5 ms·

This is a “Dropbox is just a pretty rsync”-level comment

• chmod775 3y ago
  Plenty of sites of similar scale were run on less or are to this day. SO also is technologically as basic as it gets. They don't even serve big files.
  • b112 3y ago
    Some can't stand the fact that they have a perfect product.
  • tmpz22 3y ago
    I think OP may be referencing SO has multiple products outside the core QA site that may be more headcount-intensive or at least have more costs outside a few .NET servers and a well tuned database. Not to mention an international presence benefiting from 24-hour on-call rotations that would benefit from international offices and other fixtures that are very expensive to maintain.
• toyg 3y ago
  Atwood and Spolsky themselves boasted repeatedly that SO, for a long time, was just a Windows server and a SQL Server with some C#. The key element in the success of SO was not technical: it was Spolsky and Atwood leveraging already-established (Microsoft) audiences they had, to create a virtuous circle of sharing that snowballed for years.