Stackoverflow site and Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg117196] Stackoverflow site and Mathematica
- From: "Sjoerd C. de Vries" <sjoerd.c.devries at gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 04:33:18 -0500 (EST)
For a couple of weeks I have been looking around the Stackoverflow website, a Q&A forum for programming questions. I really like it. It has a short turnaround time, as posting is almost instantaneous and responses are pretty quick. First answers are often given within 15 minutes. Posting may include formatted code and pictures, which helps clarifying both questions and answers considerably compared to the newsgroup. A nice system of voting and a reputation system with various user privileges takes care of spam and other forms of abuse, and provides incentives for the users (just like the boy scout badges of yore). Archiving and searching is great. The Mathematica traffic, though, isn't very dense, usually a handful of questions per day. I guess the site (at least the Mathematica part) needs to get some publicity. I'd like to invite you to look around for yourself at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mathematica. If you want to post questions or answers a free registration is required. Cheers -- Sjoerd