I just noticed that this is post 001101…
Good Karma to you Jeff. Like most of us here, I’ve already bookmarked a (fairly) empty page and can’t wait to go see it grow.
I’m thrilled to find out about this venture. With the information scattered over the web and seemingly unstructured, this may be a refreshing change. In fact, I’ve been swimming around aimlessly on the 'Net for good information on MFC, C++, and database connection.
Making this site accessible to everyone would be ideal as well. I’m deaf myself and would be much more inclined to go to the website if I had much equal access to information as the rest.
I was wondering where I saw that cartoon before… At first I thought it was Creative Computing magazine in the 70’s, although now I’m leaning toward Discover Magazine in the 80’s.
I also am no fan of podcasts, but Joel believes it adds another dimension to our writing when you can hear voice, intonation, etcetera.
Granted, but that should be as well as, not instead of, a written transcript.
I love your site and recommend it to everyone I know in I.T. I work at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. I certainly hope this new stackoverflow thing will not be all audio only. Your description sounded wonderful until I saw that it was presented as an audio podcast and only accepts submission in audio file. Not a good way to be “accessible”.
Cool, its a small world, I mean both you and Joel are quite popular, but nice to see you working together.
What a crummy idea.
I hope that you fall flat on your face…you idiot!
Brad: “your use of bold type”.
I don’t mind emphasis being used appropriately. What I find are people who visit other people’s web sites and criticize the layout/fonts/etc. without being asked. People who do that are pedantic and rude.
Larry Bank: “Your site won’t solve anything”
How do you know? Are you basing that on inside knowledge that none of the rest of us (including Jeff and Joel) don’t have? Or are you just being a rude idiot. (I’m guessing it’s the latter choice, myself.)
Alan: “Hasn’t this all been done before, what makes yours different.”
Why don’t you just wait and see before passing judgment?
Joshua Gosse: “I don’t think this site will work [snip nonsensical MS/OSS, Jeff/Joel bashing blather]. Books is [sic] MUCH better than what you can find online.”
How can you say the site won’t work without waiting to see what it does exactly?
And in what way are books better? They’re expensive, become outdated quickly, have limited content (and therefore limit your options), and take up space. For example, my “Advanced Undocumented MS-DOS 5” book cost around $60 when I bought it, is about 1000 pages and so is pretty heavy, and hasn’t been useful for around 10 years now; it does have some pretty nifty stuff for it’s day, though. In what way is that better than being able to search the entire globe for various ways to do things, have many options to choose from, and have knowledge available from many different people, as opposed to only having the options that one or two authors decided were best?
And perhaps grammar should be the subject of the next book you spend your money on - since you used “Books” (a plural), the appropriate phrasing would be “Books are” (plural) and not “Books is” (singular).
GUI Junkie: “you ain’t got notting [sic] yet. … please refrain from bugging me/us).”
Great! I have a solution for you! DO NOT open your browser and type in http://www.stackoverflow.com and no one will bug you! Idiot. Nobody is bugging you - it’s your choice where you go with your browser. You don’t like the site? Don’t visit, and don’t waste everybody else’s time with your babble.
“No RSS” or “No accessibility support” complainers: Give them time, people! There’s an old expression that mentions something about Rome not having been built in a day.
Sure, it’s nice if there’s full RSS feed support, and the site works equally well for sighted/blind, hearing/deaf, genius/learning disabled, NFL quarterback/physically challenged, marathon-sprinting/wheelchair-bound, male/female/transgender types, and eventually it probably will. Hell, someday Jeff and Joel may just transport themselves over broadband thoughtwaves right to your desk and help you type the code in person! So why not quit whining and give them time; obviously, since the only thing on the site currently is a cartoon, an mp3 and a rar download, and a couple of links it’s a work in progress, right? Did you catch the “in progress” part of that question?
My vile hate towards Experts Exchange is what led me to create the Filtering Search Frontend, http://www.gfilter.net
NO more Experts Exchange for me 
Yeah, its still really early beta.
Great news! This is something that should have been done years ago.
Promise not to change it into a subscription service, will you? 
This sounds more like a ‘me too’ venture since there are already a lot of good, established developers’ sites. Good luck - maybe you will bring something new into the fray.
Ok, I don’t usually post until I’ve read all your comments too, but I believe your idea is genious, and I have a suggestion or two. Key thing to focus on imho: making users into contributors. If you can do that, the site will just explode. Some other sites have things like ratings and an option for a user to contribute like a wiki, but that just isn’t enough. Theres the problem like, ok, so I just edited this page. Now my username is in the page history that no one looks at, now what?, ok my contribution got a good rating, what else is there? Two main things I see will get users to contribute. 1, the best platform. This is hard because even if you have this, you still have to get to some critical mass of contributions, so unless you get some good capital investment, that aint gonna work 2, community. Tap into those deep reasons why people donate their time to things online, whether its an open source project, or a community game website for a commercial game. Theres just this feeling that people have for a project when they get involved in it, they care about it like its theirs. If you can lead a community, it can work. So when you start making a community of contributors, not simply blog readers, thats when I will get interested.
Considering the fact that you have my absolute favorite cartoon as a placeholder on your home page, you’ve already won me over. In spite of me.
Wait. Did you just jump the shark by osmosis? Get me my skiis, Potsie…
After reading Marc Andreesen’s blog, which is as irrelevant as a blog can possibly be, I hope your blog remains relevant since you now have this audio-driven distraction called stackoverflow.com.
A podcast? A 46-min podcast? And questions to be submitted in audio format? Do share the algorithm you use for processing that and answering questions. :)))
Writing good code (if that is the intent of stackoverflow.com) should start with a VB/VB.NET bonefire. Now that .NET world is finally embracing MVC as a standard framework, this is the time to celebrate.
Also, Joel Spolsky needs some new material. It is like listening to a standup comedian with the same material over and over again. “Do we have a title for this podcast? Do we?” C’mon.
I’m a bit mystified why people talk about Expert Sex Change so much, sure it’s damned annoying when it comes up on search results but, in reality what Jeff and Joel seem to be trying to do is nothing like it at all; rather they seem to be attempting to replicate other existing sites like Codeproject.com that have been around for ages and satisfy their stated goals quite nicely.
Competition is healthy and I wish you guys luck but surely you and others realize you’re re-inventing a sucessful wheel here?
Here is what Joel Spolsky wants us to believe:
“Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. The market for books on programming topics is miniscule compared to the number of working programmers.”
How utterly ridiculous. Bad coders never read books. I cannot remember a week in the past 10+ years that I did not crack open at least two books and read most relevant sections. Not to mention the gazillion of ebooks I am shlepping on my shleptop and reading whenever I have an idle moment.
Is stackoverflow intended as a spoonfeeder for nonreader? Or it is an IV for a lazy programmer?
I like the fact that your website is starting off so ‘humbly’. I guess you’re still at step two. It will be fun to see how it morphs as time goes on.
The podcast was ok. A bit unfocused but hey it’s the first one. The audio could use some improvement. I’m not saying go Carl-Franklin-crazy on it, but the telephone voice is wearying.
My biggest complaint is how Joel constantly interrupted you. I enjoy hearing both of you but not at the same time. It reminds me of an old John McEnroe vs Metallica interview, or more recently a Charlie Rose vs Ted Turner interview - an interruption just when someone was about to say something kinda interesting. I don’t want to throw a brick through my LCD in frustration. Please Joel, ease up a tiny bit!
That said, I wish you both the best of luck on this venture.
I am severely hard of hearing, and must echo the string of comments requesting transcripts to match the audio files. I like the idea of the site, think it has potential, but please do not make it all audio.
This is great news Jeff, I look forward both to participating and listening to the podcast. Best of luck with it all.