activism
Stay Gold, America
We are at an unprecedented point in American history, and I'm concerned we may lose sight of the American Dream.
technology trends
What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?
I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here’s my 15 second answer: We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It’s called Stack Overflow. As of
markdown
Toward a Better Markdown Tutorial
It’s always surprised me when people, especially technical people, say they don’t know Markdown. Do you not use GitHub? Stack Overflow? Reddit? I get that an average person may not understand how Markdown is based on simple old-school plaintext ASCII typing conventions. Like when you’re *really* excited
community management
Suspension, Ban or Hellban?
For almost eight months after launching Stack Overflow to the public, we had no concept of banning or blocking users. Like any new frontier town in the wilderness of the internet, I suppose it was inevitable that we’d be obliged to build a jail at some point. But first
software development
The Vast and Endless Sea
After we created Stack Overflow, some people were convinced we had built a marginally better mousetrap for asking and answering questions. The inevitable speculation began: can we use your engine to build a Q&A site about {topic}? Our answer was Stack Exchange. Pay us $129 a month (and
community
Stack Overflow Careers: Amplifying Your Awesome
That Stack Overflow thing we launched a year ago? It’s been going pretty well so far. Of course, everyone knows you could code Stack Overflow in a long weekend. It’s trivial. Assembling a worldwide community of smart, engaged software developers? That’s a whole different ball of wax.
community
Stack Overflow: None of Us is as Dumb as All of Us
I’m in no way trying to conflate this with the meaning of my last blog post, but after a six month gestation, we just gave birth to a public website. Of course, I’m making a sly little joke here about community, but I really believe in this stuff.