[ams6110]

Jeff and I started out with a goal for StackOverflow of changing the way programmers and system administrators get answers to their questions on the Internet, which was deeply broken. In 18 months we’ve accomplish that

Have they? Whenever I have a question the first place I turn is Google, and I usually find my answer on a site that's not stack overflow.

[llimllib]

"changed the way programmers... get their answers" != "changed the way I get my answers"

Clearly, based on their traffic, they have changed the way many, many programmers get their answers.

[abyssknight]

A lot of those Google results are now coming from StackOverflow. Arguably, they've done a good job of centralizing programming Q&A and making it manageable. Certainly light years ahead of Experts Exchange.

[BigZaphod]

I use Google to start the process of finding answers (often with results pointing to SO). But when it comes time to ask a question, I go to SO immediately and almost always get a reasonable answer within a few hours. The more this keeps happening, the more the Googling step will become irrelevant.

[ghosttrails]

This is the thing about SO that really works. You almost always get a good answer within hours of asking any programming question (that's been my experience anyway).

[michaelbuckbee]

It's getting better, but StackOverflow is still pretty dominated by C# and .Net questions. If you're using something else there is a significantly smaller chance that they'll turn up in your search results.

[spolsky]

Check out the "Tags" page to see the popularity of various technologies on StackOverflow. Although C# and .NET are pretty popular on StackOverflow, I don't think they are disproportionate to their overall popularity in the developer community.

Look at how StackOverflow has displaced Experts Exchange, though, and it tells a clearer story:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com+experts-exch...

I don't think there is ANY other general-audience programming site with more traffic.

[davidw]

I've been watching that over time, as a potential data source for http://LangPop.com , and StackOverflow has definitely "improved", but it has historically had a .net/c# bias compared to what turns up elsewhere, just like github has had a Ruby bias, which is slowly fading as github gains in popularity with the developer population at large.

[melling]

Joel and Jeff don't create the content for the site, the communities do. The fact that other communities haven't moved into their sections en masse is not their fault. It's YOUR (ie. everyone else) FAULT.

For example, I tried to get the Grails community to use StackOverFlow when the site first started and their attitude was that they would rather just use the mailing list and sift through Nabble.

http://archive.codehaus.org/lists/org.codehaus.grails.user/m...

The problem isn't with StackOverFlow, it's with the other communities refusing to adopt something new. "After all, IRC is where all the best people hang out...who needs this .Net thing..."

I'm currently learning Lisp. You wouldn't be able to get this kind of an answer on a mailing list or on IRC.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz...

This .Net/C# site just made it easier to learn Haskell, Lisp, Erlang, Scala... a little irony not to be overlooked.

[plinkplonk]

"The fact that other communities haven't moved into their sections en masse is not their fault. It's YOUR (ie. everyone else) FAULT."

The first sentence is fine. The second not so much. "Fault" assumes that moving to SO/contributing etc is unambigously a good thing. I would not be suprised if at least some developers thought their existing communication channels are just fine.

"For example, I tried to get the Grails community to use StackOverFlow when the site first started and their attitude was that they would rather just use the mailing list and sift through Nabble.

http://archive.codehaus.org/lists/org.codehaus.grails.user/m.... "

This sounds like a valid choice to me.

"The problem isn't with StackOverFlow, it's with the other communities refusing to adopt something new."

They may have good reasons to do so. Just because you are enthusiastic about SO doesn't mean everyone has to be.

(Due Disclosure : I don't use SO at all. I once saw an algorithm question on SO I could answer and when I tried, I found out I had to use OpenID to log in. Couldn't be bothered.)

[melling]

StackOverFlow provides structure and organization to the information. I've dug through enough email threads that ended at a dead-end to be able to say that the structure is welcome.

People tag their questions, while others vote on the questions and answers. Question titles are matched against the database when people enter new questions. Admins "close" duplicates, and stop trolling. The reputation "economy" provides a way to get an answer.

StackOverflow isn't perfect but it is a big step forward in organizing the information so that that the data can be searched more effectively.

http://stackoverflow.com/search

There are 500,000+ questions tagged. Some are great, some are not. Joel and Jeff don't provide either of these. We do!

Don't try this on a mailing list.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of...

[btilly]

The word "fault" implies that there is a problem that needs fixing.

The Perl community has a decade of history and over 800,000 posts of history invested in http://www.perlmonks.org/. Granted the site is creaking and could use a better design, but someone with a Perl question is likely still better off going there than to StackOverFlow.

[melling]

The glass is half empty? I think you're completely missing the point. It's really up to each community (Haskell, Lisp, Scala, Clojure, etc.) to develop their appropriate sections of StackOverFlow. I've been on an Lisp bent lately, mainly Emacs Lisp. Think of a good question and ask it. You'll be throwing down breadcrumbs for the next guy who wants to learn an esoteric language. I've got 86 questions, and the last dozen have been mainly about Lisp, of some flavor.

http://stackoverflow.com/users/5020/melling

I'm going to turn Emacs Lisp into a mainstream developer tool. :-)

[bartl]

StackOverflow is a help when you don't find the answer with Google. It's not really new: it's more a successor to Usenet which is getting quite dated -- especially since most of the old folks have abandoned it.

[InclinedPlane]

That's a bit silly, it's structurally unlike usenet. It's advantage is that due to its structure it has the S/N that usenet once did, which is much to its credit since usenet collapsed under the explosive growth of the internet yet stackoverflow appears to just get stronger with growth.

[petercooper]

It seems to vary a lot by area. In my usual day-to-day Ruby mode, I rarely come across Stack Overflow. For a couple of weeks, though, I've been building an iPhone game and SO seems to come up all the time for Objective C and iPhone framework stuff.

[jimbokun]

I often check Google first, not find anything helpful in the first few pages, then remember to try StackOverflow, and have a much higher success rate.

Actually, the best technique I've found is Google with "site:stackoverflow.com", as Google does a much better job searching StackOverflow than the built in search engine.

[fnid2]

I wish they would change it back to the way it was when usenet was popular. Years ago, when I was looking for an answer, the first place I would go is dejanews and google destroyed that pretty much... so sad.