Ryan Bates on Stack Overflow via Twitter.
I would like to see more Rails developers on http://stackoverflow.com/
Great to see a high profile Rails developer encouraging all Rails developers to start asking and answering questions on Stack Overflow.
It’s a step in the right direction, but not enough. The Stack Overflow community is heavily skewed towards C# development. If you don’t know C# and prefer a less popular language (or set of tools), get involved. You’re the perfect candidate for a new contributor.
I’ve compiled five reasons why you ought to consider my invitation.
Your knowledge is invaluable, and only available to you. Make your knowledge available for the benefit of the public. Think about how much easier it would have been had you been able to discover that knowledge earlier.
With each answer you’re building credibility. You’re demonstrating to the public (and potential employers) that you’re an expert. You even receive reputation and badges for asking good questions and providing excellent answers.
Programmers love to talk about programming. Stack Overflow is a community of programmers. We care about that specific, technical topic.
Stack Overflow doesn’t own the content, you do. All questions and answers are licenced under a Creative Commons licence and made available via a database dump.
Asking and answering questions about less popular tools is the best technique to foster growth in support of your preferred tools. You’re providing an open and transparent medium for newcomers and veterans alike.
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.