The Stack Overflow Podcast

Joining Jeff & Joel this week is John Siracusa, writer for Ars Technica - he's the one who introduced Macs to the Ars world (and apparently ended up converting their entire staff into Mac users).

John didn't know who Jeff was until the Stack Overflow Podcast started. (Pop quiz: What was the podcast called before Stack Overflow was Stack Overflow?) Jeff and Joel brought everyone with them on their initial journey of setting up the site. Transparency is king.

Version numbers don't matter to Stack Overflow. There's "current" and "not current" - it's a constant work in progress. Especially if version numbers are a ploy to get everyone to buy the software again.

We are downgrading Joel to an Etch-a-Sketch, since he can't get his trackpad to work.

Good programmers have a temptation to clean up Stack Overflow, and that can lead to everything suddenly looking off-topic. One result is that we get a lot of questions closed as General Reference. The gang discusses the many ways these questions have been handled over the years. There's even a blog post on the topic. Jeff and Joel have different interpretations of how these types of questions should be treated.

So what can be done to encourage good questions? One point of view is that a clearly no-work, no-effort question should not be rewarded with a brilliant answer. Another is that we shouldn't care about the questioner - the goal is to create a useful piece of information that makes the internet better. We're here to serve the 15 million people who get answers from the site without ever typing a word.

Weakness to be addressed: better canonical answers, better de-duping, better practices at editing questions. The answer might be... better social networking, although that's been heavily discouraged in the past. It's promotion on Other Channels that gets eyeballs onto pages. Therefore, promoting things you've written is an incentive for asking better questions and giving better answers.

We allow (and sometimes encourage) users to ask and then answer their own questions. Ask a good question when you start the project, then keep trying to figure it out yourself. In the meantime, somebody might jump in and answer your question. If not, solve the problem and add the answer yourself!

What if the system tried to parse the code you're typing a little bit? That way questions that aren't necessarily similar in their vocabulary would be more intelligently flagged as similar to other questions that are actually related.

Careers 2.0 doesn't have an applicant tracking system, which is why Stack Exchange uses Resumator for its internal hiring. Why didn't we ever think of that before!! (/dripping sarcasm)

A Mac v. Windows conversation take us 20 minutes over time, even when it isn't a heated debate!

(Sidebar: conversations about PCs and Windows are generally much more technical than are conversations about Macs and Apple stuff... except among developers.) The main complaint John gets about his Ars Technica articles is requests for reviews of Windows to the same level of technical detail as his Mac reviews.

Follow John Siracusa on twitter and listen to his podcast!

Join us next week when Jeff and Joel are joined by David Fullerton, the head of our NY (read: SO Careers) Dev Team.  Same Place, Same Time.

Stack Exchange Podcast - Episode #19 w/ John Sheehan by The Stack Overflow Podcast

Everyone's back in their home towns this week (Sorry for the audio quality last week. It was Joel's fault [actually, it was TechCrunch's fault]). And joining Jeff & Joel this week is John Sheehan, Developer Evangelist for Twilio.

Jeff and Joel are bored of board meetings. How do you make them productive or even useful? Brad Feld says you should give out a document beforehand. Joel does this, and nobody reads it, but they at least pretend they did. Maybe Joel should plant money under the attendees' chairs?

Joel launched Trello at TechCrunch Disrupt last week, and they did not have adequate monitors onstage! It was representative of the general A/V "screw-uppedness" of the whole conference. Cool story, bro.

Let's talk about John Sheehan! He's a developer evangelist at Twilio and doesn't have enough Stack Overflow reputation. He travels around trying to make developers be more awesome.

The future of phones is in things like BBM, iMessage, etc - alternatives to SMS. Voice is a whole 'nother medium, for when emoticons just aren't cutting it anymore. Text is useful for transmitting pieces of information, but for more nuanced conversations voice or video is necessary. How fortunate for this conversation that we have someone from Twilio on the line!

New in the SE Universe: Linguistics! Joel's dad thinks it's full of amateurs. We also have a site on Christanity now. It is less technical than Judaism... which isn't good. Our engine works better on more technical applications. Jeff: "I'm not 100% sure Christianity is working." It's still early, and it is getting more fact-based as it gets older, though.

Bitcoin is low on activity until it gets a new question. It's not what we call a healthy or growing site, but maybe that's okay for a site like Bitcoin. There is no defined formula, and it is still being figured out.

Now private beta participants will be able to invite others to the site while it's still private. This devalues committing to a proposal slightly, but the private betas sometimes need a little help.

John was at the BUILD conference in Anaheim last week. It was like Disney World, but with middle-aged dudes with questionable hygiene! Windows 8 had a developer preview, but it's probably a year away from launch. John got to play with one of their tablets and says they've taken touch and made it completely un-intuitive. The longer he used it, the less he liked it. John is giving it away to the developer of the coolest Twilio app that uses some of the new WinRT or Metro stuff announced.

Scrolling is a thing that many people have many feelings about. We got onto the subject through talking about Windows 8 merging its mobile and desktop systems, and how Apple is doing the same thing with iOS and OS X.

John asks: Does anyone have any faith in a PC manufacturer making a tablet you would actually want to buy? Joel says no. Alex says no. Everyone keeps doing things like putting stickers about the component brands on a sports car.

Totally hot right now: Trello t-shirts.

DevDays failed because we did not promise a thousand dollar piece of hardware to every attendee, like developers at BUILD got.

Jeff has not been to Burning Man. He likes the idea, but does not like the idea of being in the desert for so long. Joel did that in the army (cross that off your Podcast Bingo cards!), and it isn't pretty.

The Stack Exchange API 2.0 is baking! Take a look at the spec, and provide some feedback if you like. It'll be released by the end of the year. Stats on the API will maybe be released in a blog post or something. Jeff uses the API as much as anyone that doesn't work here, rather than using things a special, sneaky way. (You can read about past mistakes with the API on Kevin Montrose's blog. Jeff, Joel, and John share their opinions on APIs and company/developer relations in general.

New changes to the site are in the works. For example, no more duplicate title, and no more "He...

Stack Exchange Podcast - Episode #18 by The Stack Overflow Podcast

No guest this week as Joel calls in to the show live from the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco since he's there launching Trello for Fog Creek Software (also why his audio isn't quite as good as usual, it's pretty loud there).  There's still a full hour of Jeff & Joel goodness though so make sure to check it out!

Joel gives rundown of what he’s seen at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco so far. A discussion about differences between East Coast and West Coast tech startups leads Jeff and Joel to talk about how important centralized locations are for modern day companies.

The recent Facebook deal has led to a recent influx of general Facebook support emails. This leads to a discussion about user support and how other companies rate against Stack Exchange.

The merits of paying for internet services comes up, specifically thefreemium and 37signals models. Jeff discusses the merits of 37signals and Joel recounts his time using that model.

The Most Valued Super User contest is discussed, specifically how this contest gets people to do "the right thing for the right reasons." Mention of the contest's prizes spur a discussion about merchandising (and inadvertently, whose head looks best on a plush Buddha).

Jeff announces that Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange are getting Nerd Merit Badges.

The Bitcoin site launched recently and is proving to be very popular. In other site news, Jeff mentions that enhancements are underway for the SE language sites.

Jeff addresses the problem of duplicate questions, specifically on Meta. A little later on, Jeff goes into detail about the defense mechanisms being put in place to block duplicate questions.

User interface proves to be a hot topic today between Jeff and Joel. What starts as a discussion about search engine functionality leads to a full-on talk about the ins and out and future of user interface. Listen to find out which user interface Jeff thinks is like a canker sore!

Many sites have launched in the last week, opened recently. The new targeted method of advertising proposals may be the cause of this. As new sites open, Jeff and Joel discuss the new sites with overlap of existing questions. This is currently an issue with the existing Physics site and the soon-to-launch Theoretical Physics site.

CHAOS member Sam brought up the idea of regional Stack Exchanges. Jeff and Joel support their differing opinions on the necessity of localized Stacks (also known as the "let your freak flag fly" theory vs. the "Hurricane Irene" defense).

Tune in next week at the normal time and with our normal in-studio setup (really, promise) for another episode as Jeff & Joel are joined by John Sheehan, developer evangelist for Twilio.

See you then!

Stack Exchange Podcast - Episode #17 w/ Kyle & George by The Stack Overflow Podcast

Jeff & Joel are back with guests this week - joining them are Kyle Brandt and George Beech, our very own sysadmins/ops guys/[insert your own term here]

After a brief test of the emergency broadcast system, we plunge right into the podcast, including:

Joel is late because he had to go up to AOL HQ to pick up some more floppy disks for the office

We recently launched Blog Overflow - which was actually a pretty substantial engineering and technical background to making it happen.

A huge discussion of the the SE infrastructure setup and why we host our own instead of relying on Amazon or another outside provider.  Hint: not only can we roll our own better, but its a lot cheaper too.

In the department of little tweaks with big effect, check out our "network apocalypse": at one point, Stack reconfigured to separate different types of network traffic due to microbursting overloading the network - this simple upgrade greatly increased the throughput and efficiency of the existing infrastructure.

In the good news department: Jeff talks about the expanding user cards just introduced and based on a conversation from our podcast a few weeks ago with Michael Natkin

In the bad news department: we've decided to cancel Stack Overflow DevDays due to low ticket sales - you can read Joel's full blog post for all the details.

Finally, we welcome our newest engineering hire - Demis!

That's it!  Tune in next week at the usual time for another episode with more guests!

Stack Exchange Podcast - Episode #16 by The Stack Overflow Podcast

So it's been a couple weeks since our last podcast, but Jeff & Joel are back and ready to catch up on everything they missed.  There's no guest this week, just 60+ minutes of that Jeff & Joel banter that (we hope) you've grown to love.

Jeff and Joel discuss “Zombie Poke,” aka facebook.stackoverflow.com deal in depth and dispel rumors of receiving a “dump truck of money.” Details of the deal are discussed, from what the new feature accomplishes and how it came about.

Jeff also discusses the state of online identity and the issues that arise with having multiple logins.

Joel explains why he thinks Facebook might be the new AOL.

Jeff relays a story about a Stack Exchange user who devised a clever way to get his dad involved in the Bicycles Stack Exchange. Joel wonders if this, or something similar, should be undertaken by CHAOS.

The duo discusses which Stack Exchange sites don’t meet their personal expectations. The hit list includes Super User, Writing, and Gaming. Jeff goes into depth about his issues with Gaming.SE, even though it's the fifth most trafficked site.

Joel talks about the myth that reputation affects programmers’ career opportunities.

A question from the chat room about the Publicist badge spurs discussion about sharing questions on the internet and how it relates to Stack Overflow.

We discuss the state of Community Wiki. If you're looking for a good example of a community wiki answer, look no further than How do I diagnose not being able to reach a specific website as an end user?

And of course, if you enjoy the Stack Exchange podcast, make sure to check out the Ask Different Podcast - hosted by our Ask Different (aka apple.stackexchange) moderators!

We're back on our regular schedule now, so tune in next week for another great episode!

Stack Exchange Podcast - Episode #15 w/ Michael Natkin by The Stack Overflow Podcast