Freely available programming books
stackoverflow.com
Freely available programming books
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: Freely available programming books
#2Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.
Re: Freely available programming books
#3Nice! Thanks for sharing!
Re: Freely available programming books
#4Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.
It's been said every time this argument is brought up: StackOverflow is a Q&A website. It's not meant for discussions, and while some interesting questions get closed, it's not arbitrary at all.
Re: Freely available programming books
#5Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.
I've got 7K+ rep there (hardly a high-score) but I don't really like the site anymore due to arbitrary behavior of mods.
It wasn't even a "discussion" (specifically forbidden because independent thoughts and points or view are something frowned upon on SO, which is bent on crushing individuality)... Just a friggin' good list.
The really pathetic behavior of SO mods starts when they see people criticizing SO (and leaving or rage-quitting SO) and then try to say: "Do not speak about it here (e.g. on HN), bring this to meta".
Yeah. Sure. Meta is even worse than SO ; )
As a result of this crazy mod behavior people, like me, are quitting and stop helping others on that medium.
It's not that big of an issue that said because something, one day, will rise just as fast as SO did and shall have fixed the arbitrariness of SO mods behavior / rules.
A pet-peeve of mine is that they clearly said on SO (on Meta) that it was OK to rewrite a question entirely so that the question fits a totally bogus response (totally bogus response of course made by a user with lots of rep).
When I saw that non-sense I realized it was time for me to quit.
Re: Freely available programming books
#6"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site"
This is sad.
We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence of crap, it won't be crap anymore, because it won't exist.
Stack exchange is a walled garden run by members blindly following a doctrine put in place to increase revenue in the first place.
Re: Freely available programming books
#7"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site" This is sad. We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence o…
I agree with many of your points. Some of the StackExchange sites have degenerated into being virtually unusable unless you align yourself with the small group of people who viciously down-vote and close otherwise useful and relevant questions. The idea is/was great, but in some corners it seems to be starting to derail.
Re: Freely available programming books
#8Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.
The problem is that the Q&A format is a very bad to ask for list of things. A "wiki" would be a much better format to have list of things that everyone can contribute to. Q&A is also a very bad format for discussion. Traditional forum, Reddit or Quora are much better choice for discussion. It's a simple mater of using the best tools for the best job.
Re: Freely available programming books
#9"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site" This is sad. We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence o…
Nuuton will allow you to have the ability to discuss such subjects directly without such policies. You may even discuss the actual stackoverflow site if so desired (or the book homepages).
Re: Freely available programming books
#10Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.
The problem is that the Q&A format is a very bad to ask for list of things. A "wiki" would be a much better format to have list of things that everyone can contribute to. Q&A is also a very bad format for discussion. Traditional forum, Reddit or Quora are much better choice for discussion. It's a simple mater of using the best tools for the best job.
It occurs to me--I don't think there's any real "social site" focused on making lists. The closest things we have are social bookmarking tools--but those have a ranking algorithm that highly weights novelty, causing the front page to resemble a stream of ephemeral content mixed with periodic reposts of evergreen content.
---
How could we improve on this?
[Anyone who wants to do the following is welcome to; I've too many startups on the go already.]
Imagine something like Reddit--with each list being a "subreddit"--but:
A. there's no time-weighting in the front-page algorithm (though there is a "new" page); and
B. there are robust mechanisms in place for preventing duplicate entries from being created, and merging duplicates (along with their votes and comments) into the canonical versions.
Additionally, since the lists created will be far more static, you might want to give people greater influence over the ranking system--using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting_systems, for example.