

Tell HN: StackOverflow is just terrific - brandnewlow

I just wanted to sing the praises of StackOverflow.com for a second.  I wanted to put together a custom query to display a few key metrics for my social news site.  The folks on IRC ignored a polite request and I found a few folks willing to help for $50/hour. Both of these were expected, sensible outcomes.<p>StackOverflow came through with the answer in about 15 minutes.<p>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/696289<p>The impressive part, to me at least, is that the initial answer posted wasn't yet easy enough for me to follow.  I asked a few questions in the comments, more detail was added, I asked a few more questions and came back in a few hours and a copy-and-paste code snippet was waiting for me.<p>A+
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petercooper
It's cool, but I couldn't get into it - and I usually get into all of these
sorts of sites. Why? People seem to answer questions almost instantaneously
and as a new user I can't do anything to flagrantly incorrect answers. As a
new user, I am next to powerless on there - at least on HN the only real
"power" held back is downvoting. So I'm just a reader of SO and not a
contributor - which is a shame really.

~~~
sdragon
One method to fight "the fastest gun" problem, is to cherrypick good
questions, and actually write well-written, detailed essays, along with
samples. Although more time consuming, these answers usually float to the top
in rather short time frames -adding more quality.

~~~
archgrove
I've tried this approach; taking the time to give a detailed answer with
reasoning behind my choices and explanations for areas that might be unclear.
Two things happen:

1 - The fast, but "good enough" answer wins out for the short term 10+ votes
(and "Accepted status), then the question falls into the mire, occasionally
floating to the surface via a Google search, where I might get one or two
votes.

2 - My answer is accepted, enough that noone else bothers to partake in the
question, and it falls off the radar having received maybe 1 or 2 votes.

In terms of getting good answers into the system, I guess things are working
as intended. In terms of creating an engaging experience for the questioner
and answerer, this seems sub-optimal.

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jmatt
Ok I can't be the only one that doesn't find answers at SO.

The question that brandnewlow submitted was relatively simple and thus you
found a quick answer. Try asking a challenging question and you are just as
likely to find an old blog post with an answer as a StackOverflow answer. Now,
I think SO has it's place. For instance when you are picking up a new language
that is used in the industry. But I've rarely found answers there recently
(C#, VB.NET or Lisp...).

I agree that they are improving and that some of the these rare challenging
questions are beginning to be answered (Woot no complaints). And that when
they are answered the answers are usually correct. But it's far from terrific.

~~~
praptak
Manage your expectations :)

There are questions that are challenging by nature (objectively hard problems)
and those that are challenging to me, mostly because of my lack of experience
in a particular domain, but are no-brainers for an expert (or even someone who
spent an hour RTFM-ing). For the latter ones, SO works like magic.

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adrianwaj
People on Stack Overflow are generally very charitable. Thanks S.O. people.

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axod
>> "The folks on IRC ignored a polite request"

People do tend to idle on IRC :/ You may need to try a few channels, or wait
until someone is awake ;)

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richardw
It's starting to come up a lot in Google searches, which is better than paid-
for sites, say. Make an effort to read through all answers and up-rate those
that are lower down but _you_ think are better. Sometimes they're newer and
better but people ignore them and just consider the top one.

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mustpax
Like everyone else said, SO is great for answering questions like yours. But
if you have a more complicated question around code style or something more
subjective it doesn't work as well.

It really helps to update a question to clarify if answers seem inadequate.
Because of the volume of answers, there's a tendency to post the shortest
quickest answer. Otherwise you end up on the third page, unread and forgotten.

Since it's not really a discussion forum, you have to learn to work with the
question-answer format to be able to hash answers out and get real insight out
of them.

SO still feels a little off for me, partly because it's large and impersonal.
The answers don't speak to each other (for good reason) so the whole thread
feels disconnected, and doesn't seem to move forward too much.

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nopassrecover
Raises the interesting points of a) when will regular coders start outsourcing
their jobs on SO and b) when will the large community of "offshore" coders
currently doing this sort of patch work swarm SO. Having said that, I have
noticed that people are more likely to help helpful people so unless those
people add value to the system first it is unlikely they'll get extreme
amounts of help.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
What do you mean by "start outsourcing their jobs on SO"?

I've had situations where instead of spending another day struggling with an
issue on my own, I post a problem description on SO before leaving work, and
have a good idea or two waiting for me when I get back in the morning.
Sometimes it was there already when I did a late night check. SO makes me more
productive. My boss does not exactly object to that.

~~~
nopassrecover
I guess I'm thinking of freelance sites etc. reselling SO solutions.

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draegtun
Stackoverflow is informational, educational & addictive!

Its "PerlMonks" for the general programming community.

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ken
If you're in one of the big languages on SO (C#, SQL, Python, Ruby), it's
terrific.

If you're trying to get help with some other language, I've found it to be far
worse than mailing lists, IRC, or even USENET. In less-popular languages, the
only questions are of the form "How/Should I learn $(lang)?". There's no Jon
Skeet of Haskell there.

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Herring
I've tried to get something like this for the math/physics communities, but
they're lagging behind a few decades. That code release by cnprog was painful
to watch.

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pieter
I just typed in a really long question on StackOverflow and pressed 'post',
site is down and now I lost my question :(

it's nice if it works though

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cmos
It has saved my butt on a few occasions already.. all within a couple hours.
For 'non expert' programmers the answers always have actual code and not just
high level explanations that take hours to figure out.

I too can't say enough about it. Perhaps it's most appealing to people with
lower level questions (like mine) that can be answered in 2 paragraphs?

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muon
SO is just amazing, pretty much useful in every aspect of programming and
software development.

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acangiano
A StackOverflow for the business of software would be a big success.

~~~
johns
I'd be hesitant to provide business advice unless I were a lawyer or
accountant and those guys aren't doing it for free. There's not enough
questions either and you really don't want someone else telling you how to run
your business. Find a trusted advisor and good reference material and figure
it out. The scope is not nearly as big as programming questions.

The place I work at built a small business resource and discussion site for a
client with some similarities to SO and it's not doing so hot.

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EastSmith
Since SO is "Currently offline for maintenance", here is the question from
Google cache: <http://tinyurl.com/csjjxg>

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thenduks
If you got the answer you needed you should really mark it as the accepted
answer.

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viggity
Don't forget to mark a response as the "Accepted Answer", it'll give the
poster some additional rep

~~~
brandnewlow
I did forget. But I just went back and did it. Thanks!

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csbartus
yes, it is powered by joel, you really can't expect more.

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lubos
it's not really powered by joel. his technical contribution is roughly 1%.
that's what it seems like from SO podcasts.

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scorpion032
SO is the HN for programmer discussion ++1

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lbolognini
Stack Overflow is ace!

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geeko
My question was answered within 5minutes. It's sick!

