Maybe I ought to mention my number one peeve about ExEx hits in Google then. I might not be unique.

I detest following a link that ends up saying "Sorry Charlie, you have to register here in order to get what we told the web spiders we have to offer you about this!"

I always assume there's a hidden catch too if I were to follow up, like another browser toolbar, some kind of spyware requirement, etc.

What? No rss reed for the podcast!

WOW! That is great news. Congratulations!

so stackoverflow.com was the winning name?
curiously only this weekend i doing tree balancing experiments and vc ended my execution without so much as a whisper as to what was wrong. after awhile i realized i was overflowing the stack with recursion. vc was quiet about it because i wasn't doing a check of some kind i suppose but i would have thought the system would say something about it. i guess you took away its voice by coveting the name. curious coincidence... good name though for you site. good luck with it as well.

Awesome, really looking forward to this Jeff.

Thanks!

> I detest following a link that ends up saying "Sorry Charlie, you have
> to register here in order to get what we told the web spiders we have to
> offer you about this!"

Scroll down to the bottom of the page... the answers are there*, no registration required.

* (Works On My Computer certified)

Fudge-

The joke about ExEx and the "you must register to view these answers" is that you DON'T have to--just scroll waaaaaaaaaay down the page past the scrambled answers and the big pile of adds, and the real answers are posted.

Congrats, Jeff! I'll be taking a look!

Not to be negative, but one thing I disagree with you on is your use of bold type. Every time I read one of your posts, I can't help but get the impression that your key points and conclusions are in bold because the reader is somehow not smart enough to grasp their importance otherwise. For some reason this frustrates me to no end. I would enjoy reading much more if it was used more sparingly. Anyway, just an opinion, so take it for what it's worth.

This is going to delve into a hearty discussion of EX-EX I'm sure heh I registered years ago before they had the crappy formula they have now. I still find it fairly useful.

However, great to see Jeff. I'd assumed this was what your new community was going to be about and I'm grateful. It should be a really excellent resource and I look forward to watching the startup unfold.

I haven't gotten through the podcast quite yet.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this site. I know I'll be tuning in.

Podcast? 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.

congrats Jeff and Joel. I hope the site will have the content that we all wish we had access too. Something a bit more thought engaging than tutorial du-juour ala code project or 4 guys from rolla.

Looks like you need someone to design the site!

I know you got a to do with creating a CMS, wiki, whatnot and getting thigns ready for launch..*BUT*....

RSS your podcast. Seriously. If I can't put you into iTunes and by extension my ipod you might as well not exist. Its the only way I keep up with Hanselminutes and .NET Rocks!

How dare you dis expert-sex-change! They have the best domain in the business ;)

Methinks too many people think what they're seeing on stackoverflow.com is the finished product...

*rolls eyes*

I too, think that an RSS feed for the podcast would be more than handy.

I'm looking forward to it Jeff!

And on a side note, I believe the ExEx trick is to view it with Google cache and scroll to the bottom for answers.

Where is the RSS feed? The page mentioned a podcast.

:)

This should be fun. :)

Don'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

What's this new site going to give us that places like CodeProject.com don't already provide in their articles and forums?

(I haven't listened to the podcast; I'd usually much rather read a text transcript, or skip the information entirely, than listen to someone speak. Maybe that's just me being weird like that, though. :) )

Whatever the new site is exactly, best of luck with it!

You and Joel together! This is going to be great. Didn't see that one coming. Congratulation to both of you! I will definitely be a routine visitor there. Looking forward to this one.

Is it going to be "orange" too? :-)

Funny. Just the other day I discovered CustomizeGoogle and used it to block ExEx from my Google results. I didn't know about any trick--is it worth it?

+1 for transcripts. I don't do audio.

+1 on the name - I like it!

How about change programmers to developers? Not everthing is about programming, like the lenghty articles on Joel on Software about UI, almost nothing in those are about programming per se. Anyway, good initiative.

In before wasabi.

Just kidding. Congrats!

Atwood and Spolsky in one place?!?? I'm already addicted.

One of the startups I've been thinking of for a while is an experts-exchange "done right". I'm intrigued at how this will work out. How do you get quality answers? I was on a forum yesterday, something to do with XPath and one of the responses was "You could try this...". People that post "you could try" are annoying. How do you filter the good vs annoying? People rate the response? How do you get them to rate the response? How often does someone "rate" the on-line MSDN help? Rarely. OK, off to the podcast.

Why this could be good: it'll provide actual useful stuff from competent and capable people, instead of teenagers paraphrasing MSDN documentation and passing it off as a brilliant contribution to humanity. Honestly - tutorials that are newbies describing their misinterpretation of what they've figured out from sparse documentation can, on occasion, also not be helpful.

Why it could easily suck: either too little content, or emphasising quantity over quality thus leading to crap content.

Still, I'm praying there's a god who'll make sure it's not another "we'll get people to provide all the content for free and then we'll make lots and lots of money from the goggle ads" site. Unless the people providing the content are getting the cash I'ld rather have another "vapid commentary blog" because at least the guy making the money would have to write something that keeps people reading.

Alas, I find podcasts to be way too time consuming. I love the name of the web site - it will have good branding and name recognition for programmers. I've been considering doing a similar thing with TheCompilerIsYourFriend ... but just haven't been able to find the time since I've been busy ..oh... getting married ! :)

Sounds like a great idea! I don't know of any site that adequately gathers programming information in one place like this. I'm really looking forward to using the site.

I blogged about this a while ago. I call it the expert-novice problem. Your site won't solve anything. There are plenty of excellent, free forums where programmers hang out and help each other. What's missing from your idea is incentive. Why should an expert spend his valuable time educating newbies? Out of kindness, I sometimes answer programming questions I see on various forums, but most of the time I don't bother because I have better things to do. How are you improving this situation?

For those who choose not to download the "podcast" - it is interesting, but only about 10-15% of it has any connection to the new site. The rest is a somewhat randomly rambling, but still interesting, discussion about web technology, Microsoft's changing position in the marketplace, laptops, Vista vs XP vs OSX, blogging, programming documentation, etc.

I don't know that a transcript would be all that helpful :)

Hi Jeff this is great - will be listening to podcast #1 tomorrow.

I think this partnership is great because I when I speak of you I often speak of Joel and vis-versa. In my opinion you two have by far the most entertaining, educational, convincing and impactful writing styles of all bloggers I read. There's a *significant* difference in the quality of your guy's posts and everyone else's.

I just hope you keep blogging at the same "intensity". Joel is an amazing writer, but he's really pulled back from the depth of posts he would do 2/3+ years ago. The stuff from his book was brilliant and I wish he still did that type of writing. I just hope you don't do the same.

Regards,
Matt

ps Plan to make an RSS feed for the podcast?

Well guys, Larry said it won't work, so let's pack it up and call it a day... :P

Unlike the people above, I like the audio podcast format. I drive long distances on the weekends and technical podcasts that keep my brain engaged are what keep me from falling asleep at the wheel!

Hmmm...

I guess I'll give you both the benefit of the doubt because I've enjoyed reading both of your blogs over the years.

That said, I'm wondering if this may be a move in a direction away from what I found valuable about both of your sites: that they were general enough to apply to many different languages, platforms and technologies. A site for collecting "good programming knowledge" inevitably will get specific and detailed, and since I'm a Python/MySQL/Mac guy, I'm not sure a site managed by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky will be the best resource for my detailed technical questions. How can you compete with comp.lang.python? Or other communities that have the core developers actively participating?

As for a podcast, you need to do a little homework on the status quo. Download a few technical podcasts from iTunes and play around with them. All the good ones have track indexes and notes that give you "random access" to the podcast. And all of them have some sort of subscription capability like RSS. You really should put some effort into doing this part of the site right if you want to keep people interested.

Still, like I said, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and form my opinion after a couple of months of seeing and listening to what you guys have to say.

Good luck!

Hasn't this all been done before, what makes yours different. ho hum.

My first thought -- one that I hope you've thought long and hard about, but I mention it just in case -- is: What's your plan and strategy for moderating things?

Personally, I'm a big supporter of the beliefs of BoingBoing's new message-board moderator (Teresa Nielsen Hayden), which roughly amount to "a moderator is necessary for keeping discourse on a polite and respectful level, because obnoxious twits beget more obnoxious twits and then all the valuable contributors leave."

For a site like this, it may -- or may not -- be useful to do "that's off-topic here but useful, I'll move it" sorts of moderation as well. Depends, I guess, on whether you're expecting thread titles or deep-search to be the primary way of finding things, and whether the damage to conversations is worth it.

Behold the combined power that is Jeff and Joel! I’m glad you’ve thrown it out there that stackoverflow is ‘by programmers, for programmers’, otherwise I’d be afraid of the havoc you two could wreak. As a relatively inexperienced programmer, I am really looking forward to seeing what this will become. Congrats and good luck.

Excellent... now.. where's the RSS?

Shouldn't it be stackoverflow.org if it's free?

I was just looking at ExEx today and wondering "why isn't there a better replacement for this," congratulations to the two of you, I'm really looking forward to what this ends up providing.

(Also, I'm surprised that stackoverflow.com was available!)

Love the concept for your site. Unfortunately I think you guys should invest in some audio equipment and/or audio recording lessons. The sound quality is really not up to snuff. I may be biased since I work at a radio organization where audio quality is paramount. Scott Hanselman does an amazing job of his podcasts, so maybe he can help you guys get started with that stuff.

Oh, and RSS please!

Thanks for everything you've done thus far you guys!

Scott

There's definitely room on this internet for an Expert sex change that doesn't suck. Best of luck to the pair of you.

Slightly off-topic:
@MattH: 'People that post "you could try" are annoying.'

There's something wrong with you.

Joel's post on this (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/04/16.html) concerns me a bit because he says:

"Instead, they (programmers) happily program away, using trial-and-error. When they can't figure something out, they type a question into Google."

I can't even begin to emphasize how BAD of an idea it would be to create a new site that lets "google, copy, paste, and tweak-till-it-works" programmers do those 4 steps faster. You'll just make faster, well, as Mark Pilgrim calls them, "morons" (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/08/16/specs).

It's because of morons that I routinely am unable to use a plus sign in my e-mail address on the web.

What would be great though would be a programming "Q & A" site where "a-holes" (again, using Mark Pilgrim terminology) could help "morons" learn how to read/use/love "the spec".

This, perhaps, could be as simple as including a section for each question for links to authoritative references.

So when some "moron" comes in and says "how can I validate an e-mail address?", I and my fellow "a-holes" can a.) give them an immediate answer; but also b.) point them to the e-mail RFC, a reference on writing regular expressions, etc., etc.

Give a moron a fish, he'll eat for a day.
Teach a moron to be an a-hole, his stack will overflow?

I'm just listening to your podcast and you or Joel were saying about your tutorials/forum. I am just wondering about how the tutorials are going to work is it going to be submit an entry in a similar way to wikipedia maybe categorized by language then later allowing other registered users to edit it.

I suppose editing would need to go through a bit of manual checking but I can't imagine much abuse on a site added to by programmers for programmers.

Also the suggestion of rating similar to digg on articles and forum posts sounds great.

FWIW... To view the ExEx content from a google search just click on the cached page. That will give you what google thought was relevant.

The new http://www.stackoverflow.com/ Web site, as presently conceived, is inaccessible to deaf software developers.
It is not only inaccessible but also rudely inaccessible.

This "new concept" already exists. Look: http://snipplr.com/

Hi Jeff, congrats!
But please add RSS support.

10x

For the record, this is my first time posting on CodingHorror.com. Anyways, I don't think this site will work, mostly for the simple fact that you guys can't agree on anything! Based on the first podcast, Joel says some seriously ignorant shit about Microsoft, and Jeff replies with some passive words: "right", "right". Then, Jeff says some things about how Microsoft has done this and that, and then Joel says, "yeah, yeah", "no!", "yeah", and Jeff basically says "there's no reason to attack Microsoft", just because they are weaker than in the past.

The fact that Joel is a REALLY smart individual, and that Jeff is an even smarter one, makes it entirely hilarious (if anything) because one hates Microsoft, and one is donating to .NET OSS; But seriously, you're two totally different personalities, which means you should probably both go your own way(s). Maybe make guest posts on each other's web sites, but that's all. Keep Joel away from Jeff's greater level of intelligence, for the love of god.

Also, about Joel's comments on not using books: You're stupid. Books, when not used as a TEXT book for University (from my personal experience), and the reader WANTS to learn about the topic, is MUCH better than what you can find online. Most things found online are shitty answers by professors at half-assed universities, or very weak articles posted on wikipedia.

Thanks,

Josh

Regarding the missing rss, I know it is lame to complain about ease of access when it is all about the content, or about accuracy at this early stage, but something irks me real bad when supposedly tech-savvy people call "podcast" an mp3 file. What else do they not get at all?

>You and Joel together! This is going to be great. Didn't see that one coming. Congratulation to both of you! I will definitely be a routine visitor there. Looking forward to this one.

Completely in agreement here... What a combo! And left the rest of us completely blindsided. :)

ExEx ? pfft... DaniWeb's got that beat, IMHO.

Now wait.. the two of you are opening a site together... that offers free stuff... how is this going to be a "company" or a "startup"? For example, without getting too specific, what's your plans for revenue? Advertising like here at CH ? If so, this is nothing more than another forum or place of discussion on technical subjects... far cry from a new business where either you sink in debt or float in profits. Do please elaborate on how this is the new business you quit your day job for. :)

Oh by the way.. are you hiring? :D

fantastic, best of luck

I just wanted to say to Brad that I like the way Jeff uses bold to highlight important points. When I am scanning or reading through the page, I focus a little bit more on the words in bold. It makes me pause and think.

I actually detest bloggers and journalists who doesn't provide a quick way to scan their main points.

+1 more request for an RSS feed.

@Eam - There is plenty wrong with me, but perhaps my wording wasn't qualified enough. When looking for design/architecture ideas the "you could try" answers are great. When asking "how do I compare dates using xpath?" the "you could try" answers are rarely of value. If you don't know the answer then don't respond; or at least qualify the response - "if you mean this, then try this..."

Anyway, congrats Jeff and Joel. I'm eagerly awaiting more details.

@Brad -- I see no "bold type", just blue text indicating links. You know, hypertext, as in the whole point of this web thing.

Great! Can't wait for stackoverflow.com to get up and running :)

I hope you don't allow people with certifications to provide answers to questions. Those guys can be downright assholes...

@Stan:

Might want to get your eyes checked. There's plenty of bold text in this post, albeit less so than usual.

Not that I have a problem with it. Used sensibly it can help convey a point. After all, the punctuation, sentence structure, and paragraph breaks all convey very little information but to help the moron readers parse the content well :). I count six blocks of boldface (I might have missed one), including a couple instances of bolded hyperlinks. The Internet is not paper, and you need images and format changes to make it work.

Are you using a browser not in the "big four"?

Sweet.

I can't wait to post up examples of "hello lolcat" in every language and reap the karma.

Or were lolcats last year's meme?

We've seen this sort of thing before. I suppose I'm imagining a message board, divided by topic, which has a google/yahoo! ask style of posting, where when a question is answered it is marked as such.

How would this be different? How would it distinguish itself? If I have a question about (for example) a Mac programming issue, or a .Net library programming issue, why would I go to stackoverflow instead of the Apple or Microsoft developer forums?

I would imagine that "community" is half of the answer. I have a suggestion for the rest: Posting code on forums is notoriously irritating. It would be nice to be able to post code to the site to ask questions about, but have the site automatically add syntax highlighting based on the type of code. How? By adding markup tags based on the language, such as:

[c++]class foo{};[/c++] [python]class foo: pass[/python] [intel-assembly]mov eax, 42[/intel-assembly]

At first, you don't even have to implement the syntax highlighting for all languages, just make it do fixed-width font, then add syntax highlighting for individual languages incrementally.

Edited to add second suggestion: Perhaps you should allow forum members to tag posts arbitrarily, so that if someone posts a question about a language (or library) that doesn't have a forum dedicated to it, you can still search/sort/filter based on it. The best example of this is Python which has a few "sub-languages" and a few alternative implementations. What if you have an IronPython specific question? Post it under the Python forum (or the dynamic languages forum) and tag it as IronPython. Have a question about the Boo programming language (arguably a sub-language of Python)? Then post it in the Python forum and tag it with Boo.

Sweet! Another great podcast! I haven't found one I really like other than Hanselminutes, and I'd like more to listen to on the bus. 30-45 minutes is the perfect length. DOTNET Rocks is a little too long for me. I'm looking forward to the site, I've been an Atwood and Spolsky fan for a while.

Finished listening to the podcast, and the idea sounds interesting, though I'll definitely be curious to see how you set up the UI, moderation, and such to make sure the site remains useful and isn't just spammed with garbage, since those are not easy problems to solve from a technical standpoint (but then, many "social" style issues within community software rarely are if they are designed for a larger audience, though obviously karma systems help).

Plus of course seeing how you make it sustainable since it's going to be free to use, as after all it would suck if a ton of GREAT information was posted, but then bandwidth bills crushed the site taking it offline because it got too expensive to maintain.

Hopefully in the end it pans out well for you though, and good luck.

Now talk about vaporware... you ain't got notting yet!

Podcasts? Not my thing.

Please let me know when you have something to boast about (until then, please refrain from bugging me/us). I hope you take that as some constructive criticism. In your Podcast you've probably talked about all the nice features you want to implement. Probably you can implement some of these features in short time, and afterwards expand...

Cool! I hope that it goes well! I'm curious if you're planning to monetize (maybe some unobtrusive ads?) or if you're going ad-free?

Either way, best wishes on the new project!

coding horror, stack overflow, .. what is your next project, infinite-loop? :) I always get some nice comments from non-tech co-workers when they catch me read coding horror.

anyway, looking forward to see this project expand. I have read both blogs for several years, nice to see that you can work something out.

I have one request, can you guys chant "developers, developers, developers... " at the next postcast? >:)

RSS is easy http://page2rss.com/atom?url=www.codinghorror.com
Enjoy.

Question 1: Why didn't you use a DOCTYPE? ;)

So cool, I can't wait to see it evolve. Well done both. :)

I'm extremely excited by this. I hope it goes far.

A marriage made in heaven. You've been quite hard on Joel in the past so I would never have expected this.

Good Luck Jeff and thanx for entertaining us programmers :)

The main image on http://www.stackoverflow.com/ is blocked by my work's WebSense (as it's hosted by imageshack)
Just thought I'd let you know as it may be a site used by many people at work and I'd hate stackoverflow to be blocked by Websense by association.

You had me at “anti-experts-exchange”. Kudos and good luck!

I'll be following how this progresses with great interest (as well as the responses to it). Very interesting if only because of your involvement together with Joel Spolsky.

While intriguing that you'll only be communicating (at first) via podcast, I also agree that transcripts would be helpful.

I have to say I'm totally confused as to what the point of this site is. There's one image and an mp3. Sorry, I don't want to listen to an mp3 right now, I prefer reading text. So the site for me right now has zero useful content.

I'm thinking of Joel's old "Good software takes ten years" article where he mentions you shouldn't overhype your version 1.0. Otherwise you end up with "Marimba syndrome" where everybody thinks your app is pointless cause it's got no features - yet.

"Let's create something that makes it easy to participate, and put it online in a form that is trivially easy to find."

What - like discuss.joelonsoftware.com? Say what you like about the content but it's easy to participate and easy to find.

This site's also got a "chicken and egg" problem. To start with, I'm unlikely to post there because there won't be many readers, and I'm unlikely to read there because not too many people are likely to be posting stuff I want. Where's your backwards compatability solution to get out of this?

I mean, good luck with your venture and all, but have I _completely_ missed the point of what this is about?

just a (little) request. maybe it would be a good idea to present the audio in a zip file or similar. not because of the compression, but just because my company is blocking MP3 downloading in general.
tia

Sorry you move to podcasts. I still have to download one of them to my IPod, since with two young kids I just get to browse through some feeds while nursing them, I'd have huge problems to listen to anything more complicated than music.
Moreover, podcasts are not searchable, which makes it a big downside to something which would contain advice for programming issues.

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on it and maybe participate with a question or two I have on my mind.

> Why didn't you use a DOCTYPE? ;)
> present the audio in a zip file or similar
> The main image is blocked by my work's WebSense

Fixed.

> Still hate the name, but it is what it is.

I hear you. It's difficult to appreciate how hard naming is until you have to do it! But yes, stackoverflow.com it is.

> What - like discuss.joelonsoftware.com? Say what you like about the content but it's easy to participate and easy to find. This site's also got a "chicken and egg" problem.

We will be seeding stackoverflow.com with content from discuss.joelonsoftware.com ; the programming forums there will be disabled and users directed to the new site.

> I find podcasts to be way too time consuming
> I haven't listened to the podcast; I'd usually much rather read a text transcript

I also am no fan of podcasts, but Joel believes it adds another dimension to our writing when you can hear voice, intonation, etcetera. Please listen to the next podcast, I will specifically bring this up so Joel can relate his thoughts on this. Yes, I *know* it's ironic to ask people who don't enjoy podcasts to listen to one that explains why they might want to. :) We'll do it at the very beginning so you don't have to listen to the whole thing!

The podcast is mostly a side effect of work that Joel and I already do -- we have these weekly calls, and we thought some people might enjoy them. That said, I rarely if ever listen to podcasts so believe me, I totally get where you're coming from.

Got a transcript? Podcasts are all but impossible for the hard of hearing :(

Ususally I don't complain, but I'm really interested in finding out more here

Come on Jeff - you gotta have an RSS feed for the podcast :)

Why are you only taking questions in the form of audio recordings? That seems like a real inefficiency. How do I browse open questions or previously answered questions?

> Podcast? 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 April 16, 2008 06:09 PM

Agreed. What about accessibility? You have your CAPTCHA "orange" accessible for the visually impaired, but make no effort to make your stackoverflow.com preview/promo accessible to the hearing impaired. I'm disappointed - I always thought you were better than that.

I hope stackoverflow.com doesn't use audio too much when it's finished. Coding is a typed activity. It doesn't _need_ audio description, and in most cases it doesn't even need diagrams. Good old fashioned text is the way to go with this project as far as I can see.

(Maybe you just recorded an MP3 because it saves typing, but for a programmer that seems a pretty lame excuse).

Serious question: what's wrong with codeproject.com? I've been active there for five years and this year got an MVP award for answering questions in many of the forums.

The problem we have over there is that users often aren't rewarded for answering questions correctly - in fact often the best answers are voted down because they involve a lot of work, the all-time classic 'I wouldn't start from here', or even 'I wouldn't do that at all.' I can't really see that your site wouldn't suffer from the same problem. We already have a system where votes by people with greater reputation are weighted higher, the problem is that these people don't necessarily vote up a response (or article) that's been voted down incorrectly.

I don't know how to do RSS audio off the top of my head, but I wrote my own (text based) rss feed handler in an evening, and googling for "rss audio spec" gives me a good idea on how to implement that. And I'm no rockstar developer.

How about a compromise? You want us to listen to the podcast, I want to know what content to expect before I do that. How about putting up a few "teaser" quotes from it on the page, or a couple of small 30 seconds "highlights" for people to try out quickly, to entice them into the main event?

I have to wonder if trying to take questions in the form of audio recordings is simply a front for raising the quality barrier, since the amount of effort to ask it is so much higher.

Just checked del.icio.us and stackoverflow.com has already made it to the "hotlist", nice going Jeff!

Wow! A cartoon that was up on the notice board in the Science Block when I started uni! That takes me back...

(That cartoon is therefore at least 25 years old and hasn't dated at all).

Congratulations, and all the best with this new venture.

audio messages is nice way to build such a "dialog" with developers for sure (ha-ha), but it will be even better if you release your blah-blah as an uncompressed video..

good lack guys ;)

I look forward to listening to the podcast while doing the dishes. I like podcasts for when I have to do something boring or mindless. What's the license on it? Would somebody be allowed to make and publish a transcript?

I know some of you might find this hard to believe, but occasionally I am away from my computer. A podcast, allows me to follow tech. stuff when I am at the gym or in the car. Also, podcast implies iPod, not computer audio file.

There is a UI lesson involved: It doesn't matter how good your content is, if the user can't find it or access it EASILY, it may as well just not exist.

Congratulations on the new venture!!

David

I find it confusing experts exchange is still in business.

When I go googling for an answer for something I need assistance with, if I inadvertantly click on an expertsexchange link, as soon as I see the, "LOGIN PLEASE!" screen, I click back, and inevitably find exactly what I'm looking for elsewhere.

It's idiotic.

Also, I don't know what to make of stackoverflow.com.

I don't agree with everything you say, but I respect you.

I think Joel Spolsky is a raging douchebag/toolbox.

It's a conundrum.

Jeff, I'm anxious to see how stackoverflow will develop, but PLEASE FIX THE SOUND QUALITY! 32Kbps really sucks, why don't you make it at least 128Kbps VBR? And while Joel sounds terrible, Jeff's voice is so garbled that it's totally unrecognizable.

While podcasts may add a whole new dimension (voice), text transcripts also add whole new dimensions (ability to skim rapidly, ability to index for searching, access by the hard-of-hearing, probably a few others). Seems to me like providing BOTH is an absolute benefit... then the listener/reader has a choice.

Speaking of which, if you are looking for volunteers to help transcribe it, let me know. (I WON'T do so without invitation - doesn't quite seem polite.) In keeping with the open source ethos, I'm not complaining about what you're sharing for free, I'm just offering to help improve it!

"Sorry Charlie, you have to register here in order to get what we told the web spiders we have to offer you about this!"

Just choose "Cache" from the Google results page and you see what Google saw anyway (no scrambling + no registration!).

I third/fourth the request for transcripts, not all of us are native english speakers.

Also, if we're discussing any sort of community based system, tagging is a must. Not because it's a buzz word feature, but because no single answer or question deals with one category of coding. Some questions span all languages, other deal with odds and ends of one language, some deal with networking, you see what I mean.

Good luck!

Congrats, guys! You and Joel are my two favorite bloggers hands down, and I'm excited to see what you pull off

Hey Jeff, make joel ask you questions or something. The conversation is barely balanced - he can't stop talking and you're obviously more introverted. I'm sure you can figure out how to talk more, but I'm not sure you realize it. Do you plan on getting other help on this project?

Anyway, something like wikipedia would be great. Its greatest strength being the ability to save historical information. Seeing a progression of information would help a lot of programmers in the future. Keep up the good work.

I'd like to see transcripts made also; being profoundly deaf the site is a bit of a downer so far.

For 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.)

The 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.

Geez 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!

Awesome. This looks fabulous. Jeff and Joel on the same project? I'll be there man.

Podcasts 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.

i think it should be obvious by now, but "J2EE" probably has a new meaning!

1. 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 #))

oops! forgot to mention, if you use Jajah in some way....

You 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.

>>if 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.

Just don't let the new site cut into your Rock Band practice schedule!

I 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.

Your 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).

would calling your postcast 'the stackoverflow coredump' be too negative?

Despite 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.

Jeff, 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!

I 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.

I'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.

I 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.

> I 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.

I 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".

Cool, its a small world, I mean both you and Joel are quite popular, but nice to see you working together.

What 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?

My 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.

Ok, 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.

Considering 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.

Wait. Did you just jump the shark by osmosis? Get me my skiis, Potsie...

After 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.

Here 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.

This is great news Jeff, I look forward both to participating and listening to the podcast. Best of luck with it all.

Regarding "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.

I 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.

Oh, 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".

Am 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 / Q&A site, with no indication of what exactly would make this different from all the other ones.

The podcast should obviously be named Stackovercast.

I'm listening to the first podcast episode now.

Please, can you record your podcast in a better audio quality than telephone-quality? I can understand you very well, but it would be much nicer to listen to if the audio quality (sample rate) was better.

Congrats. Sounds like a good site.
I am wondering since you quit your day job, what is your revenue model going to be? I didn't see advertising mentioned, it that the route?

Hi Jeff!

I also strongly believe in the power of sharing knowledge!

In fact it's because of sharing knowledge that today we can send the Man to the Moon. :)

If there's anything I could do to help you guys with this project, please, let me know!

Thank you and good luck,
Bruno Coelho

> Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange

I am afraid to check to see if "novice-sexchange" was taken. ;)

Good luck on the new site. We all need what EE promised but has only delivered clumsily.

And regarding your use of bold to highlight key points, I approve. John Dvorak was infamous for that back in the 80s, but it served its purpose very well: when the reader's too busy to read the whole damn thing, they can pick up the key points in a few seconds without wading through all of the author's ranting and raving. Not that your ranting and raving isn't entertaining, but some days are a lot busier than others.

I'm really looking forward to this - my hope is that it'll become my first point of call.

If you can get rid of my two pet hates, I'll be a very happy man.
1. "Sorry, you have to pay us money to see the answer!" and
2. Original Poster: "Oh, don't worry, I figured out how to do it".

I love the idea of stackoverflow.com. So many programmers Google for answers that it would be nice if there were some sort of quality control on the results they get. No obtrusive ads is also a plus.

re: ExpertS-exChange.com - you do NOT have to click the 'cache' link, disable javascript, or any other 'tricks'. All you have to do is scroll ALL the way down, past what looks like the end of the page. The answers are there in plain text.

Not that it doesn't suck, of course. I'm looking forward to this new site Jeff (and Joel)!

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.

Great 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.

I 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! :)

I'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?

I 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...

Jeff, you're a bold type elitist. So, I hope you can understand us being bitter and wanting to hold onto our RSS.

Am 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.

I am avidly looking forward to this project, and I will willingly volunteer myself to assist in its success.

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.

Looking 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?

I 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

So who will be writing all of the code for this project?

And more importantly, will that code be throwing and catching exceptions?

Great! 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?

I looked up at the walls and they met the ceiling at 90 degrees :)

I 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.

Hmm.. 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.

I 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.

While working, I often look for how to do things in google. I think this is a great idea. Looking forward to using it!

You know Jeff, your site wouldn't get confused as CodingWhore if you Americans could speak properly. (;P I kid, I kid!)

I 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.

For 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

You 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.

Great. Looking forward for it.

I find downloading the Firefox UserAgentSwitcher and surfing as the Google-bot gets round most of these bullshit bait and switch search results.

Just 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

Actually 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.

sounds 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.

Hi 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.

How would this be different from CodeProject.com?

Hi 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

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).

Had 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!

Having 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.

So 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"?

Cool.. 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!

i 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

PLEASE 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.

people 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 ;-).

Just 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.

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.
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!