![]() The whole point of the Stack Overflow exercise is that it's not beholden to me, or Joel, or any other Great Person. The people working at Stack are amazing and most of them (including much of the Stack Overflow community, while I'm at it) could articulate the mission better - and perhaps a tad less crankily - than I could by the time I left. Do I have opinions about how things should be done? Uh, have you met me? Do I email people every now and then about said opinions? I might, but I honestly do try to keep it to an absolute minimum, and I think my email archive track record here is reasonable. I have not worked at Stack Overflow in any capacity whatsoever since February 2012 and I've had zero day to day operational input since that date, more or less by choice. Before I begin, I do want to be absolutely crystal clear about a few things: Thus, what I'd like to do right now is peer into that glorious abyss for a bit and introspect about the challenges I see facing Stack Overflow for the next 10 years. It's just a little something I like to do, you know. I find failure much more instructive, and when building a business and planning for the future, I take on the role of Abyss Domain Expert™ and begin a staring contest. The world is filled with people that basically got lucky, and subsequently can't stop telling people how it was all of their hard work and moxie that made it happen. incredible, actually.īut success stories are boring. You did, when you edited a question or answer on Stack Overflow to make it better.Īll those "fun size" units of Q&A collectively contributed by working programmers from all around the world ended up building a Creative Commons resource that truly rivals Wikipedia within our field.You did, when you contributed a succinct and clear answer to Stack Overflow.You did, when you contributed a well researched question to Stack Overflow.I am honored and humbled by the public utility that Stack Overflow has unlocked for a whole generation of programmers. Which reminds me, I should check my Twitter and see who else is wrong on the Internet today. It was also pleasantly the opposite of pretty much every other day I'm on Twitter, scrolling through an oppressive, endless litany of shared human suffering and people screaming at each other. I literally got chills when I read that, and not just because I always read the word "billions" in Carl Sagan's voice. I won't lie, September 17th, 2013 was a pretty good day. How useful is Stack Overflow, from the perspective of what I consider to be one of the greatest living SO has probably added billions of dollars of value to the world in increased programmer productivity.- John Carmack September 17, 2013 Let's check in with one of my idols, John Carmack. What I do care about, though, is whether Stack Overflow is useful to working programmers. Here's where I'd normally segue into a bunch of rah-rah stuff about how great Stack Overflow is, and thus how implicitly great I am by association for being a founder, and all. I currently do other stuff now, and I have since 2012, but if I will be known for anything when I'm dead, clearly it is going to be good old Stack Overflow. It's called Stack Overflow.Īs of last month, it's been 10 years since Joel Spolsky and I started Stack Overflow. We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. ![]() 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: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?
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