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 succ

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.