There cannot be many developers that have not heard about the new Stackoverflow website that launched into public Beta a couple of weeks ago. For those not familiar with the site I would recommend you spend a couple of minutes looking around. Essentially it’s a question and answer site for programmers but instead of using the traditional ‘forum’ approach they have added a little extra magic.
The magic is making the site addictive by giving people badges and reputation points. It sounds crazy that a community of smart programmers would be energized by getting some badges/points. But it really does seem to work. I know because I find myself becoming drawn to the site several times a day!
The site has been coded by Jeff Atwood, of Coding Horror fame, with support from Joel Spolsky, of Joel on Software fame. With two high profile bloggers behind the site it was guaranteed to generate the one thing that any new community site needs, a decent number of initial visitors. Without a certain minimal level of activity on the site it would have died a long slow death. It will be interesting to watch the site over the next few months and see if it gradually gains traction or if the initial rush fades.
So the next time you need to solve a programming problem and are having a little trouble I recommend you give the site a go. With all those addicts desperate to gain more reputation points you’re bound to get some decent answers within a few minutes. Literally just a few minutes.
Don’t blame me if you become addicted and spend hours pressing refresh in hope of a question appearing that you can answer. I did warn you!
September 26th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Stackoverflow is incredibly addicting and I almost yelled out loud yesterday (at the office so that would have been a bad thing) when I found that my 4th answer was voted up and then accepted as an answer. I’m even more proud to post it here given the content:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/122099/what-gui-framework-would-you-recommend#122401
September 26th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Many thanks for the product plug! Well done getting a couple of badges as well as a bonus. Now your only 1100 points behind me! Not that it is a competition of course :-)
September 26th, 2008 at 1:32 am
I doubt I’ll ever catch you but I certainly plan to try… =)
On a serious note though, SO is an amazing site and I don’t think it could be done much better. Jeff and Joel did a fabulous job designing and developing it. I have been glancing over MVC with intent to learn it as soon as a few other projects finish up. Seeing what they were able to do with it, I can’t wait to start.
September 26th, 2008 at 8:43 am
I can has username?
September 26th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Hi Phil, as a follower of your blog, I believe you owe me this time. Why not post this earlier, so that I should have been addicted to that fabulous site already? :)
September 27th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Lex, if you aren’t subscribing to CodingHorror: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ and Joel on Software: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ (the 2 guys who designed and built SO) you should definitely fix that problem. Also, make sure you are reading Scot Hanselman: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/.