I’m seeking a website where I can ask any programming or tech-related questions without the risk of it being closed. The platform should allow linking of similar problems for better organization. Previously, I found HeapOverflow to be useful, but unfortunately, it is no longer available. Another platform I tried was Wotas.net (Wisdom of the Ancient Souls Q&A Tech Website), but it didn’t last long either. These platforms were not very active, often leading me to post solutions to my own questions. Despite this, I prefer them over websites with an army of moderators trying to find any excuse to close your post. My preference leans away from platforms like StackOverflow or Codidact, which focus mainly on bug-related questions. When dealing with troubleshooting bugs involving Minimal Reproducible Examples and error logs, I find seeking help from an LLM more beneficial than those kinds of websites anyways, due to their clear and concise responses.
yeah, it was essentially the site that OP is asking for, but one day freenom disappeared the domain from my account, and Ive been too lazy to write a DB migration to another domain name =/
I asked ai to give me an image for a super hero for the fediverse and got this:
Honestly, it seems like a federated solution is in order, since this seems to be the most effective way we can have content on the internet that isn’t ‘owned’. Its not a perfect solution, but I completly commiserate with your issue. I’ve come across reddit threads for arcane GIS or programming issues and found the comments deleted.
Its only a matter of time before the walls go up around stack overflow and github. We should be thinking about the future and what its going to take to maintain an open and accessible web. A bit part of that is having the tools and resources available to learn. Theres a generation of learning that has the potential to be lost because some one ‘owns’ it.
Some other considerations. Most platforms as a resources ‘work’ because they’ve reached some critical mass. Focusing on niche programming tasks or languages and building a small but robust community is more effective than trying to go very wide, but very shallow. Compare the success of the programming communities here . Most are empty. Most have no posts and no activities. But that’s because we’re conditioned to the granularity an extant critical mass supports. Instead, just like you are doing, you can post to more general communities like this one.
There is also the strategy of focusing on more ‘diy’/ self supported projects that are based in open source. For example, QGIS, I think belongs on the fediverse. They are a phenomenal project and embody that open and free spirit.
Compare the success of the programming communities here . Most are empty. Most have no posts and no activities
Lemmy also lacks the ability to edit someone else’s post. The best answers (and even the best questions) on Stack Overflow had multiple authors. It’s very rare to find one person who can comprehensively understand a problem, but several people can do that.
Distinct posts by several people can never be as good as a single post. There’s too much repetition, too many stale posts that are out of date or have errors that the author didn’t come back to fix, etc.
Toxic communities have existed long before Stack Overflow was a thing.
Either you’re asking a question that’s too basic, which people will respond with “RTFM!!!”, or “Just Google it you moron! It’s literally the first result”.
Or you’re asking a too technically advanced question nobody has a direct answer to. That, or you’re met with “why on earth do you want to do that?”
That, or you’re met with “why on earth do you want to do that?”
To be fair, the XY problem is huge in anything coding related. Newbie wants to do X, has a vague and terribly wrong idea about how to do it (Y), then asks how to do Y instead. To give a “correct” answer to Y, assuming the question makes enough sense to have a correct answer, is less helpful than trying more or less tactfully to figure out what the actual goal was.
It shouldn’t be. People should just answer the damn question or say nothing at all. “Why?” should never be an “answer” as I find people start debating the why instead of the actual question asked.
Context is important. If a business decision has to be made, or it is important to get it right because there’s some real-world value attached to it. Otherwise, on the internet, it rarely ever matters why and is in most cases just a reason to detract and go on a tangent.
This is most often seen on HackerNews. Someone creates something like Harder Drives, or asks how to put Doom on a toaster and people respond with “why?”. It doesn’t matter why. Just let people have fun, learn in their own way, discover new things, or do things differently.
It shouldn’t be necessary to defend yourself over such trivial matters.
I used to spend a ton of time helping people on reddit with linux and related things, and the “why” matters immensely in that case.
XY problem was extremely common, where someone was trying to achieve a goal through “incorrect” means.
I also saw many, many people’s issues where they wanted something, but were referring to it by a different name, ending up confused and lost. All I had to do was say “you actually want Y” and point them on their way, and they would be happy.
And then of course, sometimes people try to do something that’s simply not possible (or more usually, not implemented in software.).
But in general, it’s very difficult to help people who don’t make it easy for you to help them, and part of that is explaining the “why”, in addition to their issue.
I also contribute to communities like stackoverflow. There are very few reasons to ask “what are you trying to do”. Often it’s when the solution to their question doesn’t help them reach their actual goal and they willingly say “actually, I was trying to do X, but this didn’t achieve that”. Other cases are when they ask things like “why doesn’t this work” or “could you recommend ABC” and don’t provide enough information to answer the question.
An example “how do I fit this $lightbulb into $fitting” shouldn’t be answered with “why?” even if you first thought is “that makes no sense, why would you do that?”. Maybe they don’t have other lightbulbs or fittings, maybe that fitting is the only one with a potentiometer or transformer they could find, maybe they actually bought the wrong fitting.
IMO, a better answer is “I would advise against it, but here’s how I would do it”. It’s then up to the person asking the question to either indicate that they want to know why you advise against it, try it out and find out that it works for them or doesn’t. You asking “why” might just waste their time having to explain circumstances and wait on async responses instead of just getting a solution and deciding for themselves whether it helped or not.
“Why” is often a waste of time and prone to tangents.I try not provide context to my questions anymore because of that.
@CoderSupreme The founder of StackOverflow went on to work on Discourse (https://discourse.org). There’s actually an ActivityPub plugin available nowadays, so apparently people can contribute from whatever fediverse server they’re coming from. For example see Go Bridge (https://forum.golangbridge.org)
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !programming@programming.dev
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person’s post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you’re posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don’t want to watch videos
If the people want heapoverflow, I’ll resurrect it
Heapoverflow?
yeah, it was essentially the site that OP is asking for, but one day freenom disappeared the domain from my account, and Ive been too lazy to write a DB migration to another domain name =/
Was it an opensource stackoverflow?
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
ya, it was a lemmy instance.
Hate to say this, but Reddit is one option.
reddit has been pretty much the only reliable option that isn’t stackoverflow, in my experience
I wish. Maybe create one, be the change and all that.
I asked ai to give me an image for a super hero for the fediverse and got this:
Honestly, it seems like a federated solution is in order, since this seems to be the most effective way we can have content on the internet that isn’t ‘owned’. Its not a perfect solution, but I completly commiserate with your issue. I’ve come across reddit threads for arcane GIS or programming issues and found the comments deleted.
Its only a matter of time before the walls go up around stack overflow and github. We should be thinking about the future and what its going to take to maintain an open and accessible web. A bit part of that is having the tools and resources available to learn. Theres a generation of learning that has the potential to be lost because some one ‘owns’ it.
Some other considerations. Most platforms as a resources ‘work’ because they’ve reached some critical mass. Focusing on niche programming tasks or languages and building a small but robust community is more effective than trying to go very wide, but very shallow. Compare the success of the programming communities here . Most are empty. Most have no posts and no activities. But that’s because we’re conditioned to the granularity an extant critical mass supports. Instead, just like you are doing, you can post to more general communities like this one.
There is also the strategy of focusing on more ‘diy’/ self supported projects that are based in open source. For example, QGIS, I think belongs on the fediverse. They are a phenomenal project and embody that open and free spirit.
Was this whole comment AI generated?
nah.
Louis LOL
Lemmy also lacks the ability to edit someone else’s post. The best answers (and even the best questions) on Stack Overflow had multiple authors. It’s very rare to find one person who can comprehensively understand a problem, but several people can do that.
Distinct posts by several people can never be as good as a single post. There’s too much repetition, too many stale posts that are out of date or have errors that the author didn’t come back to fix, etc.
Toxic communities have existed long before Stack Overflow was a thing.
Either you’re asking a question that’s too basic, which people will respond with “RTFM!!!”, or “Just Google it you moron! It’s literally the first result”.
Or you’re asking a too technically advanced question nobody has a direct answer to. That, or you’re met with “why on earth do you want to do that?”
The sweet spot is hard to find.
To be fair, the XY problem is huge in anything coding related. Newbie wants to do X, has a vague and terribly wrong idea about how to do it (Y), then asks how to do Y instead. To give a “correct” answer to Y, assuming the question makes enough sense to have a correct answer, is less helpful than trying more or less tactfully to figure out what the actual goal was.
It shouldn’t be. People should just answer the damn question or say nothing at all. “Why?” should never be an “answer” as I find people start debating the why instead of the actual question asked.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
“why” is a perfectly valid question to ask
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
Context is important. If a business decision has to be made, or it is important to get it right because there’s some real-world value attached to it. Otherwise, on the internet, it rarely ever matters why and is in most cases just a reason to detract and go on a tangent.
This is most often seen on HackerNews. Someone creates something like Harder Drives, or asks how to put Doom on a toaster and people respond with “why?”. It doesn’t matter why. Just let people have fun, learn in their own way, discover new things, or do things differently.
It shouldn’t be necessary to defend yourself over such trivial matters.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
I used to spend a ton of time helping people on reddit with linux and related things, and the “why” matters immensely in that case.
XY problem was extremely common, where someone was trying to achieve a goal through “incorrect” means.
I also saw many, many people’s issues where they wanted something, but were referring to it by a different name, ending up confused and lost. All I had to do was say “you actually want Y” and point them on their way, and they would be happy.
And then of course, sometimes people try to do something that’s simply not possible (or more usually, not implemented in software.).
But in general, it’s very difficult to help people who don’t make it easy for you to help them, and part of that is explaining the “why”, in addition to their issue.
I also contribute to communities like stackoverflow. There are very few reasons to ask “what are you trying to do”. Often it’s when the solution to their question doesn’t help them reach their actual goal and they willingly say “actually, I was trying to do X, but this didn’t achieve that”. Other cases are when they ask things like “why doesn’t this work” or “could you recommend ABC” and don’t provide enough information to answer the question.
An example “how do I fit this $lightbulb into $fitting” shouldn’t be answered with “why?” even if you first thought is “that makes no sense, why would you do that?”. Maybe they don’t have other lightbulbs or fittings, maybe that fitting is the only one with a potentiometer or transformer they could find, maybe they actually bought the wrong fitting.
IMO, a better answer is “I would advise against it, but here’s how I would do it”. It’s then up to the person asking the question to either indicate that they want to know why you advise against it, try it out and find out that it works for them or doesn’t. You asking “why” might just waste their time having to explain circumstances and wait on async responses instead of just getting a solution and deciding for themselves whether it helped or not.
“Why” is often a waste of time and prone to tangents.I try not provide context to my questions anymore because of that.
But you do you.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
@CoderSupreme The founder of StackOverflow went on to work on Discourse (https://discourse.org). There’s actually an ActivityPub plugin available nowadays, so apparently people can contribute from whatever fediverse server they’re coming from. For example see Go Bridge (https://forum.golangbridge.org)
@programming
codidact is open source, otherwise very similar to stackoverflow.
Yep - I’m also looking for the same thing. Stack Overflow used to be the most amazing website on the internet… it’s not that anymore.
LLMs are working pretty well for me and I’m not sure if anything like Stack Overflow will ever exist again. That ship has sailed in my opinion.