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How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

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61–70 of 227 posts

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#61
post #5

StackOverflow is an extremely valuable resource for all programmers. I've not seen the option anywhere, but a yearly donation would definitely be something I'd do for a substantial amount (substantial to me as a student, so it's not the moon but not a beer either).

My following suggestion is a very unpopular one, but it is this: If you are a student, use the money you would have donated to StackOverflow to purchase a book or a tool that will help you to learn better and become an expert. If you are an expert, contribute your time to StackOverflow (instead of money). Money is easy to get compared to content. What helps StackOverflow grow is quality content. I am also interested…

>>book or a tool that will help you to learn better and become

I've tried that before, many times. Unfortunately when you are trying to do real work those books are many times useless. Example, I kept trying to build a newtonian physics simulator so I got a Statics and Dynamics mechanical engineering book. The book was a text book for Mechanical engineering students and yet the examples they teach you are for toy problems. I could not generalize them to real world scenarios. To actually build the physics simulator I had to scour the internet until I found something that actually explained what I needed in an easy to understand manner [1]. And that still was not enough. I still had to use more online sources to find out all the other pieces, like the separating axes theorem for collision detection.

So no, I would not rely on books anymore, at least not exclusively since they often do not provide a full picture. One last thing, books seem to be getting progressively worse in my experience. All of this is anecdotal of course.

[1]http://chrishecker.com/Rigid_Body_Dynamics

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#63
post #50
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be very active on SO and I stopped because dealing with new people to the site is a waste of everyones time. SO has the goal of being a Q to A catalog. You're not contributing unless you are asking a new, answerable question or providing and answer to a new or existing question. There are tons of people asking questions that are already answered, tons of people asking questions that would take a book to ans…

A more recent problem with Stack Overflow now that its a few years old. The tech gets updated, and previously good answers are now out of date, as libraries and frameworks have changed.

We have an edit button though! And edits are community validated before being merged. I use it regularly to update other people's answers. If the update breaks backwards compatibility, I'll just add a separate section "For Python 3.x, use .items() instead of .iteritems()" etc.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#64
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, they do a pretty good job of balancing the needs of users and advertisers.

I ask a lot of question, and thus get banned from asking more... I wish they would have a "luxury" option for like 49.99 a year where students could ask like unlimited questions. Is this crazy?

Those bans (which occur for users who post many questions while receiving few positive votes) are for the sake of the community of contributors to the site. Allowing them to be bypassed for a fee would risk violating the community trust that's emphasized in this article.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#66
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're humbled hearing from folks like you - your willingness to give back is what makes it all work. Keep your money. But here's how you CAN help, right now: Sign up if you haven't, create a developer story, and when you ARE job-hunting, try Jobs. We I think you'll find it to be the most developer-friendly offering on the planet.

Just an anecdote from my experience — I am really enjoying the new Stack Overflow Developer Story. Mine is at [1] for example. While I do appreciate jobs, I'm a full-time independent contractor and not looking for a traditional job right now (though I have seen quality offers through SO Jobs). That said, Developer Story / CV has been instrumental for me and has become my canonical resume. I'm a huge fan. If I could m…

I'm a dev in the Developer Story/CV team and we appreciate the love <3 The conference attendance item idea is great, discussing it internally with our team right now. Thank you!

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#67
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, they do a pretty good job of balancing the needs of users and advertisers.

I ask a lot of question, and thus get banned from asking more... I wish they would have a "luxury" option for like 49.99 a year where students could ask like unlimited questions. Is this crazy?

Not crazy but out of scope. If you need a mentor get one but SO is not for mentoring. On the other hand even 49.99 per month is too cheap for a service like this.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#68
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, they do a pretty good job of balancing the needs of users and advertisers.

I ask a lot of question, and thus get banned from asking more... I wish they would have a "luxury" option for like 49.99 a year where students could ask like unlimited questions. Is this crazy?

Almost certainly the quality, not the quantity, of your questions was responsible for your ban.

See http://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#69
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, they do a pretty good job of balancing the needs of users and advertisers.

I ask a lot of question, and thus get banned from asking more... I wish they would have a "luxury" option for like 49.99 a year where students could ask like unlimited questions. Is this crazy?

There is no hard limit on the number of questions you can ask. If you are getting downvoted or banned you are probably asking low quality questions that are frustrating for the volunteers that answer questions on stackoverflow.

This is not a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#70

Would it be thieving, if i made a NN-Crawler, that condensed the Stack overflow-Conversations into a query able chat bot?

Did you know that we provide the complete set of questions and answers (from all sites, including Stack Overflow)?

No need to crawl anything.

You can find it on the internet archive:

https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

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