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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#181

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

armchairhacker wrote: post #21

Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it used to be an amazing, "must-have" site. Always the #1 result on Google. I used it for basic web and iOS dev (remember Objective-C) and it had better documentation than most of the official docs. But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse, official…

For many years, SO has been an invaluable resource for me.

At one time, I used it daily.

I have about twice as many questions as I have answers. Been on the site for a long time; maybe close to ten years.

I've learned to ask very good questions, but lately, I've mostly been answering my own questions. I visit it maybe once a week (or less), these days. It used to be multiple times per day.

I would hope that this will help SO to have a renaissance. We'll see.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#182

Post by swivelmaster »

pan69 wrote: post #97
couchdb_ouchdb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. Day 1. I'm user 25 on the site as I listened to the podcast about them making it. Just for answering a few questions early I'm in the top 0.76% overall. https://stackoverflow.com/users/25/codingwithoutcomments

I loved listening to the Stack Overflow podcast with Jeff and Joel. It was kinda crazy that they were doing a podcast like that while they (Jeff mostly) were building it and coming up with the name, etc. Still have all the mp3's somewhere. Edit: I'm in the top 2%. Most of my rep. comes from interest earned on questions/answers I posted very early on.

I used to listen to every episode of that while taking walks around Berkeley. I totally forgot about it until I saw this comment!

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#183

Post by TeMPOraL »

nosianu wrote: post #80
digianarchist wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find myself landing on a Github issue after a Google search to diagnosing an problem these days. >But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse I see a lot of new users digging up 10 year old questions and cloning answers. They've really hit a spam problem that's difficult to solve.

Well, you make it a game - people start playing. The disadvantage of gamification. I'm not sure that people giving good answers and help are well matched by a system designed for people who like "leveling up". I think that system pulls in a mismatched crowd over time, too focused on the game goal. The solution creating a match is supposed to be what you get the points for leveling up for. However, that does not reall…

Leveling up is OK. Fake Internet points may drive some people to weird behavior, but it's manageable at this level.

They shouldn't have entered the job search space. The moment they offered to help their users find work, suddenly those fake Internet points (and activity behind them) started to carry a real (if probabilistic) monetary value.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#185

Post by mrweasel »

pan69 wrote: post #97
couchdb_ouchdb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. Day 1. I'm user 25 on the site as I listened to the podcast about them making it. Just for answering a few questions early I'm in the top 0.76% overall. https://stackoverflow.com/users/25/codingwithoutcomments

I loved listening to the Stack Overflow podcast with Jeff and Joel. It was kinda crazy that they were doing a podcast like that while they (Jeff mostly) were building it and coming up with the name, etc. Still have all the mp3's somewhere. Edit: I'm in the top 2%. Most of my rep. comes from interest earned on questions/answers I posted very early on.

It is still one of the most interesting podcasts I’ve listened to. Jeff and Joel completely chanced how I view hardware. So far they’ve been right in that scaling out isn’t something most of us need to worry about for a LONG time. Modern computers are insanely fast and capable of much more than we think.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#186

Post by zaptrem »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #139
dested wrote: post #11

I always thought Microsoft would be a natural buyer given the tech stack and Microsoft's support for developers. Unrelated story, I have a day one Stack Overflow account. I don't remember how I found it but I'm sure it was posted on digg or slashdot or something at the time. I had a lot of posts in the first few years about some generally broad concepts, and completely inactive since. In spite of this, I am in the to…

It looks like GitHub Discussions is sort of filling a similar niche--I'm guessing they're banking on being able to build that out for less than $1B--since they already have GitHub, they don't benefit as much from the StackOverflow user network / brand. I think that makes sense.

Easy to build out the platform, difficult to build out the knowledge base (especially since so many areas have already been covered on SO)

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#187

Post by systemvoltage »

arp242 wrote: post #151
systemvoltage wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how giving money to Tencent has anything to do with the ability to steer SO. The best thing would have been the status quo. SO has been running on its feet for many years. This consolidation, while disputably better than Microsoft acquisition, is no worse than large companies buying out small ones usually guaranteing their demise. If anything else, Microsoft has left Github untouched so far. I am not conv…

> If anything else, Microsoft has left Github untouched so far. Actually, I think it has gotten better. I don't like the consolidation of independents like GitHub to big corporations like Microsoft, but I can't deny that thus far, it actually worked out pretty well. Stack Overflow is a difficult company/website to manage though; it's not "just a website with a SaaS product" and really requires a good understanding of…

That's a good point. I wonder why SO is so political? As an outsider it is just like a bunch of people asking questions and getting answers.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#188

Post by codegeek »

nickserv wrote: post #74
armchairhacker wrote: post #21

Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it used to be an amazing, "must-have" site. Always the #1 result on Google. I used it for basic web and iOS dev (remember Objective-C) and it had better documentation than most of the official docs. But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse, official…

The problem for me is that generally the highest ranked answers are the oldest, and in a fast moving tech stack this leads to really outdated advice. I do a lot of Python programming and some of the answers only work in 2.7 for example. Same as you, these days I'll just look at the official docs.

That depends. If it is a popular answer, people sometimes edit with latest version answer. For example, I answered something about Python/Flask many years ago which became a very popular answer at the time (simple stuff). Now in Flask's latest version, you don't need to do it that way necessarily and the answer was edited accordingly.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#189

Post by mitchdoogle »

TchoBeer wrote: post #93
eric_b wrote: post #64

I find parallels between Stack Overflow and Mozilla. Both started with fairly focused products that were best in class. The user base grew and the network effect multiplied. Both were started and largely staffed by engineers. Then both companies started focusing on "bigger", more ambiguous goals. Their about pages are riddled with the latest marketing-speak: Authentically empowering dignity, community, and inclusivit…

Since when is stack overflow dying?

It's not. This person doesn't like someone's political beliefs, so they're trying to denigrate them on a seemingly "objective" basis, which doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#190

Post by rightbyte »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #118
yaitsyaboi wrote: post #99

Everyone is saying how 1.8B is a ton, but I’m kinda surprised that it’s “barely” more than the Depop acquisition today at 1.6B.

Stack overflow is probably responsible for increasing global developer productivity by maybe ~1000x the acquisition price. In a sense it’s a tragedy of the commons.

Stack overflow's users, please.
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