3 ms·

SO is quickly approaching reference territory. It is my go-to authority on most programmatic questions. And not all content takes the form of a how-do-i-solve-

SO is quickly approaching reference territory. It is my go-to authority on most programmatic questions. And not all content takes the form of a how-do-i-solve-this-problem format. Would be good to see them re-purpose that good information (like this particular entry) into a useful format.

chrisaycock 15y ago
> Would be good to see them re-purpose that good information (like this particular entry) into a useful format. Like cough Wikipedia? Most of the entries on that page are links to a Wikipedia article with a one-paragraph summary. Seems like anything missing from the canonical list should just be added: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures
- metellus 15y ago
  Wikipedia is a good place for information about different data structures, but the question here is "What are the lesser known but cool data structures. There are tons of obscure data structures, but only a few that people would consider cool. Wikipedia cannot and should not show that information, because it's inherently subjective.
  - anothermachine 15y ago
    StackOverflow cannot show that information either, because it's inherently subjective! "What are some data structures not found on Wikipedia" is an objective question (but time-bound, which violates an SO policy)
- jroseattle 15y ago
  Wikipedia was my first thought, but it's more encyclopedia oriented (naturally). I was thinking something more along the lines of what they did with Scala: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info
Someone 15y ago
I am not optimistic that they will reach the point of being a reference. I fear that, especially for product-specific information, it will eventually become too hard to separate up-to-date content from outdated content. I do not know a good way to prevent that, other than through manual intervention (hm, thinking of it, machine learning could help here. One could train a model that knows, for example, that 'perl' answers from five years ago are more up-to-date than 'rails' ones from two years ago)

chrisaycock 15y ago

> Would be good to see them re-purpose that good information (like this particular entry) into a useful format. Like cough Wikipedia? Most of the entries on that page are links to a Wikipedia article with a one-paragraph summary. Seems like anything missing from the canonical list should just be added: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures

metellus 15y ago
Wikipedia is a good place for information about different data structures, but the question here is "What are the lesser known but cool data structures. There are tons of obscure data structures, but only a few that people would consider cool. Wikipedia cannot and should not show that information, because it's inherently subjective.
- anothermachine 15y ago
  StackOverflow cannot show that information either, because it's inherently subjective! "What are some data structures not found on Wikipedia" is an objective question (but time-bound, which violates an SO policy)
jroseattle 15y ago
Wikipedia was my first thought, but it's more encyclopedia oriented (naturally). I was thinking something more along the lines of what they did with Scala: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info

Someone 15y ago

I am not optimistic that they will reach the point of being a reference. I fear that, especially for product-specific information, it will eventually become too hard to separate up-to-date content from outdated content. I do not know a good way to prevent that, other than through manual intervention (hm, thinking of it, machine learning could help here. One could train a model that knows, for example, that 'perl' answers from five years ago are more up-to-date than 'rails' ones from two years ago)