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Dear StackExchange: Thank You
- rmATinnovafy 14y agoYes, thank you. SO opened up programming to the masses by treating knowledge as something to be shared and not something to be hidden. Again, thank you.
- 16s 14y agoThey are the best programming and general technology questions and answers anywhere by far. Discussions are not tolerated, nor are open-ended questions, but if you need to know the most efficient way to do X in language Y, then look no farther than stackoverflow.
- pilgrim689 14y agoA bit off-topic but: what are good discussion/open-ended questions sites (software development specific)?
- haasted 14y agoI believe that http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ was introduced for this. A lot of questions were migrated from SO to programmers when it started.
- yrizos 14y agoNah, they don't like discussions there either... Check out the FAQ: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq
- benjaminwootton 14y agoI prefer programmers.stackexchange.com and really want to contribute more, but the heavy handed closing of questions gors on there and it's really putting me off.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- 16s 14y agoI think HN is a reasonable place for that.
- tferris 14y ago> 41 different SE sites Wow, didn't know that there are so many different SE sites, thought there's just one. Anyway SE, its Q&A system and the community are just incredible.
- m_myers 14y agoThere's a complete list on http://stackexchange.com/sites http://stackexchange.com/sites; there are actually way more than 41 sites in the SE network.
- tferris 14y agoSo is SE the better Quora?
- _delirium 14y agoIt's much more focused on: 1) specific technical questions; that 2) plausibly have a good answer. Quora is a more general Q&A site, where you can ask questions on pretty much any subject, and can ask open-ended/discussion type questions as well.
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoThere appears to be a trend of sites creating micro communities. Reddit have done something similar. Quora does it. The SE guys do a podcast which gives an insight into their business.
- babarock 14y agoI can definitely relate with the feeling described. I too got the "prize" from Unix&Linux.SE. The hand signed letter by Spolsky definitely had a strong effect. I felt proud like a child receiving a gold star in kindergarden. A piece of advice for all the startup/business founders here on HN. When you send personalized communication to your users, be it a personal email, or something as superficial as putting your handwritten signature on a bunch of papers, you make us very happy. As a frequent user of the general WWW, I could not recommend enough you do this.
- darxius 14y agoHi there, I'm the author of the post. I couldn't agree more with your comment. I liked the letter so much I put it in a frame I had lying around and I mounted it on my wall. I think a lot of startups should heed your advice and provide this same kind of "WOW" service. Letting your users know you respect them can go a long way for a company that really means it.
- ashovlin 14y agoThe same goes for recruiting. I'm a student at Penn State which is a ranked CS school, but not necessarily Stanford or MIT. I noticed a stack of Fog Creek recruiting pamphlets in the lobby to our CS building. Inside each one was a signed letter from Joel. Students are inundated with literature at career fairs and events, but this was the only one I read entirely and then saved.
- georgemcbay 14y agoBased on various stories that popped up due to this blog post I'm starting to suspect either Joel has an Autopen or an intern that does nothing but sign his name on things. Could he really be signing letters sent out in "stacks"? One would assume that many more schools than just Penn State got such stacks. And then on top of that he's sending out hundreds of these hand-signed letters to top members of all the different new SE sites? Even if he isn't really signing each personally, there's still a good message here, but I'm now curious as to whether or not he's really signing all that stuff.
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- m_myers 14y agoI received a similar package from my participation in the English Language and Usage site (I was a temporary moderator there while the site was in beta). The letter that came with it had several intentional mistakes noted with copy-editing marks, which I thought was a nice touch. The T-shirt, however, un-intentionally misspelled the site's name (see http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/1926 http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/1926); they sent out another batch of shirts several weeks later, so I now have both a good shirt and a special limited-edition shirt.
- 4ad 14y agoNo thanks from me. The no discussions rule means the only questions on the site are the trivial questions that could be answered by reading some documentation. If questions are broad or open ended, the value lies in the discussion, not in any particular answer. I also found that many accepted answers are blatantly wrong, or encourage very poor practice. Sure, the StackExchange network is better than experts-exchange or quora, in the sense that's a much better implementation of a concept, but I believe there's just very little value in that concept.
- pierreten 14y agoGo fuck yourself
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- bp_ 14y agoSE is not meant to be a replacement for reddit or traditional forums. If you want to have discussion by all means have discussion. Just don't do it on SE because SE wasn't made for discussion. Just because echo doesn't read from files doesn't mean it's useless. If you need to read from files you just use cat instead. Sure, you can coerce both to do the other's job, but it'll be messy and only work half the time and other people will be annoyed at you. Different solutions for different needs.
- SteveJS 14y agoIt's not the software it's the community. Here's the exact same software with a community that tolerates a list: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4994/fundamental-examples http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4994/fundamental-examples That said the community+software is good at what it does. I can be sad it's intolerant of lists without needing to disparage it further.
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- gyaresu 14y agoI just signed up to http://math.stackexchange.com http://math.stackexchange.com today to ask a question and ended getting a lesson from a guy who had answered my question but invited me into chat to fully explain it. So awesome.
- eagsalazar 14y agoWTF?? No clawhammerbanjo.stackexchange.com??? No thanks from me, stackexchange sux!
- simonsarris 14y agoI participate in the SO community a lot (I'm top answer-er for the Canvas tag and HTML5 tag). It's not quite a "community", though, because while I have a lot of respect for the other answer-ers I don't really get to interact with them very much, aside from complimenting a novel solution and the like. I sort of wish there were more methods for interaction (the chat channels don't help that much for niche tags). And while my interaction with askers is always fleeting, I'd really like to thank them for all their support. At the end of the day their words are the only encouragement I need: http://i.imgur.com/POZmt.png http://i.imgur.com/POZmt.png
- Trufa 14y agoIt really does feel great to have an answer accepted, you get something similar to that feeling of "ahh this is fixed, finally!".
- weinzierl 14y agoI don't feel the same about SO not being a community. Even though I'm not a very active member, I'm in contact with quite a few people I got to know from SO and even met some in person. In my opinion it's just that communication doesn't happen mainly on SO itself. As far as I understood the discussion (more methods for interaction have been suggested since the beginning of SO) this is deliberate.
- patrickg 14y agoI am a tex.stackexchange.com regular and I really like the community. It is a small community but/therefore quite some people meet on a regular basis, the (local) TUG conferences. I agree very much with the "thank you sx" note.
- bp_ 14y agoThe problem is mainly that chat.SO sucks in a lot of ways and probably should be reduced to a single room where all SO regulars who have time to chat do chat - together. That's the way pretty much all other sites do chat (including MSO) and it's... saner. I just don't know how much it'd scale.
- reidmain 14y agoStackOverflow is a watershed website. There are very few websites I can go without and StackOverflow is, without a doubt, one of them. It is difficult to remember the dark ages where every question I typed into Google would link to Expert Exchange and it was a coin flip on whether you'd find your answer. Very much like GitHub was the tipping point for social coding, StackOverflow was the tipping point for social problem solving about programming. StackOverflow and GitHub weren't the first websites of their kind but they were the ones that executed it almost flawlessly.
- sopooneo 14y agoIt's funny. I remember when Spolsky first announced the idea for the site and the vast majority of the reactions I read were people poo-pooing it since there were so many seemingly similar things already. I take that as a big lesson: if there is a crowded market, but no one doing it well, that is the best possible opportunity.
- kprobst 14y agoActually prior to the dark ages most programming answers (for me at least) were to be found on the Deja USENET archives.
- Jimmie 14y agoDo you mean "can't go without"? Except for your second sentence you are praising StackOverflow.
- reidmain 14y agoYup you are correct Jimmie. Unfortunate that I cannot go back and edit it.
- ZanderEarth32 14y agoI seriously doubt I would have had as much progress with trying my hand at programming if it hadn't been for the SE community. Very helpful.
- FuzzyDunlop 14y agoI found it particularly valuable for iOS development. Even if it didn't solve my problem straight away, it pointed me in the right direction.
- stesch 14y ago[closed]
- chaostheory 14y agoYeah StackOverflow is a Godsend that helps people. It's really great that good people set out to fix the formerly closed door landscape that was dominated by companies like ExpertExchange.
- pknerd 14y agoStack Overflow helped me to finish up a facebook app. Prior to that project I had never worked on Fb apps. After having initial requirements by clients, I googled about the main features of the project and found answers about their implementation. I gave a demo to the client and he approved my bid. The rest of the project also completed by posting a few questions. Without SO It was not possible for me to earn a project. Thanks Joel!
- diminish 14y agoI suddenly expected something like a financial package as present somehow; am too naive. that said, stack exchange is really life saver.
- stan_rogers 14y agoThere can be a bit of that as well. I got the swag from both english.SE (both the "stackchange" and "stackexchange" tee-shirt as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) and photo.SE (logo tee-shirt and a logo Spudz lens cloth), along with the two Joel-signed letters, a bunch of stickers and Sharpies and such, but that's not always where it ends. Photo.SE, for instance, has a program where one can be reimbursed for equipment rentals if you write a review/how-to of the equipment for the blog (with prior approval). Of course, only one person gets the nod for any given item, but it's a great way to try a new lens or piece of studio equipment at little or no cost, and provides an educational resource for the community at the same time. It's not a program that scales well—very few of the other SE sites are nearly as focused on tools (pardon the pun)—but it's definitely the kind of touch that makes SE different. Others will (partially) reimburse for conference attendance and that sort of thing, provided that you've made a significant contribution to the site and come back with the goods. It's just token stuff in the grand scheme of things (the odd fifty bucks here or a hundred bucks there, and not very often) but those are the kinds of tokens that make a difference.
- dbecker 14y agoYou can pay $300/hour to a statistics consultant, and you would be lucky if the consultant gave you the quality of responses I frequently see for free on stats.stackexchange.com.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- philipbjorge 14y agoI received a portfolio from stackoverflow careers yesterday! I'm a college student and was in dire need of a portfolio for future interviews (the SO logo on the front is an awesome touch). The surprise package made my day. http://twitpic.com/9kjx03 http://twitpic.com/9kjx03
- DanWaterworth 14y agoHand signing, the real-world equivalent of proof of work.