At moments like this, I feel an undeserved and irrational pride in being of tribe geek:
stackoverflow.com - Joel on Software
Jeff Atwood and I ... build a programming Q&A site that's free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no JavaScript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away. You can register if you want to collect karma and win valuable flair that will appear next to your name, but otherwise, it's just free...
... Every week, Jeff and I talk by phone (he's in California, I'm in New York), and we're going to record those phone calls and throw them up on the web for you to listen in on, and call it a podcast. We have a lot of trouble keeping on topic, so the podcast may be interesting to you even if you don't want to hear about stackoverflow.com. The first episode is up right now. Eventually I imagine we'll figure out this newfangled "RSS" technology and you'll be able to actually subscribe and get fresh episodes delivered into your ears automatically. All in good time.
PS I'm still CEO of Fog Creek full time. StackOverflow.com is a joint venture between Fog Creek and Jeff Atwood. He's the full time CEO which means he's calling the shots. I'm sort of a consultant on this one.
From Jeff's description we see how inspiring 'experts-exchange' has been ...
Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-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.
I've followed Joel Spolsky's blog on business and software for several years, and Jeff Atwood's blog for over a year. They're both great writers and teachers with the geek compulsion to advance the world -- as well as their part of the world.
It's the bit about advancing the world that marks the noble geek. Karma counts. Fairness matters. You get and you give.
These two have millions of readers. By virtue of their considerable reputations earned through their writing, they may be able to make this work.
If it does work that will say something interesting about the power of the geek tribe, and of reputations developed entirely online.
Joel has a full-time job, but Jeff has only recently quit his programming job to work on independent projects. I wish him and stackoverlfow.com every success. At the moment the site is entirely audio oriented, so the best way to follow its development will be to subscribe to Jeff's blog.
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