This marks the end of an era in a lot of ways. Joel Spolsky's influence on software development can't be understated. Stack Overflow is a huge company with lots of decision makers, so things will carry along without him.
In the post, he acknowledges that Stack will have to keep evolving
The type of people Stack Overflow serves has changed, and now, as a part of the developer ecosystem, we have a responsibility to create an online community that is far more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming of newcomers.
It's pretty interesting to make this announcement without a successor named.
It will not be easy to find a CEO who is the right person to lead that mission. We will, no doubt, hire one of those fancy executive headhunters to help us in the search. But, hey, this is Stack Overflow. If there’s one thing I have learned by now, it’s that there’s always someone in the community who can answer the questions I can’t.
Thoughts?
Latest comments (41)
I mean, ok.
I think change may be good.
I stopped using SO a long time ago. It’s a largely untrustworthy in a lot of topics. Especially those that change fast over time, like JS.
S.O., in my opinion; has become the site of the most rude, opinionated and offensive question site anywhere.
Many years ago, I spent hours daily answering questions as a learning tool for my own interests. I achived a top 5% contributer acknowledgement.
Today, I refuse to contribute at all. Reason? Nazi moderators mostly, but negativity within the community is the norm. There's little respect for honest questions and plenty of downvotes everywhere.
I only go there for answers now.
Change is good. Perhaps either he decided to take a break, or a break was decided for him. Either way, new leadership will perhaps help shake up some of the old crystallized thinking and keep SO relevant for the future.
In trying to remove personal bias from my thoughts, I realized that my opinion of this news is, indeed, inseparable from what I know of Joel personally.
To that end, it's probably unfair of me to share any thoughts on the matter at all.
"there’s always someone in the community who can answer the questions I can’t." Great quote.
"that is far more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming of newcomers" yeah after they had questionar and got a lot of negative feedback probably
Ben is too cool for SO.
So, Ben - have you applied yet?
Reputation is flawed on pretty much every site that tries to implement it. The more you try to smooth it out the more cracks you notice, and after it's gotten going you can't suddenly change. It's like pinball: pressing "start" generally gets you a million or so points on modern games, and you could just lop off the last few zeros with no effect apart from... everyone who has high scores resenting you forever.
I've only answered a few questions on SO, but my rep keeps on growing as people upvote them. My rep there is definitely not indicative of my actual involvement on the site.
But it is indicative of the value the site's users have received from you over time.
Reputation is difficult, and I can't think of a good way of doing it, but SO's way is not really any worse than any other site. And it's a lot better than counting "likes" on Facebook.
Yeah same here, over 90% of my reputation score is from a single answer, years ago,that frankly isn't even all that insightful. It keeps getting upvoted though, so I keep adding 50 points a week or so even though I haven't really participated much in a while.
Nah, I was kidding. '#HumbleBrag' from me is more about pointing out an alternative, unintended interpretation for comedy. More like 'That's what she said'.
Discourse, which is pretty much Stack's successor, already solves this problem:
He's done a lot for devs over the years. Outside of SO, he also had a successful blog with a lot of gems. Such as A Field Guide to Developers. He was hilarious on the SO podcast -- I caught the tail end of his tenure there.
So I hope he enjoys his retirement. Sincerely.
#humblebrag ;)
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