Stack Overflow has been hard to miss. If you have ever searched for an obscure programming question in Google, chances are you’ve landed on a question that was posted on Stack Overflow.
Stack Overflow is a questions and answers site strictly for programmers. There’s a large, diverse range of questions from the newbie to the expert programmer. Questions are categorised by tags which makes it incredibly easy to filter questions you are or aren’t interested in.
More importantly, the quality of answers is typically high. It’s not uncommon to find a long, well written answer with links to supplementary resources for a narrow-topic question. In addition, an ingenious reputation system provides users with the credibility, motivation and the tools to maintain high standards. That’s right, tools.
Previously restricted tools become available to users who achieve defined thresholds of reputation, eventually providing them with the capability to moderate questions and answers.
What I like most about Stack Overflow is that the data is licenced under the Creative Commons and is freely available for download by the public. Irrespective of what happens to Stack Overflow, the community owns the data.
Stack Overflow has become my favourite destination as a programming forum, replacing my preference for other forums, IRC and mailing lists. It’s a free service, has a fantastic interface and minimal, unobtrusive ads (It’s only fair, they’re providing a free service).
I’ve got 126 reputation and two badges. It’s not much, but I’m getting there and really enjoying it along the way. If you’re a programmer and love to share your knowledge with others, then I strongly encourage you to join Stack Overflow and contribute.
Tate Johnson is a 23 year old Ruby on Rails developer and university student living in Brisbane, Australia. He enjoys riding bicycles, motorbikes, taking photos and travelling.