7 ms·

All-Star Team Backs StackOverflow to Go Beyond Programming Questions

36 points by aditya 16y ago

raganwald 16y ago
The closing paragraph: Spolsky says that the easiest way he's heard people explain the difference between Stack Overflow and old fashioned forums is that when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page. That's a charming way to put it and it's sure to be interesting to see the team that's assembled take a shot at building that kind of experience around other kinds of topics. Now THAT is an elevator pitch: Stack Overflow is just like old fashioned forums, only when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page.
- melling 16y ago
  That's correct. And the iPad is just a tablet notebook like the one from Microsoft in 2000. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13tabletpc.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13... And the iPhone is really just a cleaned up smart phone. StackOverFlow took an old idea, cleaned it up and made a better product. Seems pretty simple after the fact. Getting the small things right in a product really makes a big difference. StackOverFlow isn't perfect (and neither was the iPhone or iPad) but they got a good minimal viable product and now they're off to the races.
  - klochner 16y ago
    I'm all for Ries, Blanks, lean, mvp, etc. etc., but all the lean jargon is getting overused and abused.
- pak 16y ago
  It's not always at the top, though. Call it the reddit effect: sometimes the top-voted item is not the one that is the most informative, relevant or correct, but the one that appears so by virtue of being well written, backed by someone with sufficient karma, and clever enough to get upvotes. The asker may then mistakenly pick this as the accepted answer and the better but less hive-mind-friendly answers get pushed away. When skimming the site I've occasionally seen better answers at the bottom of a page getting ignored while people shout about the top few answers. If I didn't know better, I would have ignored them too.
  - cruise02 16y ago
    This happens a lot less on Stack Overflow than on reddit. The asker isn't supposed to accept the most popular answer, either. They're asking a question because they have a problem to solve. They should be testing solutions and accepting the one that works. I often see accepted answers with fewer upvotes than the most popular ones. The fact that both the most popular and the accepted answer are at the top of the screen is a nice feature of the site.
    - pak 16y ago
      The asker may be testing out some of the answers, but in reality most of the problems to be solved during software development are about balancing tradeoffs, e.g. security vs. performance. The reason the best solution is the best may not become apparent for years, when the project needs to scale, changes hands, needs to upgrade, gets hacked, etc. In such a case, how is the asker, lacking such experience, able to pick out the right answer except by number of upvotes? Same goes for anybody reading the page. I'm just saying a popularity-driven Q&A site has its drawbacks.
      - cruise02 16y ago
        You're assuming that both the asker and the crowd are incompetent. No kind of Q&A site is going to produce good results under those conditions.
        pak 16y ago
        I'm not assuming that. I'm suggesting that certain answers may become more popular and rise to the top for reasons that have nothing to do with correctness. These include but are not limited to: the style in which the answer is written, the assertiveness/aggressiveness of the answer, the decision to include or not include sample code, the karma or reputation of the answerer, and the current vote count and visibility of the answer. I think it is safe to assume that there is a gradient in experience among SO users and that for those on the lower end, votes may be more influenced by the issues I just listed than any standard of correctness. It's simple crowd psychology, and already well established at other voting sites like digg and reddit.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Stack Overflow is about instant gratification. This isn't a bad thing. It's what it is. Another way to look at it is this way: Stack Overflow gives a man a fish. Forums teach a man to fish. Now, when you need a fish, you need a fish. You don't need to learn to fish. But in the long run, forums, and discussion, usually provide better value. This doesn't mean SO can't teach people. However, it doesn't encourage teaching. It's setup for questions and answers, not discussion.
  - melling 16y ago
    Books aren't set up for discussion. I'm guessing that you think they aren't good for "fishing" either? The basic idea with StackOverFlow is to ask well-defined questions and get well-defined answers, without the long messy threaded response found in most forums. The worst is when the thread ends in a dead end. The wiki feature and the ability to include formated code are very useful. The reputation economy is essential, so more questions get answered, including older ones. What happens in a forum when no one answers a question? Ask again a few days later? Also, they do have short discussions through comments, which I have found to be effective. Finally, I think you, and many others, are completely missing the point of StackOverFlow, and hopefully other future sites like it. If say, for example, 100,000 people are learning [Lisp, Scala, Java, C++, Go, jQuery, C#, etc], they are going to have the a lot of similar questions that really only need to be asked once, with one or two solutions provided. Now the next 99,999 people don't need to ask the same question. So, now we have taken the FAQ and improved upon it by creating it dynamically through voting, and question matching. There are various improvements that could be done to StackOverFlow. They are essentially creating a huge database of programming knowledge. Ideally it, or a similar project, could be organized to enable someone to start learning any new topic and become proficient by browsing and searching the site. Questions could be further categorized to enable better filtering (eg. Mac OS bug, compiler warning message, compiler error message), include specific version solutions (eg. Java 1.5, Java 1.6). A Rosetta Stone feature could be added linking solutions. For example, the question: "How do I reverse a string in [Java]?" could provide links to the Perl, C#, Java, Lisp, Scheme, Javascript solutions.
    - jasonlotito 16y ago
- jaytee_clone 16y ago
  Stack Overflow is optimized for Q & A, while you can do more than just asking questions in a forum (i.e. actually making friends and building communities). They are both great. Really, every forum should just have a Q & A section that implements Stack Overflow or use a similar widget.
garply 16y ago
"We're not going to have to worry about the cost of servers, hiring a few people, getting office space. Before I would have walked around New York for weeks looking at all the office space to save $2k/month. We don't have to be careful anymore." Hmm.
- pchristensen 16y ago
  Not a red flag, given Joel's history and experience. Now he can optimize for growth and opportunity cost as opposed to cash flow.
- avk 16y ago
  Made me raise an eyebrow too but I think Joel's previous business experience with Fog Creek will help them steer things in the right direction. I don't think a bubble-like spending spree is in their future.
slantyyz 16y ago
I expected Google to buy them up. StackOverflow really has become a destination for answers, especially after all the negative goodwill that Experts Exchange and to a smaller degree IT Toolbox have built up by creating barriers to viewing answers.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  I'm still looking for words for describing how StackOverflow is so much better than it's competitors. I think it's more than just ill-will for Experts Exchange (though that's undoubtedly a factor). StackOverflow is built right. It runs smooth and the barrier to joining is damn near as low as possible. But what else gives it that extra something?
  - felideon 16y ago
    Reputation, aka karma. People like being recognized. (That, and Jon Skeet.)
brown9-2 16y ago
Has Joel always been listed as the CEO of StackOverflow?
mhartl 16y ago
Stack(Overflow|Exchange) is a textbook example of why you might want to take VC rather than bootstrap. Whether they succeed or not, they perceive that their chances of success are higher if they try to get big fast—and there's nothing wrong with that. Oftentimes the bootstrap vs. venture capital debate gets rather heated and adversarial. But the dichotomy is a false one.
avk 16y ago
"Now Spolsky says the plan is for the company to launch a handful of very targeted sites running the same software but focused on offering objective answers to technical questions in other verticals." So is this just a pickier StackExchange? How do they plan to offer objective answers (or is this just restating what StackOverflow does today)?
klochner 16y ago
Searching SO via google works great, but their native search kinda blows: http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_many http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_m... http://www.google.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_many+site%3Astackoverflow.com http://www.google.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_many...
- cruise02 16y ago
  This is true. Luckily Google aggressively crawls and indexes SO, so that really is the preferred way to search the site. I've seen results in Google for questions that were posted 10 minutes earlier.
- chime 16y ago
  I don't know why more sites don't use Google's Ajax API and instead waste resources on making really bad search engines. Sure, users get more features if you roll your own engine (sort-by-hotness, hide self-posts etc.) but what users want are good results, not features. I wish reddit, HN, and SO used Google's Ajax. I made a very simple JS/CSS tool to add a Google search box to any site: http://chir.ag/projects/drop-search/ http://chir.ag/projects/drop-search/ - I use it on my blog and it works pretty well.
codingthewheel 16y ago
This article makes it seem like Spolsky had way more to do with the founding/creation of StackOverflow than he actually did. Jeff Atwood was the visionary behind Stackoverflow / StackExchange, and (as a far bigger "voice" in computing than Joel ever was) the guy who built initial consensus/mindshare. Spolsky was (at best) just along for the ride, at least initially.
- lubos 16y ago
  joel was the one who had the idea to build Q&A side. without joel, there would be no stackoverflow. jeff was the one who researched the whole concept and built the final product. i think both of them were equally important to stackoverflow.
- joshfinnie 16y ago
  {{cn}}
  - joshfinnie 16y ago
    Sorry, I guess the above commment wasn't liked much. What I was trying to asy is the above comment sounds a bit short on anything but personal opinion, which I guess is fine... I was in a rush and will write this out next time. Please site your sources when you make such a strong comment about someone's contribution to a successful project because when you don't it sounds like you are just jealous.
- reitzensteinm 16y ago
  I listened to their podcasts right from the start which doesn't qualify me to comment. But I will anyway. I'm just not sure this is the case. Joel seemed to have a much better grasp of the big picture. You could tell that he'd thought everything through really well, in the way that you'd expect from a successful business owner. There's no doubt that Jeff did all the 'work' between the pair - Joel was mainly advising. But I would be very careful about writing off his contribution. I would personally bet a lot of money that Atwood going it alone would have been far less successful. I'm not saying that Joel contributed more than Jeff either. When you look at two partners, and claim that one is more important than the other... that's a pretty big call to make. And unless you personally know them, I'm not sure you have the evidence to back it up.
thasmin 16y ago
Software developers are the perfect audience for a Q&A site because they do their job online. I think StackOverflow's biggest challenge is extending their audience to people who aren't already on the Internet.
frou_dh 16y ago
Listening to the plan for the proposal-heavy StackExchange site creation process on the podcast, it seemed to me that it relies on people being super motivated in desperately wanting a StackExchange created for their topic. I wonder where this drive is supposed to come from for people who are indifferent to the StackExchange software because they haven't participated in sister sites much (or at all). I mean, I'm even very familiar with and enjoy using the software (StackOverflow), yet I can't be bothered using SuperUser for my general tech needs, let alone creating a site of my own.
- cruise02 16y ago
  It isn't supposed to come from people who haven't participated in sister sites. They're taking ideas from within the existing communities for a reason. They're going to take a handful (or several) from those ideas. Those sites will attract more people in those new niches. In the next round of proposals there will be a bigger pool of users to propose what the next sites should be.
proee 16y ago
I don't understand why SO doesn't generate enough money for the founders to find an office space without having to worry about cost. "Before I would have walked around New York for weeks looking at all the office space to save $2k/month." They receive 25M page views a month. So even at $5CPM that's $100k/month in revenue. I'd think that would be enough income to get the ball rolling in an office downtown. Maybe they have a hard time selling ads?
jmatt 16y ago
Their single biggest problem is OpenID. Normal people have zero tolerance for such shenanigans. It's confusing to create an account and login. On top of that asking for such information seems like a scam to non-techies. I know, I know there is significant support for OpenID. Yet it's still a distraction to the site. And it still scares people away. This may be acceptable for tech to tech communities but not for the rest of the world.

36 points by aditya 16y ago

The closing paragraph: Spolsky says that the easiest way he's heard people explain the difference between Stack Overflow and old fashioned forums is that when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page. That's a charming way to put it and it's sure to be interesting to see the team that's assembled take a shot at building that kind of experience around other kinds of topics. Now THAT is an elevator pitch: Stack Overflow is just like old fashioned forums, only when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page.

melling 16y ago
That's correct. And the iPad is just a tablet notebook like the one from Microsoft in 2000. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13tabletpc.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13... And the iPhone is really just a cleaned up smart phone. StackOverFlow took an old idea, cleaned it up and made a better product. Seems pretty simple after the fact. Getting the small things right in a product really makes a big difference. StackOverFlow isn't perfect (and neither was the iPhone or iPad) but they got a good minimal viable product and now they're off to the races.
- klochner 16y ago
  I'm all for Ries, Blanks, lean, mvp, etc. etc., but all the lean jargon is getting overused and abused.
pak 16y ago
It's not always at the top, though. Call it the reddit effect: sometimes the top-voted item is not the one that is the most informative, relevant or correct, but the one that appears so by virtue of being well written, backed by someone with sufficient karma, and clever enough to get upvotes. The asker may then mistakenly pick this as the accepted answer and the better but less hive-mind-friendly answers get pushed away. When skimming the site I've occasionally seen better answers at the bottom of a page getting ignored while people shout about the top few answers. If I didn't know better, I would have ignored them too.
- cruise02 16y ago
  This happens a lot less on Stack Overflow than on reddit. The asker isn't supposed to accept the most popular answer, either. They're asking a question because they have a problem to solve. They should be testing solutions and accepting the one that works. I often see accepted answers with fewer upvotes than the most popular ones. The fact that both the most popular and the accepted answer are at the top of the screen is a nice feature of the site.
  - pak 16y ago
    The asker may be testing out some of the answers, but in reality most of the problems to be solved during software development are about balancing tradeoffs, e.g. security vs. performance. The reason the best solution is the best may not become apparent for years, when the project needs to scale, changes hands, needs to upgrade, gets hacked, etc. In such a case, how is the asker, lacking such experience, able to pick out the right answer except by number of upvotes? Same goes for anybody reading the page. I'm just saying a popularity-driven Q&A site has its drawbacks.
    - cruise02 16y ago
      You're assuming that both the asker and the crowd are incompetent. No kind of Q&A site is going to produce good results under those conditions.
      - pak 16y ago
        I'm not assuming that. I'm suggesting that certain answers may become more popular and rise to the top for reasons that have nothing to do with correctness. These include but are not limited to: the style in which the answer is written, the assertiveness/aggressiveness of the answer, the decision to include or not include sample code, the karma or reputation of the answerer, and the current vote count and visibility of the answer. I think it is safe to assume that there is a gradient in experience among SO users and that for those on the lower end, votes may be more influenced by the issues I just listed than any standard of correctness. It's simple crowd psychology, and already well established at other voting sites like digg and reddit.
jasonlotito 16y ago
Stack Overflow is about instant gratification. This isn't a bad thing. It's what it is. Another way to look at it is this way: Stack Overflow gives a man a fish. Forums teach a man to fish. Now, when you need a fish, you need a fish. You don't need to learn to fish. But in the long run, forums, and discussion, usually provide better value. This doesn't mean SO can't teach people. However, it doesn't encourage teaching. It's setup for questions and answers, not discussion.
- melling 16y ago
  Books aren't set up for discussion. I'm guessing that you think they aren't good for "fishing" either? The basic idea with StackOverFlow is to ask well-defined questions and get well-defined answers, without the long messy threaded response found in most forums. The worst is when the thread ends in a dead end. The wiki feature and the ability to include formated code are very useful. The reputation economy is essential, so more questions get answered, including older ones. What happens in a forum when no one answers a question? Ask again a few days later? Also, they do have short discussions through comments, which I have found to be effective. Finally, I think you, and many others, are completely missing the point of StackOverFlow, and hopefully other future sites like it. If say, for example, 100,000 people are learning [Lisp, Scala, Java, C++, Go, jQuery, C#, etc], they are going to have the a lot of similar questions that really only need to be asked once, with one or two solutions provided. Now the next 99,999 people don't need to ask the same question. So, now we have taken the FAQ and improved upon it by creating it dynamically through voting, and question matching. There are various improvements that could be done to StackOverFlow. They are essentially creating a huge database of programming knowledge. Ideally it, or a similar project, could be organized to enable someone to start learning any new topic and become proficient by browsing and searching the site. Questions could be further categorized to enable better filtering (eg. Mac OS bug, compiler warning message, compiler error message), include specific version solutions (eg. Java 1.5, Java 1.6). A Rosetta Stone feature could be added linking solutions. For example, the question: "How do I reverse a string in [Java]?" could provide links to the Perl, C#, Java, Lisp, Scheme, Javascript solutions.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
jaytee_clone 16y ago
Stack Overflow is optimized for Q & A, while you can do more than just asking questions in a forum (i.e. actually making friends and building communities). They are both great. Really, every forum should just have a Q & A section that implements Stack Overflow or use a similar widget.

garply 16y ago

"We're not going to have to worry about the cost of servers, hiring a few people, getting office space. Before I would have walked around New York for weeks looking at all the office space to save $2k/month. We don't have to be careful anymore." Hmm.

pchristensen 16y ago
Not a red flag, given Joel's history and experience. Now he can optimize for growth and opportunity cost as opposed to cash flow.
avk 16y ago
Made me raise an eyebrow too but I think Joel's previous business experience with Fog Creek will help them steer things in the right direction. I don't think a bubble-like spending spree is in their future.

slantyyz 16y ago

I expected Google to buy them up. StackOverflow really has become a destination for answers, especially after all the negative goodwill that Experts Exchange and to a smaller degree IT Toolbox have built up by creating barriers to viewing answers.

jessriedel 16y ago
I'm still looking for words for describing how StackOverflow is so much better than it's competitors. I think it's more than just ill-will for Experts Exchange (though that's undoubtedly a factor). StackOverflow is built right. It runs smooth and the barrier to joining is damn near as low as possible. But what else gives it that extra something?
- felideon 16y ago
  Reputation, aka karma. People like being recognized. (That, and Jon Skeet.)

brown9-2 16y ago

Has Joel always been listed as the CEO of StackOverflow?

mhartl 16y ago

Stack(Overflow|Exchange) is a textbook example of why you might want to take VC rather than bootstrap. Whether they succeed or not, they perceive that their chances of success are higher if they try to get big fast—and there's nothing wrong with that. Oftentimes the bootstrap vs. venture capital debate gets rather heated and adversarial. But the dichotomy is a false one.

avk 16y ago

"Now Spolsky says the plan is for the company to launch a handful of very targeted sites running the same software but focused on offering objective answers to technical questions in other verticals." So is this just a pickier StackExchange? How do they plan to offer objective answers (or is this just restating what StackOverflow does today)?

klochner 16y ago

Searching SO via google works great, but their native search kinda blows: http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_many http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_m... http://www.google.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_many+site%3Astackoverflow.com http://www.google.com/search?q=rails+has_and_belongs_to_many...

cruise02 16y ago
This is true. Luckily Google aggressively crawls and indexes SO, so that really is the preferred way to search the site. I've seen results in Google for questions that were posted 10 minutes earlier.
chime 16y ago
I don't know why more sites don't use Google's Ajax API and instead waste resources on making really bad search engines. Sure, users get more features if you roll your own engine (sort-by-hotness, hide self-posts etc.) but what users want are good results, not features. I wish reddit, HN, and SO used Google's Ajax. I made a very simple JS/CSS tool to add a Google search box to any site: http://chir.ag/projects/drop-search/ http://chir.ag/projects/drop-search/ - I use it on my blog and it works pretty well.

codingthewheel 16y ago

This article makes it seem like Spolsky had way more to do with the founding/creation of StackOverflow than he actually did. Jeff Atwood was the visionary behind Stackoverflow / StackExchange, and (as a far bigger "voice" in computing than Joel ever was) the guy who built initial consensus/mindshare. Spolsky was (at best) just along for the ride, at least initially.

lubos 16y ago
joel was the one who had the idea to build Q&A side. without joel, there would be no stackoverflow. jeff was the one who researched the whole concept and built the final product. i think both of them were equally important to stackoverflow.
joshfinnie 16y ago
{{cn}}
- joshfinnie 16y ago
  Sorry, I guess the above commment wasn't liked much. What I was trying to asy is the above comment sounds a bit short on anything but personal opinion, which I guess is fine... I was in a rush and will write this out next time. Please site your sources when you make such a strong comment about someone's contribution to a successful project because when you don't it sounds like you are just jealous.
reitzensteinm 16y ago
I listened to their podcasts right from the start which doesn't qualify me to comment. But I will anyway. I'm just not sure this is the case. Joel seemed to have a much better grasp of the big picture. You could tell that he'd thought everything through really well, in the way that you'd expect from a successful business owner. There's no doubt that Jeff did all the 'work' between the pair - Joel was mainly advising. But I would be very careful about writing off his contribution. I would personally bet a lot of money that Atwood going it alone would have been far less successful. I'm not saying that Joel contributed more than Jeff either. When you look at two partners, and claim that one is more important than the other... that's a pretty big call to make. And unless you personally know them, I'm not sure you have the evidence to back it up.

thasmin 16y ago

Software developers are the perfect audience for a Q&A site because they do their job online. I think StackOverflow's biggest challenge is extending their audience to people who aren't already on the Internet.

frou_dh 16y ago

Listening to the plan for the proposal-heavy StackExchange site creation process on the podcast, it seemed to me that it relies on people being super motivated in desperately wanting a StackExchange created for their topic. I wonder where this drive is supposed to come from for people who are indifferent to the StackExchange software because they haven't participated in sister sites much (or at all). I mean, I'm even very familiar with and enjoy using the software (StackOverflow), yet I can't be bothered using SuperUser for my general tech needs, let alone creating a site of my own.

cruise02 16y ago
It isn't supposed to come from people who haven't participated in sister sites. They're taking ideas from within the existing communities for a reason. They're going to take a handful (or several) from those ideas. Those sites will attract more people in those new niches. In the next round of proposals there will be a bigger pool of users to propose what the next sites should be.

proee 16y ago

I don't understand why SO doesn't generate enough money for the founders to find an office space without having to worry about cost. "Before I would have walked around New York for weeks looking at all the office space to save $2k/month." They receive 25M page views a month. So even at $5CPM that's $100k/month in revenue. I'd think that would be enough income to get the ball rolling in an office downtown. Maybe they have a hard time selling ads?

jmatt 16y ago

Their single biggest problem is OpenID. Normal people have zero tolerance for such shenanigans. It's confusing to create an account and login. On top of that asking for such information seems like a scam to non-techies. I know, I know there is significant support for OpenID. Yet it's still a distraction to the site. And it still scares people away. This may be acceptable for tech to tech communities but not for the rest of the world.