Stack Overflow: Ask a question without getting grilled.

As a very amatuer programmer, I find myself looking for answers all the time. Most of the time I have to ask a professor or another student when I need help. However, other times I find myself going online, on Sun’s Java forums, or some other java site. It seems to me that every time I look something up, I see posts asking for help. Though there are many helpful people, a lot of them can be not so nice- okay they can be downright nasty. So far, Stack Overflow is quite the opposite of this. One can freely ask programming questions in a fairly “Web 2.0-like” fashion.


One can freely ask programming questions in a fairly “Web 2.0-like” fashion.


It is a lot like Digg, where those with the most popular questions/answers are voted up or down, based on the answers and quality of the question. Another cool feature is that one needs to earn “reputation points” in order to vote questions up/down. One gets this “rep” by answering someone’s question with a helpful answer (much like the “best answer” option on Yahoo! Answers). The site is really informative, and can be quite humorous as well. For example, this question asks “What’s your favorite programming joke?” Helpful and Humorous, Stack Overflow is a great site for both amatuer and experienced programmers, of any language!