programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
A little over a month ago, I announced that I was quitting my job. But there was also something else I didn't fully announce.
But I refuse to become a full-time blogger. I think that's a cop-out. If I look at the people I respect most in the industry, the people I view as role models-- Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, Steve Yegge, Eric Sink, Rich Skrenta, Marc Andreesen, Wil Shipley, Douglas Crockford, Scott Guthrie -- they all have one thing in common. They're not just excellent writers and communicators. They build stuff, too. The world has enough vapid commentary blogs. I want to build stuff-- and talk about it. I have a little micro-ISV startup opportunity I'll be working on, a web property I'm building out with one of the above people. I'm not ready to announce the details yet, but when I do, you'll read about it here.
The "building stuff", as you helped us determine, is stackoverflow.com. It's a small company Joel Spolsky and I are founding together.
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might find this pairing strange. It's true that I've been critical of Joel in the past. And it is sort of funny that I own the number one image search result and a top 10 search result for Joel Spolsky. Good thing Joel has a sense of humor.
Occasionally I'll meet readers, or get emails from readers, who tell me that they enjoy my blog... and oh-by-the-way they strongly disagree with a few things I've said. Their phrasing clearly implies that they think there's something wrong with this. Well, there isn't. I'm here to tell you that occasional disagreement is healthy and normal. If you agree with everything I write here, why would you bother reading? At that point, we're the same person. I distrust people who agree with me all the time. I want someone to push back and encourage me to question my assumptions.
I admire what Joel has created. He was one of the earliest programming bloggers, and certainly one of the first I found that helped me realize the kind of positive influence writing could have on my fellow programmers. He is very much living the dream: he founded a company with the express intent of not cashing out with VC money, but creating a sustainible place where programmers can have fun while programming useful stuff. It's an honor to have the opportunity to work closely with Joel, and to combine the collective power of our two communities.
So what is stackoverflow?
From day one, my blog has been about putting helpful information out into the world. I never had any particular aspirations for this blog to become what it is today; I'm humbled and gratified by its amazing success. It has quite literally changed my life. Blogs are fantastic resources, but as much as I might encourage my fellow programmers to blog, not everyone has the time or inclination to start a blog. There's far too much great programming information trapped in forums, buried in online help, or hidden away in books that nobody buys any more. We'd like to unlock all that. Let's create something that makes it easy to participate, and put it online in a form that is trivially easy to find.
Are you familiar with the movie pitch formula?
Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit. It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.
Of course, there's more to it than that. Joel and I are recording our weekly calls and releasing them as podcasts. Listen to us describe our vision for stackoverflow in our own words -- just head over to stackoverflow.com to download the first 46 minute episode. We're even taking questions, if you submit them in the form of audio recordings.
I'm more than a little excited to see how it all shapes up. I will most likely be a frequent visitor to your site. I respect both you and Joel greatly. Since he is soliciting ideas for the site, here are mine.
Here is something I would love to see; a series of articles on best practices. Meaning, if you need to show a table of data (repeating rows), should I use a repeater, or a gridview? Why? What if I need to add a checkbox into a column (or make it a new column)...how do I do that in a way that is cross browser compliant?
Beyond that, what I would NOT like to see is a website that is something like what Joel described in his article on how MS lost the API war...please please please do not become an MSDN site showing off the latest aluminum bullet every couple of months. Show me proven ways of accomplishing well defined tasks, with good explanations of why.
Also, I would hope that your site doesn't get a rush of quick answer artists trying to build "karma" points without doing any teaching.
I'm not sure if you or Joel ever spent any time on the old VB programming newsgroup microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion, but there were a group of about 10-20 developers who really cared about honing their craft, discussing the "best" solution, teaching new users who showed a desire to learn (like me).
That is a site I would frequent.
Matt on April 17, 2008 6:52 AMI'd like to see transcripts made also; being profoundly deaf the site is a bit of a downer so far.
Jonathan on April 17, 2008 7:01 AMFor all the people asking about transcripts: why not *write* one? Email it to Jeff or Joel, and I bet someone will put your transcript up next to the podcast. (Maybe if you do it really well, they'll make you the official podcast transcriber.)
Adam V on April 17, 2008 7:13 AMThe thing that's missing from Experts Exchange, programming forums, the PHP manual, etc. is a shared coding scratch board. I'll explain.
Somebody asks for a certain algorithm and gets 25 responses. Some responses are original code and others are modifying the code from previous responses. Now you've got to wade through all these responses and figure out which of the code snippets are best and if any of the modifications are useful. This can be harder when two responses offer different modifications and you may have to merge the changes.
I would love to see a shared code board so one person can modify the code from another post, then somebody can modify _that_ code, while a third person modifies the original code again. The scratch board offers versioning, diffs, and merging. so it's easier to see the most recent version, views and merge differences, etc. Members should be allowed to merge versions to create a new version of the code and other members vote on the version they think is best, which then gets presented as the default answer.
Now *that* is a programming site I'd use all the time.
Dave on April 17, 2008 7:30 AMGeez people give 'em a break. Their obviously just trying to establish an inital presence and get something out there. Haven't you ever heard "release early, release often"? The pomp and polish will no doubt come later.
Congrats Jeff and Joel on your endeavor!
Craig on April 17, 2008 7:31 AMAwesome. This looks fabulous. Jeff and Joel on the same project? I'll be there man.
Ben Lacy on April 17, 2008 7:37 AMPodcasts are a great way to practice my spoken english. Just reading text I might get the spelling of words that I do not know wrong.
Hoffmann on April 17, 2008 7:38 AMGreat podcast, it reminds me of the early Boagworld stuff. Its nice and free-flowing and honest.
Im not really a programmer (CSS) but I still hope to enjoy the podcast.
Dan cave on April 17, 2008 7:52 AM1. Meta moderation is a must, but with a reason required. One of the things about development that make searching forums so difficult is the evolution of the languages that we deal with. So if someone says, "this doesn't work" make sure they explain why. This allows intelligent digestion of past comments, and the realization that the proposed solution may be valid for you if you're working with .NET 1.0 vs. .NET 3.5.
2. Comments about a solution working or not working must also be rateable. At no point should a comment be unable to be removed from the default community view along with its effects on the item being commented on. Each registered user should be able to provide a threshold value for comments and have those comments and their impact on the results displayed.
This means the site search is dynamic. You can choose to view only known working answers and the site will never show you the proposed answers.
3. Ensure that version information for all aspects of each issue are clarified. Visual Studio 2005, no SP, SQL Server 2005, SP2, etc. Provide a framework that makes it easy to define a new product and revision for questions which are asked.
4. Allow for the upload of sample files and sample solutions. This gets hairy with the idiots of the world attempting to hijack your upload for their own inane storage purposes, but it's a must because...
5. Inform users to refrain from soliciting samples or continuing conversations in email. This terminates the chain of information in the question being posed and ends up with follow up visitors wondering what the eventual solution was.
6. Find, define, or determine a license that can be used by both the developers who contribute to the site as well as those who browse the site. One of the common issues about code snippets is that they are copyrighted and the poster didn't give you terms of use. Define those terms, make users agree before posting, and prominently display a link to those terms of use on the site, every page where possible.
7. Consider a karma, credit, or reputation system. GameDev has one that works incredibly well; each user has a reputation based on other users who rate them. As the users who have rated you have their reputation increased or decreased, your reputation also increases or decreases. The admins of the site start with a high level. Users below a certain rating no longer contribute to the ratings of others, to prevent abuse.
8. Use one format. Ensure you design the site to allow the UI to change massively, but refrain from having multiple presentation methods both housing information repositories that are separate and distinct. (Don't do forums, a wiki, and a custom app.)
9. Dear God, whatever you do, present a site search that works effectively. Even if it's a Google box that defaults to stackoverflow.com the worst thing in the world is to attempt to search for identifiers considered too small to be significant, but ARE significant when developing.
10. Have an indicator in the profile for users indicating their native language. Indicate whether languages other than English are allowed; if not, have a location where the individual can rate their English level. This would serve to limit the number of, "wtf, lrn english u idiot!" comments that seem to abound in some communities.
You've probably thought of all of the above, but maybe not. =)
I don't know what platform you're developing this in but I'll be the eighteenth guy to say, "If you need help and I'm proficient in what you're using, let me know." It would be an honor, great fun, and educational to work with you. (b#m#schkerke@g#mail.com (remove #))
Brian Schkerke on April 17, 2008 7:56 AMYou might wanna look at http://refactormycode.com
If you wanna use it as a support for your podcast let me know, we can work something together.
macournoyer on April 17, 2008 8:04 AMif you submit them in the form of audio recordings.
Why the limitation?
Not everybody is geeking with a headset on their computers.
Sounds good, congrats on the new venture.
Since there's no RSS feed for stackoverflow yet, I hope you'll post updates here to keep us informed of your progress.
Adrian on April 17, 2008 8:14 AMJust don't let the new site cut into your Rock Band practice schedule!
CroW on April 17, 2008 8:15 AMI was going to mention how profoundly stupid it is to be audio only in this day and age, but I see I'm just thirding the emotion.
Ignoring that a deaf person can't even access your audio only podcasts, imagine the process of asking a question. They type it up, and then have some sort of text-to-speech software read it, ending up with a file that is much larger and harder to process on your end.
Kind of like taking a picture of a printout, (on a wooden desk) then scanning and emailing the photo.
Rich on April 17, 2008 8:33 AMYour podcast mentioned ranking of content on the new site....
I've always thought your blog could use some way to weed thru the comments.... they are usually worth going thru, but often too time consuming... looking forward to cream rising to the top.
The audio requirement for posting questions sounds like an attempt to move into audio-only (guess that is _ok_ for a podcast)....
but is it really a way to weed out those folks who couldn't be bothered to jump-thru-the hoops of recording their voice and emailing the result?
might be nice to document your website design process (and expose it later once it's working well).
Eric on April 17, 2008 8:34 AMwould calling your postcast 'the stackoverflow coredump' be too negative?
BusError on April 17, 2008 8:39 AMI usually like seeing ExEx search result entries because once i do i know that the answer is close by (they do provide answers most of the time, in my experience).
By the way, in case you're not aware, you can use the search engine's cached version of the page to view the otherwise restricted content, hello! :)
Bobby on April 17, 2008 8:43 AMDespite what some of us have said about the name choice, at least you won't need to change it later down the road when someone points out the unfortunate juxtaposition of the words...like expertsexchange.com
Congrats on the new venture.
Matt on April 17, 2008 8:50 AMJeff, first, congrats on the founding of a new venture. I hope the best for you guys. I have a lot of respect for you and Joel both, so I will give the site a fair chance as it launches.
I listened to the first podcast just now. One thing that stood out to me was how much Joel rambles! Ha. His blog posts are usually very focused, so hearing him ramble off to various topics several times was kind of surprising.
Anyways. I enjoyed the podcast and am looking forward to the next ones. Best of luck, Jeff and Joel!
Judah on April 17, 2008 9:10 AMI just noticed that this is post 001101....
Good Karma to you Jeff. Like most of us here, I've already bookmarked a (fairly) empty page and can't wait to go see it grow.
Yartiss on April 17, 2008 9:19 AMI'm thrilled to find out about this venture. With the information scattered over the web and seemingly unstructured, this may be a refreshing change. In fact, I've been swimming around aimlessly on the 'Net for good information on MFC, C++, and database connection.
Making this site accessible to everyone would be ideal as well. I'm deaf myself and would be much more inclined to go to the website if I had much equal access to information as the rest.
Jay on April 17, 2008 9:27 AMI was wondering where I saw that cartoon before.... At first I thought it was Creative Computing magazine in the 70's, although now I'm leaning toward Discover Magazine in the 80's.
James Curran on April 17, 2008 9:31 AMI also am no fan of podcasts, but Joel believes it adds another dimension to our writing when you can hear voice, intonation, etcetera.
Granted, but that should be as well as, not instead of, a written transcript.
Christopher Wells on April 17, 2008 9:32 AMI love your site and recommend it to everyone I know in I.T. I work at the National Technical Institute for the *Deaf*. I certainly hope this new stackoverflow thing will not be all audio only. Your description sounded wonderful until I saw that it was presented as an audio podcast and only accepts submission in audio file. Not a good way to be "accessible".
Dave on April 17, 2008 9:40 AMCool, its a small world, I mean both you and Joel are quite popular, but nice to see you working together.
Silvercode on April 17, 2008 10:03 AMWhat a crummy idea.
I hope that you fall flat on your face...you idiot!
Brad: "your use of bold type".
I don't mind emphasis being used appropriately. What I find are people who visit other people's web sites and criticize the layout/fonts/etc. without being asked. People who do that are pedantic and rude.
Larry Bank: "Your site won't solve anything"
How do you know? Are you basing that on inside knowledge that none of the rest of us (including Jeff and Joel) don't have? Or are you just being a rude idiot. (I'm guessing it's the latter choice, myself.)
Alan: "Hasn't this all been done before, what makes yours different."
Why don't you just wait and see before passing judgment?
Joshua Gosse: "I don't think this site will work [snip nonsensical MS/OSS, Jeff/Joel bashing blather]. Books is [sic] MUCH better than what you can find online."
How can you say the site won't work without waiting to see what it does exactly?
And in what way are books better? They're expensive, become outdated quickly, have limited content (and therefore limit your options), and take up space. For example, my "Advanced Undocumented MS-DOS 5" book cost around $60 when I bought it, is about 1000 pages and so is pretty heavy, and hasn't been useful for around 10 years now; it does have some pretty nifty stuff for it's day, though. In what way is that better than being able to search the entire globe for various ways to do things, have many options to choose from, and have knowledge available from many different people, as opposed to only having the options that one or two authors decided were best?
And perhaps grammar should be the subject of the next book you spend your money on - since you used "Books" (a plural), the appropriate phrasing would be "Books are" (plural) and not "Books is" (singular).
GUI Junkie: "you ain't got notting [sic] yet. ... please refrain from bugging me/us)."
Great! I have a solution for you! DO NOT open your browser and type in http://www.stackoverflow.com and no one will bug you! Idiot. Nobody is bugging you - it's your choice where you go with your browser. You don't like the site? Don't visit, and don't waste everybody else's time with your babble.
"No RSS" or "No accessibility support" complainers: Give them time, people! There's an old expression that mentions something about Rome not having been built in a day.
Sure, it's nice if there's full RSS feed support, and the site works equally well for sighted/blind, hearing/deaf, genius/learning disabled, NFL quarterback/physically challenged, marathon-sprinting/wheelchair-bound, male/female/transgender types, and eventually it probably will. Hell, someday Jeff and Joel may just transport themselves over broadband thoughtwaves right to your desk and help you type the code in person! So why not quit whining and give them time; obviously, since the only thing on the site currently is a cartoon, an mp3 and a rar download, and a couple of links it's a work in progress, right? Did you catch the "in progress" part of that question?
KenW on April 17, 2008 10:42 AMMy vile hate towards Experts Exchange is what led me to create the Filtering Search Frontend, http://www.gfilter.net
NO more Experts Exchange for me :)
Yeah, its still really early beta.
Great news! This is something that should have been done years ago.
Promise not to change it into a subscription service, will you? ;)
This sounds more like a 'me too' venture since there are already a lot of good, established developers' sites. Good luck - maybe you will bring something new into the fray.
eric on April 17, 2008 11:27 AMOk, I don't usually post until I've read all your comments too, but I believe your idea is genious, and I have a suggestion or two. Key thing to focus on imho: making users into contributors. If you can do that, the site will just explode. Some other sites have things like ratings and an option for a user to contribute like a wiki, but that just isn't enough. Theres the problem like, ok, so I just edited this page. Now my username is in the page history that no one looks at, now what?, ok my contribution got a good rating, what else is there? Two main things I see will get users to contribute. 1, the best platform. This is hard because even if you have this, you still have to get to some critical mass of contributions, so unless you get some good capital investment, that aint gonna work 2, community. Tap into those deep reasons why people donate their time to things online, whether its an open source project, or a community game website for a commercial game. Theres just this feeling that people have for a project when they get involved in it, they care about it like its theirs. If you can lead a community, it can work. So when you start making a community of contributors, not simply blog readers, thats when I will get interested.
okgo on April 17, 2008 11:30 AMConsidering the fact that you have my absolute favorite cartoon as a placeholder on your home page, you've already won me over. In spite of me.
Yax K'uk Mo' on April 17, 2008 11:32 AMWait. Did you just jump the shark by osmosis? Get me my skiis, Potsie...
Grant C on April 17, 2008 11:41 AMAfter reading Marc Andreesen's blog, which is as irrelevant as a blog can possibly be, I hope your blog remains relevant since you now have this audio-driven distraction called stackoverflow.com.
A podcast? A 46-min podcast? And questions to be submitted in audio format? Do share the algorithm you use for processing that and answering questions. :)))
Writing good code (if that is the intent of stackoverflow.com) should start with a VB/VB.NET bonefire. Now that .NET world is finally embracing MVC as a standard framework, this is the time to celebrate.
Also, Joel Spolsky needs some new material. It is like listening to a standup comedian with the same material over and over again. "Do we have a title for this podcast? Do we?" C'mon.
SamG on April 17, 2008 11:52 AMI'm a bit mystified why people talk about Expert Sex Change so much, sure it's damned annoying when it comes up on search results but, in reality what Jeff and Joel seem to be trying to do is nothing like it at all; rather they seem to be attempting to replicate other existing sites like Codeproject.com that have been around for ages and satisfy their stated goals quite nicely.
Competition is healthy and I wish you guys luck but surely you and others realize you're re-inventing a sucessful wheel here?
JohnC on April 17, 2008 11:54 AMHere is what Joel Spolsky wants us to believe:
"Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. The market for books on programming topics is miniscule compared to the number of working programmers."
How utterly ridiculous. Bad coders never read books. I cannot remember a week in the past 10+ years that I did not crack open at least two books and read most relevant sections. Not to mention the gazillion of ebooks I am shlepping on my shleptop and reading whenever I have an idle moment.
Is stackoverflow intended as a spoonfeeder for nonreader? Or it is an IV for a lazy programmer?
I like the fact that your website is starting off so 'humbly'. I guess you're still at step two. It will be fun to see how it morphs as time goes on.
The podcast was ok. A bit unfocused but hey it's the first one. The audio could use some improvement. I'm not saying go Carl-Franklin-crazy on it, but the telephone voice is wearying.
My biggest complaint is how Joel constantly interrupted you. I enjoy hearing both of you but not at the same time. It reminds me of an old John McEnroe vs Metallica interview, or more recently a Charlie Rose vs Ted Turner interview - an interruption just when someone was about to say something kinda interesting. I don't want to throw a brick through my LCD in frustration. Please Joel, ease up a tiny bit!
That said, I wish you both the best of luck on this venture.
I am severely hard of hearing, and must echo the string of comments requesting transcripts to match the audio files. I like the idea of the site, think it has potential, but please do not make it all audio.
Grant Palin on April 17, 2008 12:13 PMThis is great news Jeff, I look forward both to participating and listening to the podcast. Best of luck with it all.
Ross Neilson on April 17, 2008 12:37 PMRSS is easy http://page2rss.com/atom?url=www.codinghorror.com
Enjoy.
Question 1: Why didn't you use a DOCTYPE? ;)
Arthur on April 17, 2008 1:10 PMSo cool, I can't wait to see it evolve. Well done both. :)
Vaughany on April 17, 2008 1:15 PMRegarding "google, copy, paste, and tweak-till-it-works programmers". OMG, you are onto my methodology! Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with this. Often I will document and add to my notes anything that required research so that I won't need to search for it again.
Robert S. Robbins on April 17, 2008 1:15 PMI love the name and enjoyed the podcast. Those people who think that searching on the web for answers to programmatic problems is bad approach can certainly make that argument all day long and be right the entire time. It still does not line-up with reality and why the book market has tumbled.
I am just wondering if the podcasts will eventually evolve into these DotNetRocks type of productions with advertising spots and intro/outro tunes.
I kind of liked the simplicity and natural feeling of the conversational tone. It felt more like standing outside of a conversation occurring between developers at some event.
OK, so since your podcast is not RSS-ready yet, I put the file on my iPod "manually" and listened to it in the car.
My commute is only about half an hour so I got about 33 minutes in and then had to turn it off. I just now went to go run an errand and since it's not a "podcast" on the iPod and I didn't mark the file to "resume" or whatever, I fastforwarded it to 33 minutes in.
Only then it wouldn't play. The iPod (5.5G) went back to the main menu, like I had just finished playing it. For a brief second I can even see "0 of 0" at the top of the screen.
If I try and fastforward a little bit it works but if I go past like 20 minutes, it's like it "crashes"
So, whatever you're using to encode these might need a little work. I'll mark the file as resumable and see what happens later.
Schnapple on April 17, 2008 1:25 PMOh, and isn't always funny to hear that people you really admire have many of the same habits as yourself. I don't know why I expect Joel or even yourself, Jeff, to never miss keystroke; but, it was funny hearing him mention the "change to classic" in order find anything in Windows.
I always feel silly doing that kind of stuff but chalked it up to "hey, works for me".
Ian Hughes on April 17, 2008 1:26 PMAm I the only one disappointed by this announcement? I thought Jeff promised something new and revolutionary. What he now "delivers" is yet another programming forum / QA site, with no indication of what exactly would make this different from all the other ones.
Helen on April 17, 2008 1:43 PMI'm extremely excited by this. I hope it goes far.
Robin Goodfellow on April 17, 2008 1:44 PMThe podcast should obviously be named Stackovercast.
Weatherman on April 17, 2008 1:54 PMI looked up at the walls and they met the ceiling at 90 degrees :)
Russ on April 18, 2008 4:16 AMJeff, you're a bold type elitist. So, I hope you can understand us being bitter and wanting to hold onto our RSS.
Turdburgler on April 18, 2008 6:30 AMAm I missing something?
Problem: Popular blog posts attract lots of comments which then don't all get read. It's possible to make popular posts more prominent, but popular isn't necessarily better.
Solution: You're going to provide a series of (unsearchable) podcasts where developers can record questions in audio format, send them to you and wait for their topic to be discussed at an unspecified point in time on a phone call between you and Joel.
I can see two positive aspects to your idea:
1. People who regularly take long journeys can gradually improve their knowledge about development issues (assuming the quality of the podcasts is consistently high, and judging by the first episode I'm not confident of this), and
2. It requires almost no additional effort on your part, since you were going to be having these phone calls anyway.
As much as I admire and respect many things that you and Joel have done, I don't understand how this is going to address the problem.
I'll check back in a couple of weeks in the hope that I've completely mis-understood what stackoverflow.com is all about.
Andy on April 18, 2008 6:42 AMI am avidly looking forward to this project, and I will willingly volunteer myself to assist in its success.
Eric Martindale on April 18, 2008 7:00 AMI use expert exchange and I find it very useful. I get answers within 30 minutes and their search function is very useful. yes I pay $12.95 but it's well worth it. Searching using Google sometimes is time consuming and my time's worth searching during the month is a ton more than $12.95.
If you guys can offer it for free that would be great. But if you're going to put ads everywhere as your business model, I would rather pay the $12.95. I just need something that works and is useful. Expert exchange is a service and I don't mind paying for a useful service.
So is this why you left your jon at Vertigo.. to launch a free site?
I am not sure how you're making a living out of this.
I didn't like Joel's post much. You shouldn't have a problem with a service charging money if you think you could do better and the ex-ex site doesn't claim every answer is coming from an 'expert'. As an IT professional, I know when an answer is worth its salt. There are many times when I just can't remember something and answers I see there direct me to the correct way.
Sometimes I don't feel like spending more than 5 minutes searching for
an answer and I would just post a question as an easy way out and I have infinite points.
Your new site will need to take its time to build a useful database full of knowledge so in the beginning to me, searches on it will return nothing.
Anyways, congrats and I am looking forward to using it.
Good luck on your new site guys.
i will be watching ;)
just scroll waaaaaaaaaay down the page
ExEx hasn't always been like that. That's probably a forced thing they're doing at the moment because some search engine threatened to delist them for obscuring the content they showed to the engine or something. I'm sure they'll go back to not showing the answers at all if they can figure out a way to get away with it and not give up their search engine rank.
a on April 18, 2008 8:37 AMLooking forward to the site going live.
+1 for transcripts of the audio.
How about building this with google app engine? Or at least considering it?
On this topic... What technologies _are_ you intending to use to build this?
James on April 18, 2008 10:28 AMI thought a transcript would be nice -- so I thought I would take a stab at it.
There is a heavy burden on the transcriptionst to "get it right." Taking someones words and putting them to text where it can be searched and quoted and all of the consequences of that is a big responsibilty. I typed up the first ten minutes of the podcast and thought to myself -- this better be accurate.
It isn't enough to disclaim the potential errors. I sent an email to Jeff asking if he would accept a transcript. If he does, I will send it on, but it seems like Jeff or someone else would need to review the transcript for accuracy.
And, then it beings to look like work rather than a quick write-up to help people who might not want to or can't listen to the podcast.
Feedback? -- bpelton@jgboswell.com
Brian on April 18, 2008 10:47 AMI dont know if anyone else has seen this peculiarity of ExEx...but whenever I search for something on Google on ExEx it comes up ok...the results are all displayed in normal text AFTER all the adverts at the bottom of the page. its always been like that for me on all my pc's in different jobs...
Mauro on April 18, 2008 1:14 PMSo who will be writing all of the code for this project?
And more importantly, will that code be throwing and catching exceptions?
Jesse on April 18, 2008 1:47 PMYou know Jeff, your site wouldn't get confused as CodingWhore if you Americans could speak properly. (;P I kid, I kid!)
Bernard on April 19, 2008 3:48 AMHmm.. I've spent the last two days listening to the podcast- not repetitively, mind you. I would listen to almost 10-15 minutes at a time and I'm starting to see the points others here have made with the whole podcasts sucking and even you Jeff have said that you don't like podcasts. I listen to them when it makes sense for me as in when I can multitask at work for example and listening won't affect my performance... otherwise I never listen to podcasts. It really irked me when Joel insisted on folks recording themselves asking questions.. and I just really hope you don't transition to some kind of podcast realm. Having information documented in plain text is way more useful over podcasts; this is all redundant from the folks here... anyways, just my .02.
Patrick on April 19, 2008 4:36 AMI think this new website of yours could definitely fill a niche. For inspiration, I think you should definitely take a look at www.perlmonks.org. It's an amazing community. Everyone is very helpful and almost every question gets a good answer. They have experience points (like karma) and user levels based on those experience points, which give you more privileges (like more votes) on the site. I've never seen another site quite like it. If you succeeded in making something similar, with a broader focus, that would be wonderful.
Pat on April 19, 2008 8:36 AMI don't do audio, I do text. Sign me up and let's see where we can take it. Oh! Can't sign up yet! andy at arakka dot co dot th is the name. Andy Canfield, Roiet, Thailand.
While working, I often look for how to do things in google. I think this is a great idea. Looking forward to using it!
Mitch on April 19, 2008 1:41 PMFor those after an RSS for itunes or whatever, here's one I made a pipe for for personal use. It should work at least for getting it onto itunes easy like.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=FMNbD7wO3RGTcPl3ODY80A_render=rss
Toby on April 20, 2008 3:44 AMYou know, I'm going to be interested to see how stackoverflow.com handles answers that were right, and thus are highly rated, that become wrong. (Many questions regarding how to do something in .NET, for instance, had their answers change when 2.0 came out.) Many of the voting systems that I've seen have a bias towards older answers - the top twenty at bash.org hasn't really changed much over the years, even though there's much funnier quotes in the database.
Merus on April 20, 2008 6:51 AMGreat. Looking forward for it.
Thejesh GN on April 21, 2008 2:31 AMsounds awesome...I can't believe no one has thought of this. I'm looking forward to how the Q (correct only)A will be laid out.
Joe Beam on April 21, 2008 5:56 AMHi Jeff,
Been an avid sometime/longtime reader of your excellent blog. As you're venturing into new audio territory, you might consider using Pingercast as a way to reach your audience. It's an opt-in, subscription based service through a custom widget you place on your site that connects directly to your listeners via their mobile phone. It could be used as a summary (it's limited to 5 mins.) of your full podcast, and subscribers can reply back with questions/comments directly from their phone. Worth looking into. See http://www.pinger.com/content/lounge.html for some examples.
The full Pinger service is also quite handy for managing 1-1, 1-many, and voice mail messaging.
moe on April 21, 2008 6:23 AMI find downloading the Firefox UserAgentSwitcher and surfing as the Google-bot gets round most of these bullshit bait and switch search results.
CS on April 21, 2008 7:55 AMJust so you know in order to be a "podcast" it HAS to be avaiable on an RSS feed. The whole concept of podcasts is to download and listen later at your schedule.
What you have is simply a sound recording that is available for download. nothing podcast about that.
Just my nitpicking on people throwing around podcast term just becuase its a new buzzword and not actually having a podcast.
I look forward ot it ONCE I can subscribe to the podcast.
Mike
Mike on April 21, 2008 9:58 AMActually I'm glad someone is going after the x-x model. They suck. 'nuff said...
What I would actually like to see is less of a 'forum' format, cuz there's too many of those already and more would just increase the static. I would like to see something like Helium, but with a tech focus - programmers write articles and others rate the article and submit edits, which can be approved by the author. I like to write about programming occasionally, as can be seen on my site, but I don't have the time to do a full-time programming blog. Still, I would like people to read my articles - the one on my site about a login database is one of the most popular pages on the site, after the photo page - not sure why, but it's apparently a good article or it has an unusual nugget of info in it somewhere.
I want a place where I can post those kind of articles and work with other programmers to improve them. Codeproject gets about half way there with their user-submitted articles, but their article-posting interface and other rules get in the way too much.
Good luck with the podcasts. I have a complete distaste for the medium that won't be overcome any time soon, but I'm sure there's an audience out there for it (or we wouldn't have the term podcast in the first place).
Vizeroth on April 22, 2008 6:31 AMHow would this be different from CodeProject.com?
Jay on April 22, 2008 10:37 AMHi Jeff,
I just heard the first podcast for StackOverflow with you and Joel Spolsky and I wanted to congratulate you on your new endeavor. Although I've been programming since 1990, I have always considered myself a novice and your comment about the "Humble Programmer" struck a chord with me. Anybody with any sense realizes that no matter how much you know, there's always more to learn and it's truly impossible to feel fully confident in your programming skills.
Thanks very much,
Bill White - Phoenix, AZ
Bill White on April 22, 2008 12:04 PMHad a look at this week's update. Great on getting the RSS and transcription wiki up. That'll make lots of people happy. Keep it up!
Ritchie Swann on April 23, 2008 2:28 AMHaving babysat the ASPN (http://aspn.activestate.com/) web site for two years (2005-2007), I've often dreamt of the possibilities of leveraging its organic search engine traffic with a social network. Unfortunately, I was never granted the resources to carry it out. The "social network for developers" idea is a winner and its great to hear you talented folks will be rolling it out.
** I have no time to listen to a 46 minute podcast. **
Text is the dominate form on the Net for several reasons. Think about it. I'm not sure this is a good precedent to start at StackOverflow. Programming knowledge tidbit #1: Text downloads faster, is more indexible, and will be experienced by more people than audio.
Alan Hogan on April 24, 2008 9:36 AMSo now that you've decided on a name, what are you going to do with all the other great domain names that are registered to "Atwood Heavy Industries"?
asdf on May 2, 2008 12:59 PMCool.. Looking forward to it.. It is a real pain looking at exactly what you have been searching for and finding it hidden behind the dollars (expert-ex-change.. !)
Thank You!
Manoj on May 6, 2008 3:23 AMPLEASE make it so that folks can vote on replies.
And then be sure that those replies voted down cannot get indexed by google.
This will make it a very useful site.
anonymous on July 10, 2008 4:06 AMi am working in drupal...i have added a menu item called Admin reports...... the problem is when i click that i get the message as
STACKOVERFLOW.........
SO PLZ HELP ME OUT ITS VERY URGENT
raj on July 10, 2008 5:43 AMpeople are already trying to mock your project! For only $250. haha
http://getafreelancer.com/projects/PHP-Website-Design/amp-Site-Clone.html
Jeff: I recently found stackoverflow.com and am addicted. What's funny is that I work as a Linux admin in support for a large hosting company and my day job revolves around answering customer's technical questions -- so why would I be addicted to a site where I can answer (or ask) technical questions without being paid? Yeah...it's because that's what I enjoy doing, for one, and that I enjoy the game of answering a question best.
Oh, and I *hate* Experts Exchange with a passion (even though the registration required answer is available without registration I just feel dirty visiting that site) and refuse to use it.
I'm actually thinking of ways to incorporate some of your ideas in my day job...some because as appealing voting down a customer's question might make a BOFH feel it's probably not the best way to treat customers ;-).
rjamestaylor on January 21, 2009 9:36 AMJust my nitpicking on people throwing around podcast term just becuase its a new buzzword and not actually having a podcast.
http://autoseler.ru/
Hi, just wondering if there's still a way to listen to the first 7 episodes of the podcast? I see that ITConversations.com only has them as far back as episode 8.
Kevin on May 1, 2009 11:10 AMText is the dominate form on the Net for several reasons. Think about it. I'm not sure this is a good precedent to start at StackOverflow. Programming knowledge tidbit #1: Text downloads faster, is more indexible, and will be experienced by more people than audio.
http://armore.ru
The level of skills on stackoverflow is very poor, comparated to BBS or Usenet (20 years of history, experts only!)
, in particular about Windows programming....
Useless.
stackoverflow.com is the best community for programmers! great for sharing scripts and Ideas.
Thanks!
Pennfolio on August 8, 2009 3:35 AMPodcast? No thanks. 46 minutes? Really, no thanks.
How about transcripts? I can process information by reading a whole helluva lot faster than I can by listening to it.
Cliton on February 6, 2010 10:24 PMDon't forget the small print at the bottom: All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License
i think it should be obvious by now, but "J2EE" probably has a new meaning!
fwiwobservation on February 6, 2010 10:24 PMoops! forgot to mention, if you use Jajah in some way....
fwiwobservation on February 6, 2010 10:24 PMGreat! I just listened to the first podcast and your discussion has quite a range! Great to hear two experienced and influential techies chat... When can we expect it?
Mason on February 6, 2010 10:24 PMThe comments to this entry are closed.
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