover their own answers to post the questions anyway (if they’re not already there). It makes the site’s content more thorough and provides a good way to get started with reputation. You get reputation for your question getting up-voted and for choosing an accepted answer. Plus, you definitely know which answers should be up- and down-voted. :)

By: Adam Olsen

Adam Olsen — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:05:11 +0000

@Christopher: I do look at questions that already have answers, but it’s hard to find one where there’s anything useful to add. It’d be a little easier to add a comment about one of the answers.. but I’m not allowed to do that yet either.

I’m pretty good at researching my questions on my own, so anything that survives is going to be either extremely particular or just a rant about the current state of affairs (or both). Nothing too productive. Or it could be because my interests are very unusual in the first place.

By: Christopher Leary

Christopher Leary — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:49:15 +0000

@Adam Olsen: I agree — I primarily use it to ask questions I come across while programming (that weren’t previously asked) and answer already answered questions in a more precise or thorough way.

It’s important to note that there’s no rule saying you can’t answer an already answered question. The “Accepted Answer” flag is just for the author to indicate their currently preferred answer. It’s nothing definitive.

I’ve gotten some really good answers to nagging questions, so if you’ve got some of those, throw them out there.

By: Adam Olsen

Adam Olsen — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:43:44 +0000

I find SO interesting, but I’ve yet to get my foot in the door. There just aren’t many unanswered C or Python questions.

By: Joe Zack

Joe Zack — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:43:12 +0000

I think, much like google, a couple years from now programmers are going to be wonder how they ever managed to get along without SO.

By: Christopher Leary

Christopher Leary — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:56:14 +0000

Sounds like you didn’t have to root around for the beta signup form, Will. :) The form that linked to Jeff’s Google Docs spreadsheet. It’s referenced in one of the podcasts — check out: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/08/bad-news-good-news/

By: will w

will w — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:51:37 +0000

Yea StackOverflow is a awsome resource, and their never was a `beta form` you just needed to email jeff in the early days.

i was the 32 user.

will