Yearly Archives: 2009

company February 17, 2009

Specialist Badge Implemented

The long-awaited Specialist badges are now working; you can browse them on the badges page. After I worked with it for a while, I realized that these are just tag-based badges, so I dropped the “Specialist” name and stuck with the name of the tag as the badge name. There are two levels: Silver 400…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
community February 16, 2009

When Is An Account “Abandoned”?

Let’s talk about deletion. Not question deletion, which works this way, for the record. The deletion I want to talk about today is account deletion. Stack Overflow is a bit unusual in that our accounts are ultra lightweight. We don’t require registration; we allow essentially anonymous posting. We were inspired by Wikipedia in this regard.…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
community February 13, 2009

Now Showing: Email Notifications

We just implemented a basic form of email notifications, which (mostly) closes our highest voted UserVoice request. If you… Tick the option to allow emails on your user page preferences Provide us a valid email address in your user settings Haven’t been to the Stack Overflow website in at least 7 days Have at least…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company February 12, 2009

Podcast #41

This is the 41st episode of the StackOverflow podcast, where Joel and Jeff sit down with Robert Martin aka “Uncle Bob”, and discuss software quality, the value of software engineering principles, and test-driven development. Joel clarifies that some of his comments in Podcast #38 were a bit unintentionally ad-hominem, and apologizes to Uncle Bob for…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company February 8, 2009

New Datacenter Migration

We just finished migrating our new servers over to the new datacenter at PEAK Internet. The installation was aided greatly by Stack Overflow team member Geoff Dalgas, who happens to live about a mile from PEAK in Corvallis, Oregon. He visited the facility before the servers arrived, and also helped with their installation. Having Geoff…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company February 6, 2009

Server Speed Tests

We now have the new servers set up in the data center, and configured with copies of the Stack Overflow website and database. We excitedly ran a few quick speed comparisons with the live site and found.. the new site was two times slower than the old one. (insert sound of analog record needle being…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company February 5, 2009

Podcast #40

This is the 40th episode of the StackOverflow podcast, where Joel and Jeff sit down with Michael Lopp, aka Rands, to discuss how a geek manages other geeks, the dangers of working remotely, the pitfalls of offshoring, and some techniques for continual learning. You may know Michael Lopp from his excellent blog, Rands in Repose.…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company January 30, 2009

Updated WMD Editor

Thanks to the herculean efforts of several Stack Overflow users, we were finally able to deliver some long-overdue bugfixes to our beloved WMD editor in early January, once it was fully reverse engineered. (Sadly I still have yet to hear from the original WMD author, John Fraser, after months of attempting to contact him in…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company January 30, 2009

Podcast #39

This is the 39th episode of the StackOverflow podcast, where Joel and Jeff discuss database design and the shell game of performance, the value of short, focused presentations, and the importance (or not) of a prestigious degree for software engineers. Joel insisted that we run the stackoverflow.com books on QuickBooks. I was more open to…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company January 29, 2009

New Replies Notification

We just rolled out a new replies notification feature. You’ll notice that there is a small envelope icon next to your name at the top of the page. Every 30 minutes, we check to see if new comments have been added to your posts, or if new answers have been added to your questions. If…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
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