Freely available programming books

http://stackoverflow.com/a/392926/127880

by ralphchurch • 13 years ago

110 29 13 years ago

tspike• 13 years ago

Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.

fayden• 13 years ago

It's been said every time this argument is brought up: StackOverflow is a Q&A website. It's not meant for discussions, and while some interesting questions get closed, it's not arbitrary at all.

Garoof• 13 years ago

"We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion."

He's asking for free books about programming. When someone answers with a book, it's super-easy to verify that it is a book, is about programming, and is free.

It might be a bad fit for SO because there isn't one answer that is "more correct" than all other answers and so on, or something like that. But it is not a question that leads to arguing and extended discussion. It's a question that leads to people posting links to free books about programming.

So like, it might not be arbitrary and it might be that all the right questions are being closed, but it looks like a bunch of deletionists flailing about, knocking shit over. And it looks like that because there's this canned "reason" for closing a question, and it is often a poor match for the question being closed. Not because people don't get that SO is "not meant for discussions".

martinced• 13 years ago

I've got 7K+ rep there (hardly a high-score) but I don't really like the site anymore due to arbitrary behavior of mods.

It wasn't even a "discussion" (specifically forbidden because independent thoughts and points or view are something frowned upon on SO, which is bent on crushing individuality)... Just a friggin' good list.

The really pathetic behavior of SO mods starts when they see people criticizing SO (and leaving or rage-quitting SO) and then try to say: "Do not speak about it here (e.g. on HN), bring this to meta".

Yeah. Sure. Meta is even worse than SO ; )

As a result of this crazy mod behavior people, like me, are quitting and stop helping others on that medium.

It's not that big of an issue that said because something, one day, will rise just as fast as SO did and shall have fixed the arbitrariness of SO mods behavior / rules.

A pet-peeve of mine is that they clearly said on SO (on Meta) that it was OK to rewrite a question entirely so that the question fits a totally bogus response (totally bogus response of course made by a user with lots of rep).

When I saw that non-sense I realized it was time for me to quit.

dinkumthinkum6• 13 years ago

Yeah, I have similar feelings. I have more rep and at the time my usage dipped it was a fairly high number, but far less than people like Jon Skeet. I stopped answering and engaging a few years ago. It just seemed like at some point enough LRH (or JA, if you like) tech was disseminated on the site that even very good participants on SO that dared to have different opinions were relegated to SO's version of RPF or just deemed SPs altogether. :)

HoLyVieR• 13 years ago

The problem is that the Q&A format is a very bad to ask for list of things. A "wiki" would be a much better format to have list of things that everyone can contribute to. Q&A is also a very bad format for discussion. Traditional forum, Reddit or Quora are much better choice for discussion. It's a simple mater of using the best tools for the best job.

derefr• 13 years ago

It occurs to me--I don't think there's any real "social site" focused on making lists. The closest things we have are social bookmarking tools--but those have a ranking algorithm that highly weights novelty, causing the front page to resemble a stream of ephemeral content mixed with periodic reposts of evergreen content.

---

How could we improve on this?

[Anyone who wants to do the following is welcome to; I've too many startups on the go already.]

Imagine something like Reddit--with each list being a "subreddit"--but:

A. there's no time-weighting in the front-page algorithm (though there is a "new" page); and

B. there are robust mechanisms in place for preventing duplicate entries from being created, and merging duplicates (along with their votes and comments) into the canonical versions.

Additionally, since the lists created will be far more static, you might want to give people greater influence over the ranking system--using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting_systems, for example.

dinkumthinkum6• 13 years ago

Yeah, but really that was kind of the idea in the beginning. It was to be this Wikipedia-like destination but it was all these subtle micro-management decisions that pushed it away from this.

On some level it is silly to put such constraints.

xijuan• 13 years ago

Nice! Thanks for sharing!

eduardordm• 13 years ago

"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site"

This is sad.

We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence of crap, it won't be crap anymore, because it won't exist.

Stack exchange is a walled garden run by members blindly following a doctrine put in place to increase revenue in the first place.

robomartin2• 13 years ago

I agree with many of your points. Some of the StackExchange sites have degenerated into being virtually unusable unless you align yourself with the small group of people who viciously down-vote and close otherwise useful and relevant questions. The idea is/was great, but in some corners it seems to be starting to derail.

dinkumthinkum6• 13 years ago

Yes, you have to agree with the groupthink or you are basically an outcast. That said, I think it is still very useful.

I mean on some level I think it's sort of stupid. The original idea always centered around SO being a blog for programmers that don't really blog; at least that was what was constantly talked about. However, any question or answer that contains any semblance of personality is struck down or edited to an extreme. It's really anal retention run amok. But it's still useful. :)

orangethirty2• 13 years ago

Nuuton will allow you to have the ability to discuss such subjects directly without such policies. You may even discuss the actual stackoverflow site if so desired (or the book homepages).

dinkumthinkum6• 13 years ago

Interesting, I'm not familiar with that. The fact is SE sites have such a large user base and for the most part I'm not sure the problems it has are significant enough to give much room to new players, unless it is something really remarkable.

dinkumthinkum6• 13 years ago

I agree with you. However, this is not like something that has "failed" in the sense that this sort of mindset was always prevalent from the Beta of SO. This is just Jeff Atwood's philosophy plain and simple. I don't think it is, as you say, put in place to increase revenue, I think it was sort of "control freak" mindset that Jeff Atwood displayed (love it or hate it). I don't know how much Joel agreed with him on this sort of stuff in the beginning but the inane amount of micromanagement, brow beating questioners, etc was always there. You can go back to the old podcasts and blog posts for that. In the beginning, for a long time, there was push back, I felt like even in the SO blog comments there would be 25% disagreement with this idea, but I think the collective has "gotten out of control" (if you think it is bad thing). I remember long discussions on the podcast about whether some such question was relevant enough to stay on the site.

I always thought Programmers SE was just evidence of this silliness; I saw and still see no reason for it to exist outside of SO. But that's the way it goes.

Toenex• 13 years ago

Yes I often find myself wishing that, at the user level at least, USENET was still all pervasive. However, that is probably remembering the past a little more fondly that I should. Joel even talks a little about the comparison here [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-...].

George_ns• 13 years ago

Nice work ralph

Freely available programming books

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