It’s been 13 years since Stack Overflow was founded. It began with a simple mission, to serve as a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. It’s become a place where anyone could ask for help or share some knowledge and where all the content created by the community would be open and accessible to the public. The landscape of software and technology has evolved tremendously in the decade since, and Stack Overflow has become a central hub in the day-to-day practice of software development for coders around the globe.
From this seed, an entire universe of Q&A sites blossomed, becoming the Stack Exchange Network. Some of these sites focused on topics closely related to software development, but many others centered on topics—cooking, parenting, home repair—that had nothing to do with computer programming, but fostered a devoted community of experts who built up tremendous libraries of knowledge in their particular field. Now we’ve got over 175 sites building individual libraries.
Today we are celebrating a group of sites that passed their 10th birthday during the first half of 2021. They have helped millions learn new languages, repair their cars, and sharpen their skills at code review. If you have a favorite question, answer, or experience from one of these sites, please share it in the comments. We’ll add our favorites to the post.
Graphic Design A site for professional and hobbyist graphic designers that helps to answer questions like understanding design choices, making graphic software do what you want, getting your design properly printed, and dealing with problematic clients. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: adobe-illustratorDatabase Administrators For those needing expert answers to advanced database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL alternatives. Questions about database administration, advanced querying, data modeling, data warehousing, business intelligence, and more are welcome here. - Interesting Questions: One, Two, & Three / Most Popular Tag: sql-serverScience Fiction & Fantasy A community of fans who love digging deep into fictional universes, understanding characters, plot points, and what makes these worlds and stories tick. In-depth analysis, gathering statistical trivia, advising on reading/watching order, and identifying half-remembered stories: any work of speculative fiction from page or screen is on-topic here. - Interesting Questions: One, Two, & Three / Most Popular Tag: story-identificationCode Review A question and answer site for seeking peer review of your code. The community works together to improve the skills of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better. Questions must come from a working piece of code in need of open-ended feedback in the areas of performance, correctness in unanticipated cases, potential security issues, or application of best practices and design pattern usage. - Interesting Questions: One, Two, & Three / Most Popular Tag: pythonCode Golf & Coding Challenges A site where users compete against each other in various types of coding competitions, such as writing the shortest code for a given task, puzzles where one has to guess the language or crack a re-coding puzzle. Answers can be written in nearly any language, whether common or niche like JavaScript to APL, to the outright esoteric, like Malbolge. Many users even make their own languages to create ever-shorter programs. If you want to propose a challenge, be sure to post it in their Sandbox first! - Interesting Questions: One & Two / Most Popular Tag: code-golfQuantitative Finance A question and answer site for quants. The community helps professionals and academics in solving problems related to portfolio management, risk management, derivatives pricing, and hedging. Questions related to mathematical finance such as stochastic calculus and quant-related programming problems are also on-topic. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: optionsProject Management A community that started off when the agile manifesto was only 10 years old, has now grown into one of the very few places where agility and waterfall are equally welcome - with a community formed by leaders not only from IT but also from other markets. It doesn't matter if your question is about Why use Story Points instead of hours for estimating, How Technical should a project manager be, or even When to use Waterfall, when to use Scrum?, your question will be warmly received. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: scrumSkeptics We live in a world of superstition, urban legend, and "fake news". Skeptics Stack Exchange is dedicated to taking widely-believed claims and subjecting them to scientific skepticism to see what the evidence supports. The scope of the questions is broad - from the serious to the common-place to the bizarre. What the answers have in common is we work to push past politics and opinion to get to the empirical facts. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: united-statesDrupal Answers For questions about using, administering, and extending Drupal. Questions related to Drupal development/theming how-tos, site troubleshooting, site-building how-tos, terminology or jargon, and support questions for specific modules that aren't about working around bugs are welcome here. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: 7Physical Fitness For fitness professionals, athletes, trainers, and enthusiasts to ask questions about improving exercise performance or technique, choosing a training program, nutrition as related to exercise, gear and gadgets for exercise, injury prevention, and achieving physique milestones. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: weightliftingMotor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Where anyone, be it a professional mechanic or the homegrown do-it-yourselfer, can find information regarding the inner workings of motor vehicles. This includes subjects related to the maintenance and repair of these vehicles and their accessories, internal combustion engines, even in applications other than automotive so long as the question is related to engines or engine accessories. And above all, there's no Pink Tax allowed. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: engineParenting For parents, grandparents, nannies, and others who care for children. Topics include upbringing, safety, feeding, health and hygiene, development and growth, language, behavior, and discipline. - Interesting Questions: One & Two / Most Popular Tag: toddlerMusic Practice & Theory For musicians, students, and enthusiasts. It focuses on an understanding of music, approaches to composition, development of technique and delivery both in the studio and live. - Interesting Questions: One, Two, & Three / Most Popular Tag: theorySoftware Quality Assurance & Testing For software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers to ask questions about topics related directly to software testing. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: automated-testingGerman Language Caters to everybody interested in the German language, from rookie learners to curious native speakers. For example, the community provides learning strategies for common problems, dissects the meaning of words when a dictionary fails, and delves into the convoluted history of the language. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: meaningJapanese Language For students, teachers, and linguists who want to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. Tools are available to help write questions that include furigana, pitch accent notation, and other markdown bug workarounds. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: grammarGardening & Landscaping For professional and amateur gardeners and landscapers to ask questions about the care and maintenance of gardens and landscapes. Welcomed questions will be related to the care and feeding of plants, gardening diagnosis and management, plant diseases, pests, identification of plant life, landscape and garden planning and layouts, as well as the general practice of gardening which includes timing, tools, and techniques. - Interesting Questions: One, Two, & Three / Most Popular Tag: identificationPhilosophy For philosophers, students of philosophy, and those interested in the history of ideas and the rational analysis of concepts. This is for both academic and informal questions from subjects such as epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and applied philosophy. - Highest Upvoted Question / Most Popular Tag: logicTravel Travel is a website helping people from all walks of life: from hippie backpackers on a shoestring budget to wealthy businessmen flying first class; from those who want to relax in a nice restaurant to crazy adventurers out in the Himalayas. If you're planning to leave your home and have a question about it, Travel.SE is the best place to ask for advice. - Interesting Questions: One, Two, & Three / Most Popular Tag: visas
One site that also has an anniversary but deserves a special mention is Area 51, which serves as the idea generator and incubator for the rest of the sites in the Stack Exchange network.