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![“I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby) [...] I'd like to know what features most people would want.”“Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.”“In the past, we could do little things for love, but big things required money. Now, we can do big things for love.”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/webstock-2010-100217225836-phpapp02/75/Webstock-2010-Stack-Overflow-Building-Social-Software-for-the-Anti-Social-50-2048.jpg)
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Webstock 2010 - Stack Overflow: Building Social Software for the Anti-Social
The document discusses the evolution of programming as a social activity, highlighting the motivations and dynamics among programmers, who are often introverted yet share a passion for coding and a disdain for bad code. It emphasizes the importance of understanding user motivation and the value of community-driven contributions in platforms like Stack Overflow. The content reflects on how collaboration has transformed in the digital age, allowing significant achievements to be made without financial incentives.
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Webstock 2010 - Stack Overflow: Building Social Software for the Anti-Social
- 1. Stack Overflow:Building SocialSoftware for the Anti-SocialJeff Atwoodcodinghorror.comstackoverflow.com
- 6. So I wentto New Zealand Consulate and asked if it was true. And they said: "Indeed. New Zealanders can visit Australia without a Visa". And I said:"Well, I wanna be a New Zealander. My father is a New Zealander. Can I get a New Zealand passport?" And they said: "Certainly, Sir. Go down to the basement, get some pictures taken, bring them up". And I did, and they did, and they made me a passport.Joel Spolsky
- 8. Step 1:Know youraudience
- 12. Q:How do youtell an introverted computer programmer from an extroverted computer programmer?
- 13. A:An extroverted computerprogrammer looks at your shoes when he talks to you.
- 14. “In the earlyyears of programming, a program was regarded as the private property of the programmer. One would no more think of reading a colleague's program unbidden than of picking up a love letter and reading it.”
- 15. “This is essentiallywhat a program was, a love letter from the programmer to the hardware, full of the intimate details known only to partners in an affair.”
- 17. This series ofbooks is affectionately dedicatedto the Type 650 computer once installed atCase Institute of Technology,in remembrance of many pleasant evenings.Donald Knuthdedication toThe Art of Computer Programming1968
- 19. One of thegreat pioneers of computer and online gaming, Dani Berry died in 1998. Some of her aphorisms are still frequently quoted by game developers, including”No one ever said on their deathbed, ‘Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer.’”
- 22. Step 2: Knowyour topic
- 23. Programming is nowa social activityLike it or not.
- 24. Social software forthe anti-social (programmers)
- 32. Step 3:Understand people’smotivations
- 33. Modern programming maybe a social activity, but programmers are still introverted and anti-social.*What motivates us to work with confusing, complicated, erratic people instead of simple computers?*and that’s how we like it!
- 34. A shared passion:Welove programming.
- 35. A common enemy:Wehate Bad Code.
- 36. I don’t haveto agree with youI don’t have to be “friends” with youI don’t even have to like you… but we have a shared passion, a shared enemy, and we can learn from each other.
- 37. The currency ofStack Overflow is information.Programmers map social relationships on top of that.Do you really need software to tell you who your friends are?
- 39.
- 40. Work is whenyour boss tells you to do something, you do it, and you get paid.work is motivated by inherent interest and generally unpaid.
- 42. Usability testing techniquesdeveloped over the past 25 years for Work no longer apply for work.We shouldn't be asking, “Can you complete the task?” but rather “Are you motivated to do it in the first place?”
- 45. Little-w work:Tiny slicesof frictionless effortAmortized across the entire community
- 46. “If you takeWikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project --every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in -- that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought.”
- 47. Fast, fast, fastNoregistration requiredSimple Markdown formattingEdit anything, anytime (with rep)Every question has an input box at the bottom, inviting you to participate and share what you know
- 50. “I'm doing a(free) operating system (just a hobby) [...] I'd like to know what features most people would want.”“Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.”“In the past, we could do little things for love, but big things required money. Now, we can do big things for love.”
Editor's Notes
- #27 Good programmers write. Great programmers steal.Joel and I wanted a mashup of all the social website concepts that we knew worked at places where programmers hang out.We did a LOT of research into sites that worked.
- #28 Let’s start with a static phpBB style discussion forum. A chronological list of messages.
- #29 Voting – digg/reddit. AJAX style. So the best stuff goes to the top. You don’t have to read 40 messages to find that one nugget of useful technical information buried in there.
- #30 Bring in editing. So a year later, after this API has been deprecated, or if there’s a better way to do this, users can change their posts.Note that editing brings in discussion about the editing as well. This is important.
- #31 Blogs –owner authorship. From delicious, the concept of tagging.
- #32 Finally, bringing it all together. A Web 3.0 forum.
- #51 Loving not necessarily each other, because people can be hard to love – but loving the thing we are creating together for the future.