Stack Overflow

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:06:52 -0800

For my programming entertainment needs, I frequent Slashdot and Reddit, but lately also Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow is turning out to be a good source of information. I've posted some very obscure Emacs questions and gotten great answers in a few hours. Any question you post, no matter how obscure, is likely to be pounced upon by rabid reputation-seeking answerers.

What is it about a slowly-increasing numeric representation of your value as a human being that is so appealing? This is one thing Perl Monks got right early on. People there always say XP points don't matter, but I think it does on some level. It's just a silly number, but even knowing it's silly, on some deep dark level, you look at someone with 10,000 XP differently from someone with 400.

I think one of the best things you can experience as a programmer is for other programmers to think (and say) that you're smart. Maybe that's true of all professions and hobbies, but I know it's true of most programmers. Anything which takes good advantage of that fact of programmer psychology is on track to become successful.

Only bad thing about Stack Overflow is how saturated it is with .NET and Java. If you can wade through that crap, you can find some cool stuff.

briancarper.net (λ) (Tag: C-Sharp)

Stack Overflow