Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror Starts a New Website for Coders

[mouser]

www.stackoverflow.com is a new site by Jeff Atwood (of Coding Horror fame).

I love the CodingHorror blog, and so i have high hopes for stackoverflow.com.

If you visit the new site you'll see its just a white page with a download for the first recorded interview between Jeff and Joel Spolsky.

The description of the site below is a bit confusing.. except that the site is a collaboration between Jeff and Joel Spolsky.  That comes as a bit of a shock to me since i have come to view joel as a very smart writer but someone who has become almost a charicature of a blogger, being almost entirely focused on self promotion.  Jeff Atwood has written repeatedly about joel in unfavorable (though always respectful terms), so this comes as somewhat of a shock to me seeing them collaborate, and it does make me a bit apprehensive about the effort.

Jeff seems to know this team up is going to cause some confusion because he talks about the importance of talking with people who disagree with each other.  I guess my problem is not at all that i disagree with Joel when he writes about technical issues, which he does so well.  My problem with Joel is that everything he touches gives you that slimey feeling you get when you talk to a telemarketer on the phone who pretends to be interested in your life until they get to the part where they want your money.

From the CodingHorror blog:

So what is stackoverflow?

From day one, my blog has been about putting helpful information out into the world. I never had any particular aspirations for this blog to become what it is today; I'm humbled and gratified by its amazing success. It has quite literally changed my life. Blogs are fantastic resources, but as much as I might encourage my fellow programmers to, not everyone has the time or inclination to start a blog. There's far too much great programming information trapped in forums, buried in online help, or hidden away in books that nobody buys any more. We'd like to unlock all that. Let's create something that makes it easy to participate, and put it online in a form that is trivially easy to find.

Are you familiar with the movie pitch formula?

Stackoverflow is sort of like experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit. It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.

Of course, there's more to it than that. Joel and I are recording our weekly calls and releasing them as podcasts. Listen to us describe our vision for stackoverflow in our own words -- just head over to stackoverflow.com to download the first 46 minute episode. We're even taking questions, if you submit them in the form of audio recordings.

http://www.stackoverflow.com/

[f0dder]

Hmm, I don't feel comfortable about him teaming up with Spolsky.

And "stackoverflow.com"? Cool domain name, but it should've been used for something primarily focusing on security, really.

[mouser]

Having listened to the first podcast.. I don't know guys.. I see a trainwreck coming..

[justice]

I think it's going to be good, but should I be worried that the "good coding encyclopedia" is in the hands of a company?

[Lashiec]

Oh, so this was the startup Jeff talked about so enthusiastically these past days, I was hoping for something bigger, something more innovative. I mean, the guy left his job, taking great risks in the process, and unless the description does not make justice to the venture, it does not seem like a great deal. Besides, he talked about building stuff and setting up an ISV, so far I don't see traces of anything built, or some product or service being offered. Well, it's early in the game, it could get better with time.

And "stackoverflow.com"? Cool domain name, but it should've been used for something primarily focusing on security, really.

-f0dder (April 17, 2008, 03:10 AM)

Hey, if they want to improve coding quality the name fits the task perfectly. After all, who didn't hit a stack overflow when programming recursive functions? . Besides, there was a poll a few days ago on the blog, so I guess it was "democratic".

Having listened to the first podcast.. I don't know guys.. I see a trainwreck coming..

-mouser (April 17, 2008, 07:20 AM)

Can you elaborate?

[Renegade]

Having listened to the first podcast.. I don't know guys.. I see a trainwreck coming..

-mouser (April 17, 2008, 07:20 AM)

The first couple minutes do give that impression... The audio quality is pretty low too. That makes listening difficult.