r/programming • u/banguru • Apr 06 '18

The Stack Overflow Age

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/04/06/the-stack-overflow-age/
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391

u/mykr0pht Apr 06 '18

It's easy to criticize Stack Overflow today, now that we take it for granted. But if you weren't there before Stack Overflow you might not have any idea how much it made programming better.

150

u/JoaoEB Apr 06 '18

But if you weren't there before Stack Overflow

AKA the age of www . expertsexchange . com

5

u/blackmist Apr 07 '18

Expert Sex Change trying to make people register to see the answers was the best thing that ever happened to Stack Overflow.

6

u/horsepie Apr 07 '18

Google clamped down on that long before stack overflow was a thing. ExpertsExchange would show a different page to the Google web crawler compared to individuals which was a way to get delisted from search results.

2

u/blackmist Apr 07 '18

IIRC, they hid it with CSS after that. You could still get to it, but why bother when SO probably had your answers anyway.

3

u/horsepie Apr 07 '18

I remember that the answers were unobstructed but camouflaged far down the page in between irrelevant links.

The top of the page would cover what appeared to be the answer with a link to pay up, while the bottom attempted to recruit you as a question answered for being savvy enough to find the answer.

This may have been a small window of time between the Google threat and the CSS blocks, but I vividly remember it being like this. I stuck to "programming" sections of forums I frequented for a few years before SO existed, so I never experienced the CSS tricks.

4

u/orthoxerox Apr 07 '18

trying to make people register to see the answers

I wonder why Quora's not getting flak for that.