Yearly Archives: 2009

community July 30, 2009

How-To Geek and Stack Overflow

Remember the League of Justice I said we were forming? Well, I’m thrilled to announce that our League has added its first new superhero: the How-To Geek. I’ve been a fan of The Geek’s site since the very first time I discovered it in late 2007. It’s a fantastic resource filled with great content, and…
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Co-Founder (Former)
community July 29, 2009

Stack Overflow Search – Now 61% Less Crappy

Remember when We Made Search 51% Less Crappy? Well, we rolled up our sleeves and increased search quality a whole ten percent to 61%. How? Search now heavily weights title in the results, since people seemed to really like that approach. This is currently used on the /ask page, which does a title-exclusive search when…
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Co-Founder (Former)
background July 26, 2009

Why Can’t You Have Just One Site?

Now that we have four sites in the Stack Overflow trilogy: Some users disagree with the idea that there should be four sites. Why do we need the trilogy instead of just one site? Having four sites to jump between is ridiculous! Why not one Site? Trilogy Portal: Community Colloboration The whole point of these…
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Co-Founder (Former)
company July 23, 2009

Podcast #62

In this episode of the Stack Overflow podcast, Joel and Jeff discuss software updates, the power of APIs and plugins, and leading by example. A brief discussion of how software should be updated, using Firefox and Apple’s Software Updater as examples. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t need to care about software updates because you’d…
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Co-Founder (Former)
community July 23, 2009

Non-English Question Policy

Since this came up on meta, here’s our official policy towards non-English questions on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User. (note that I say “programming” below, but this policy is the same across all the sites — when reading, you should substitute the actual topic of the site you use, e.g. “sysadmin topics” for…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background July 22, 2009

Stack Overflow Flash Mobs

Coding Horror reader Alex Vincent wrote to let me know that there is a Stack Overflow Birds-of-a-Feather session at OSCON 2009, which is going on right now. The premise of the BOF session is intriguing; it’s not at all what I expected: In concert with users online across the country, this session will lead a…
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Co-Founder (Former)
background July 17, 2009

High Scalability Blog on Stack Overflow

It was quite an honor to see that the High Scalability Blog posted an entry on Stack Overflow! We referred to the HSB, and its exhaustively detailed information about how other websites handle scaling, many times during the course of Stack Overflow development. And I’ve cited it myself when researching what we think is the…
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Co-Founder (Former)
company July 16, 2009

Podcast #61

In this episode of the podcast, Joel and Jeff sit down with Miguel de Icaza of the Mono project to discuss Mono, Silverlight / Moonlight, and the pros and cons of open sourcing your code. Miguel is one of the lead developers on the Mono project, which is an ongoing effort to bring the .NET…
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Co-Founder (Former)
beta July 15, 2009

Super User Semi-Private Beta Begins

The semi-private beta for Super User has begun. That’s right, it is officially Ewok Time. At any rate, if you wanted a community where (almost) anything goes, you’re about to get exactly what you asked for in the form of superuser.com. If your question has to do with computers, it will be allowed there. But…
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Co-Founder (Former)
company July 14, 2009

Migrate Questions Between Websites

First, I’ve got a little joke for you, courtesy of Kip and TheTxi. A doctor, a lawyer, and a rabbi log into Stack Overflow. The bartender looks at them and says “sorry, you guys are not programming related.” I didn’t say it was a good joke. Moving on. Now that we have threefour Stack Overflow…
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Co-Founder (Former)
community July 13, 2009

Reversal and Pundit Badges

Two new badges today: Reversal Provided an answer upvoted 20 or more times to a question that was downvoted 5 or more times. (gold) Pundit Left 10 comments with a score of 10 or more. (silver) I think I’ve discussed the Stack Overflow philosophy of badges ad nauseam by now, but the Reader’s Digest condensed…
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Co-Founder (Former)
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