Jeff Atwood, Joel Spolsky, Thanks for Stack Overflow!

If you code regularly chances are you might have stumbled upon Stack Overflow, a Q/A site for passionate programmers where they answer questions and get answers to their problems.

Via this post I would like to thank Jeff and Joel, the founders of Stack Overflow for this wonderful gift to the internet.

I have no qualms in saying that the two sites that make me a better programmer are Coding Horror and Stack Overflow.

When I started programming, things outside the textbooks used to excite me more. But the walled garden that Indian Education is has little room to accommodate such people, in such times I came across Stack Overflow and I was surprised by two things

1. Show Respect-Get Respect  :  The place I come form in India, people don't show respect to unknown people face to face, let alone the internet. But here I was seeing people showing respect not only to those who gave answers but also to those who asked questions (although If your questions is like "X framework vs Y which is better, chances are you will get a good load of people closing your question).
2. Advice, not just answers: There are two ways doing things,  one is getting them done anyhow and the other is getting them done correctly. At Stack Overflow, people not just take time to solve your problem, they also advice you on how things could be done better. Of course if you want an instant hack to solve the problem, you get it, but the person who gave you that hack might just leave a note like:-

Hey this is just a hack, if you want that you not face problem in the future do this:

             function foo(){
                       //correct code here
             }

That's something that commands respect.

Another thing worth mentioning is the community moderators. They actually take time out of their schedules to keep their favorite site free of span by closing questions that violate the guidelines or are too broad to have a specific answer.

Jeff, Joel and their team at Stack Overflow has successfully devised an online discussion system that brings out the best answers and keeps the spam to the minimum.

Stack Overflow has now expanded to Stack Exchange, a group of 90 Q/A websites ranging from coding to cooking, from game development to science fiction and photography and bicycles to physics. Making internet a better place.

Having said that, its not necessary that you have to ask to be at Stack Overflow, if you are one those people who can solve pretty much anything by themselves there are several stupid, question-asking, solution-hungry programmers like me who would love to hear from you.

Here are a few big guns on SO

• Jon Skeet (Author of C# in depth)
• Alan Kay (Pioneer of OOP)
• John Resig (jQuery Creator)
• Bjarne Stroustrup (C++ Creator)
• Chris Espiona (Lengendry Apple Employee, lead of XCode)
• Guido Van Rossum(Python Creator)
• Chris Coyier(CSS-Tricks)

And of course we all are famous in some circle, aren't we ? :)