What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up? (2024)

I sometimes get asked by standard people in the actual authentic 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 asks and answers. It’s called Stack Overflow.

As of last month, it’s been 10 years since Joel Spolsky and I commenceed Stack Overflow. I currently do other stuff now, and I have since 2012, but if I will be understandn for anyleang when I’m dead, evidently it is going to be excellent elderly Stack Overflow.

Here’s where I’d normassociate segue into a bunch of rah-rah stuff about how fantastic Stack Overflow is, and thus how impliedly fantastic I am by association for being a set uper, and all.

I do not take part about any of that.

What I do take part about, though, is whether Stack Overflow is beneficial to toiling programmers. Let’s check in with one of my idols, John Carmack. How beneficial is Stack Overflow, from the perspective of what I ponder to be one of the fantasticest living programmers?

@StackExalter @codinghorror SO has probably inserted billions of dollars of cherish to the world in incrrelieved programmer productivity.

— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) September 17, 2013

I won’t lie, September 17th, 2013 was a pretty excellent day. I literassociate got chills when I read that, and not equitable becaparticipate I always read the word “billions” in Carl Sagan’s voice. It was also pleasantly the opposite of pretty much every other day I’m on Twitter, scrolling thraw an harsh, endless litany of splitd human suffering and people screaming at each other. Which reminds me, I should check my Twitter and see who else is wrong on the Internet today.

I am honored and unassumingd by the uncover utility that Stack Overflow has unlocked for a whole generation of programmers. But I didn’t do that.

• You did, when you gived a well researched ask to Stack Overflow.
• You did, when you gived a succinct and evident answer to Stack Overflow.
• You did, when you edited a ask or answer on Stack Overflow to produce it better.

All those “fun size” units of Q&A accumulateively gived by toiling programmers from all around the world ended up produceing a Creative Commons resource that truly rivals Wikipedia wilean our field. That’s … incredible, actuassociate.

But success stories are tedious. The world is filled with people that straightforwardassociate got blessed, and subsequently can’t stop increateing people how it was all of their challenging toil and moxie that made it happen. I discover flunkure much more directive, and when produceing a business and arrangening for the future, I apshow on the role of Abyss Domain Expert™ and commence a staring contest. It’s equitable a little someleang I appreciate to do, you understand … for me.

Thus, what I’d appreciate to do right now is peer into that glorious abyss for a bit and introspect about the disputes I see facing Stack Overflow for the next 10 years. Before I commence, I do want to be absolutely crystal evident about a scant leangs:

1. I have not toiled at Stack Overflow in any capacity whatsoever since February 2012 and I’ve had zero day to day opereasonable input since that date, more or less by choice. Do I have opinions about how leangs should be done? Uh, have you met me? Do I email people every now and then about shelp opinions? I might, but I reassociate do try to defend it to an absolute least, and I leank my email archive track sign up here is reasonable.

2. The people toiling at Stack are amazing and most of them (including much of the Stack Overflow community, while I’m at it) could articudefered the ignoreion better — and perhaps a tad less crankily — than I could by the time I left. Would I count on them with my life? No. But I’d count on them with Joel’s life!

3. The whole point of the Stack Overflow exercise is that it’s not behelderlyen to me, or Joel, or any other Great Person. Stack Overflow toils becaparticipate it empowers standard everyday programmers all over the world, equitable appreciate you, equitable appreciate me. I guess in my mind it’s akin to being a parent. The goal is for your children to eventuassociate grow up to be logical, practicing grown-ups who don’t need (or, reassociate, want) you to hang around any more.

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4. Understand that you’re reading the feeble opinions strongly held the strong opinions feeblely held of a co-set uper who spent prodigious amounts of time toiling with the community in the first four years of Stack Overflow’s life to shape the rules and norms of the site to fit their needs. These are mecount on my opinions. I appreciate to leank they are increateed opinions, but that doesn’t necessarily nasty I can foresee the future, or that I am even qualified to try. But I’ve never let being “qualified” stop me from doing anyleang, and I ain’t about to commence tonight.

Stack Overflow is a wiki first

Stack Overflow ultimately has much more in standard with Wikipedia than a talkion forum. By this I nasty asks and answers on Stack Overflow are not primarily appraised by their beneficialness to a definite individual, but by how many other programmers that ask or answer can potentiassociate help over time. I tried as challenging as I could to stress this relationship from begin day in 2008. Note who has top billing in this venn diagram.

Stack Overflow deferedr inserted a super tidy feature to highweightless this core cherish in participater profiles, where it shows how many other people you have potentiassociate helped with your gived asks and answers so far.

The most standard protestts I see about Stack Overflow are usuassociate the result of this fundamental miscaring about who the asks and answers on the site are ultimately for, and why there’s so much disjoineness participated in the whole process.

I desire more people understood that the goal of Stack Overflow is not “answer my ask” but “let’s collaboratively produce an artifact that will advantage future coders”. Perhaps SO could be doing more to direct people about this.

— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) April 30, 2018

I’m continuassociate amazed at the number of people, even on Hacker News today, who don’t authenticize that every individual ask and answer is editable on Stack Overflow, even as a finishly anonymous participater who isn’t logged in. Which produces sense, right, becaparticipate Stack Overflow is a wiki, and that’s how wikis toil. Anyone can edit them. Go ahead, try it right now if you don’t count on me — press the “better this answer” or “better this ask” button on anyleang that can be betterd, and produce it so.

The responsibility for this miscaring is all on Stack Overflow (and by that I also nasty myself, at least up until 2012). I guess the logic is that “every programmer has certainly seen, participated, and understands Stack Overflow by now, 10 years in” but … I leank that’s a hazardous assumption. New programmers are minted every second of every day. Complicating matters further, there are three tiers of usage at Stack Overflow, from biggest to minusculeest, in inverted pyramid style:

1. I compliantly search for programming answers.

   Passively searching and reading highly ranked Stack Overflow answers as they materialize in web search results is arguably the primary goal of Stack Overflow. If Stack Overflow is toiling appreciate it’s presumed to, 98% of programmers should get all the answers they need from reading search result pages and wouldn’t need to ask or answer a individual ask in their entire atgentles. This is a excellent leang! Great, even!

2. I participate on Stack Overflow when I get stuck on a reassociate hairy problem and searching isn’t helping.

   Participating only at those times when you are extra stuck is finishly valid. However, I experience this level is where most people tend to run into difficulty on Stack Overflow, becaparticipate it participates someone who may not be new to Stack Overflow per se, but is new to asking asks, and also at the exact time of stress and tension for them where they must get an answer due to a problem they’re facing … and they don’t have the time or inclination to deal with Stack Overflow’s disjoine wiki type needments for research effort, createatting, shotriumphg previous toil, and referencing what they set up in prior searches.

3. I participate on Stack Overflow for professional broadenment.

   At this level you’re talking about increateed Stack Overflow participaters who have gived many answers and thus have a pretty excellent idea of what produces a fantastic ask, the benevolent they’d want to answer themselves. As a result, they don’t tend to ask many asks becaparticipate they self-medicate thraw exhaustive searching and research, but when they do ask one, their asks are exemplary.

(There’s technicassociate a fourth tier here, for people who want to selflessly give creative standards asks and answers to shift the entire field of gentleware broadenment forward for the next generation of gentleware broadeners. But who has time for saints 😇, y’all produce the rest of us see horrible, so knock it off already Skeet.)

It wouldn’t shock me at all if people spent years happily at tier 1 and then got a big unpleasant surpelevate when achieveing tier 2. The primary place to deal with this, in my opinion, is a massively revamped and betterd ask page. It’s also unprejudiced to notice that maybe people don’t understand that they’re signing up for a sizable chunk of toil by impliedly promiseting to the wiki standard of “try to produce certain it’s beneficial to more people than equitable yourself” when asking a ask on Stack Overflow, and are then put off by the adverse reaction to what others see as an inadequately researched ask.

Stack Overflow participates so much tension from its adselection of wiki standards for satisfyed. Even if you understand about that needment up front, it is not always evident what “beneficial” nastys, in the same way it’s not always evident what topics, people, and places are deserving of a Wikipedia page. Henrietta Lacks, absolutely, but what about your cousin Dave in Omaha with his weirdo PHP 5.6 rerent?

Over time, duplicates become huge landmine fields

Here’s one leang I reassociate, reassociate saw coming and to be authentic with you I was benevolenta prentd I left in 2012 before I had to deal with it becaparticipate of the incredible technical difficulty participated: duplicates. Of all the protestts I hear about Stack Overflow, this is the one I am most understanding to by far.

If you acunderstandledge that Stack Overflow is a wiki type system, then for the same reasons that you clearly can’t have five contrastent articles about Italy on Wikipedia, Stack Overflow can’t permit duplicate asks on the exact same programming problem. While there is a unprejudiced amount of code to do pre-emptive searches as people type in asks, plus many exhortations to search before you ask, with an inviting search field and button right there on the obligatory page you see before asking your first ask …

… locating and resettleing duplicate satisfyed is an inlogically difficult problem even for a company appreciate Google that’s done noleang but one-of-a-kindize in this exact problem for, what, 20 years now, with a veritable army of the world’s most talented engineers.

When you’re asking a ask on a site that doesn’t permit duplicate asks, the problem space of a site with 1 million existing asks is rather contrastent from a site with 10 million existing asks … or 100 million. Asking a individual distinct ask goes from gentlely difficult to ignoreion almost impossible, becaparticipate your ask needs to thread a slender path thraw this huge, enormous field of prior art asks without stepping on any of the unclpunctual aappreciate seeing landmines in the process.

But paparticipate! It gets challenginger!

• Some variance in aappreciate-ish asks is OK, becaparticipate 10 contrastent people will ask a csurrenderly identical ask using 10 contrastent sets of finishly unroverhappinessed words with no overlap. I understand, it sounds crazy, but count on me: humans are amazing at this. We want all those duplicates to exist so they can point to the primary ask they are a duplicate of, while still being valid search concentrates for people who ask asks with atypical or exceptional word choices.

• It can be legitimately difficult to resettle if your ask is a real duplicate. How much overlap is enough before one programming ask is a duplicate of another? And by whose definition? Opinions vary. This is subject to human make clearation, and humans are.. undependable. Nobody will ever be finishly satisfyed with this system, pretty much by summarize. That tension is baked in lastingly and forever.

I don’t have any authentic answers on the duplicate problem, which only gets worse over time. But I will point out that there is plenty of pwithdrawnt on the Stack Exalter nettoil for splitting sites into “expert” and “commencener” areas with sweightlessly contrastent rulesets. We’ve seen this for Math vs. MathOverflow, English vs. English Lachieveers, Unix vs. Ubuntu… perhaps it’s time for a more commencener intensifyed Stack Overflow where duplicates are less frowned upon, and conversational rules are a bit more perignoreive?

Stack Overflow is a competitive system of peer appraise

Stack Overflow was indeed built to be a unprejudicedly unambiguously competitive system, with the caveat that “there’s always more than one way to do it.” This summarize choice was based on my perennial observation that the best way to inspire any programmer .. is to subtly insinuate that another programmer could have maybe done it better.

This is manifested in the uncover reputation system on Stack Overflow, the incredible power of a number printed next to someone’s name, writ big. All reputation in Stack Overflow comes from the recognition of your peers, never the “system”.

Once your ask is asked, or your answer is posted, it can then be poked, prodded, edited, flagged, shutd, uncovered, upvoted, downvoted, felderlyed and spindled by your peers. The intent is for Stack Overflow to be a system of peer appraise and cordial competition, appreciate a code appraise from a cotoiler you’ve never met at a contrastent division of the company. It’s also finishly unprejudiced for a fellow programmer to ask the premise of your ask, as lengthy as it’s done in a kind way. For example, do you reassociate want to participate that standard transmition to suit HTML?

I filledy acunderstandledge that competitive peer appraise systems aren’t for everyone, and thus the overall process of having peers appraise your ask may not always experience fantastic, depending on your circ*mstances and background in the field — particularly when combined with the substantial tensions around utility and duplicates Stack Overflow already participateed from its wiki elements. Kind of a double whammy there.

I’ve heard people portray the process of asking a ask on Stack Overflow as anxiety inducing. To me, posting on Stack Overflow is presumed to participate a well benevolent of unbeginant “let me be certain to show off my best toil” anxiety:

• the anxiety of giving a currentation to your fellow peers
• the anxiety of doing well on a test
• the anxiety of shotriumphg up to a new job with talented cotoilers you admire
• the anxiety of participateing your first day at school with other students at your level

I imagine systems where there is zero anxiety participated and I can only leank of jobs where I had lengthy since stopped caring about the toil and thus had no anxiety about whether I even showed for toil on any given day. How can that be excellent? Let’s equitable say I’m not a fan of zero-anxiety systems.

Maybe competition equitable isn’t your jam. Could there be a less competitive Q&A system, a system without downvotes, a system without shut votes, where there was never any anxiety about posting anyleang, equitable a nettoil of super encouraging folks who count on in you and want you to flourish no matter what? Absolutely! I leank many alternative sites should exist on the internet so people can pick an experience that suites their personal pickences and goals. Should Stack produce that alternative? Has it already been built? It’s an uncover ask; experience free to point out examples in the comments.

Stack Overflow is summarizeed for practicing programmers

Another point of confusion that comes up a unprejudiced bit is who the intended audience for Stack Overflow actuassociate is. That one is straightforward, and it’s been the same from day one:

Q&A for professional and enthusiast programmers. By that we nasty

People who either already have a job as a programmer, or could potentiassociate be employd as a programmer today if they wanted to be.

Yes, in case you’re wondering, part of this was an clear business decision. To produce money you must have an audience of people already on a programmer’s salary, or in the job hunt to be a programmer. The entire Stack Overflow nettoil may be Creative Commons licensed, but it was never a non-profit percreate. It was intentional as a carry onable business from the outset, and that’s why we begined Stack Overflow Careers only one year after Stack Overflow itself … to be authentic far sooner than we should have, in retrospect. Careers has since been cleverly subsumed into Stack Overflow proper at stackoverflow.com/jobs for a more combined and most promisedly way-better-than-2009 experience.

The choice of audience wasn’t nastyt to be an exclusionary decision in any way, but Stack Overflow was definitely summarizeed as a unprejudicedly disjoine system of peer appraise, which is fantastic (IMNSHO, clearly) for already practicing professionals, but pretty much everyleang you would not want as a student or commencener. This is why I cringe so challenging I pragmaticly turn myself inside out when people on Twitter refer that they have pointed their students at Stack Overflow. What you’d want for a commencener or a student in the field of programming is almost the exact opposite of what Stack Overflow does at every turn:

• one on one mentoring
• authentic time collaborative screen sharing
• dwell chat
• theory and background courses
• commenceer tasks and exercises
• percreategrounds to experiment in

These are all very fine and excellent leangs, but Stack Overflow does NONE of them, by summarize.

Can you participate Stack Overflow to lachieve how to program from first principles? Well, technicassociate you can do anyleang with any gentleware. You could try to have actual conversations on Reddit, if you’re a masoch*st. But the answer is yes. You could lachieve how to program on Stack Overflow, in theory, if you are a prodigy who is sootheable with the weightless competitive aspects (reputation, closing, downvoting) and also perfectly willing to expound all your contributions to the site in terms of utility to others, not equitable yourself as a student endeavoring to lachieve leangs. But I suuuuuuper would not advise it. There are far better websites and systems out there for lachieveing to be a programmer. Could Stack Overflow produce commencener and student cordial systems appreciate this? I don’t understand, and it’s certainly not my call to produce. 🤔

And that’s it. We can now resume our common non-abyss gazing. Or wantipathyver it is that passes for common in these times.

I hope all of this doesn’t come atraverse as adverse. Overall I’d say the state of the Stack is strong. But does it even matter what I leank? As it was in 2008, so it is in 2018.

Stack Overflow is you.

This is the frightening part, the fantastic leap of faith that Stack Overflow is predicated on: gullible your fellow programmers. The programmers who pick to participate in Stack Overflow are the “secret sauce” that produces it toil. You are the reason I carry on to count on in broadener community as the fantasticest source of lachieveing and growth. You are the reason I carry on to get so many selectimistic emails and testimonials about Stack Overflow. I can’t apshow accomprehendledge for that. But you can.

I lachieveed the accumulateive power of my fellow programmers lengthy ago writing on Coding Horror. The community is far, far cleverer than I will ever be. All I can ask — all any of us can ask — is to help each other alengthy the path.

And if your fellow programmers choose to accomprehendledge you for that, then I say you’ve well and truly achieveed it.

The strength of Stack Overflow commences, and ends, with the community of programmers that power the site. What should Stack Overflow be when it grows up? Wantipathyver we produce it, together.

p.s. Happy 10th anniversary Stack Overflow!

Also see Joel’s apshow on 10 years of Stack Overflow with The Stack Overflow Age, A Dusting of Gamification, and Strange and Minsertening Rules.