What makes StackOverflow different…

I was asked the question recently, what makes StackOverflow different from other developer forums. (Thanks http://twitter.com/redgum)

http://www.stackoverflow.com

I’ve only been using it for a few days now, and its still in private beta, although it is claimed to be (mostly) feature complete.

There are a few obvious things that mark it as different from your usual developer forum.

1. No forums

It doesn’t have the concept of forums, instead uses tags to provide order to the chaos. This is good, in that everything gets at least some attention when it is posted, as well as the eventual problem of things being posted to the incorrect forum never appearing.

2. No login

Eventually you will be able to ask questions and answer them without logging in. This does sound very strange, and as the web site is still in private beta it really isn’t being tested much yet, but it certainly could make life interesting.

3. Voting

Questions, as well as answers can be voted up and down – you require a log in and the required reputation to do either of these things. Reputation is gained from answering questions, having questions and answers voted up, and by having answers marked as ‘correct’ by the question asker. The exact formula isn’t really known.

4. Badges and Reputation

As you answer questions and generally interact you gain reputation, and various ‘badges’. This is in common with many game web sites (such as Kongregate) where completing certain objectives gives you a particular badge. Badges are given for things like ‘First Answer marked as Correct’.

So far this is producing a very fluid and engaging experience, but I don’t think it will truly get tested till it is open to a) Spam and b) Crap questions. Hopefully the reputation/voting system will encourage the better questions, while discouraging the worst.

Will StackOverflow end up any different from all the other developer forums? They have certainly set out on the right path. Whether this path enables them to end up better than the rest is something I think is still to be seen.

Big Bug in Flickr Screensaver

Hi

I’ve just been informed of a fairly large bug in the uninstaller for the latest Flickr Screensaver.

Basically if you uninstall it it will try and delete your WindowsSystem32 directory.

Obviously that is VERY BAD. I apologise. I’ve deleted the installer from the web site, but anyone who has the latest version of the screensaver should not uninstall it.

Sam

Does More Than One Monitor Improve Productivity?

Coding Horror: Does More Than One Monitor Improve Productivity?

A difficult one this one – I’ve never actually been able to work with 2 same sized monitors, but I have tried to use a laptop and an external monitor at the same time, and personally I found the ‘second’ monitor (the external one is bigger so that would be my primary monitor) to be a distraction – especially if I had a web browser or email application running on it.

On a side note – Good sleeping habits and goal setting are more important and effective in work productivity. If you find yourself tired and drowsy during the day, try using Modafinil to help you stay focused and awake. Get it on https://buy-modafinil-online.org/. Be careful and consult your doctor before using to avoid improper dosage and side effects.

20 things I’m longing to do in 2008 (Part One)

Tagged by Brenda, so…

I shall start at 1 and see how far I get – so in no particular order:

1. Convert my Flickr Screensaver to WPF.

I thought I’d start off with this as this is a mostly code related blog. I’ve written some small prototypes and it looks like it could be quite good. I’ll also try and write a couple of blog posts about the process/what I learnt.

2. Take more photos.

I had a slow end to the year photo-wise, but I got a new wide angle lens for Christmas which it would be rude not to use, plus strange people keep giving me rolls of film, so they need experimenting with.

3. Lose weight and strengthen ‘core’.

I’ve been hovering at around the 13stone mark for quite a while now. I want to get down to 12.5-ish, all in an aid to…

4. Improve my climbing.

Climbing is now definitely my main none-work related focus at the moment, and my main inspiration for getting the weight down. We have three trips abroad planned for this year, all climbing trips (Fontainebleau in France is the first one). Its a strange game, climbing – while there is a certain joy in ‘just climbing’ there is also a large part of you that always wants to be a little bit better.

Working on your ‘core stability’ (which is more than just your abs, but your back and other areas too) is very good for climbing. Good exercises include doing crunches on a swiss ball, planks (or benches as they are sometimes called) and super man exercises.

5. Visit more places in the north-east.

This one should go nicely with the No 2. Places I want to go this year include Dunstanburgh Castle and Cragside, but there are plenty of other places out there (like the Farne Islans for example).

6. Visit more places in the UK.

This one will go nicely with the climbing one as well. So far I’ve only really ever climbed a little in the Peak District, quite a bit in the Lake District, and lots in Northumberland. Possible places to go include definitely North Wales, other bits of Yorkshire, and ideally (though less likely) somewhere on the south coast, like Cornwall (there is an area called ‘Chair Ladder’ which has some amazing climbing on it).

7. Spell better

Get it into my head that the middle vowel of ‘definitely’ is an ‘i’, not an ‘e’ or an ‘a’. Whenever my hands spell that damn word I always get it wrong. Oh, and win more games of Scrabulous in the process.

8. Improve as a husband…

Hey, no-one said I’m perfect, so there’s always room for improvement. Luckily I have a wife who loves me (and who likes climbing too).

9. Think of something else to put on this list to make 10.

Because 9 just seems to few :)

Helping out on the Wrox forums

Wrox ProfileSince I started working as the technical editor for the XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 reference book I thought I’d try my hand at helping out on the Wrox Programmer to Programmer (P2P for short) forums.

When I first started out I was a ‘Starting Member’ but soon progressed to ‘New Member’.

Not long after that I noticed I’d gone up in status to ‘Junior Member’, which I actually found to be slightly condescending! I’m 33, I’m hardly a junior anything anymore.

Now however I’ve just passed the 200 post mark and I’m now a plain ‘Member’, although I do get 3 funky red stars to my name.

My Wrox Forums profile

I help out mostly on the XSLT forum, but I’ve been straying onto the C# and C# 2005 forums of late too. I find the post volume is about right for me to not get overloaded – compared to the Microsoft Forums where I can barely keep up. Luckily the Microsoft forums has a helpful ‘answered’ feature, so you can easily see which posts still need help.

However for some reason sometimes when I click on the ‘Reply’ button it logs me out – very annoying.

Overall though I find helping out others useful as makes me think about the way I work, plus I try to write my proposed solutions in a way that they should hopefully learn a little without just writing out the answer for them. Its the way I would want to be answered.

Still, the most annoying thing is those questions where the answer is on the first page of the results I find when I search google. Is it just laziness do you think? My typical response to these is now just “Google is your friend”.


Official ASP.NET MVC framework – CTP release in ‘next few weeks’

News about the recently previewed Model-View-Controller framework for ASP.Net is that a first look Community Technology Preview is due out in a few weeks.

It will form part of the ASP.Net Futures release, which is a product I had a quick look at recently, and includes some wonderful stuff on Dynamic Forms.

For an overview of what the ASP.Net MVC will do there is a recording of a presentation Scott Hanselman did recently here, as well as an overview of the framework by Scott Guthrie here (if you’re not subscribed to Scott’s blog yet then why not – he provides some of the most concise yet informationful (is that a word?) blog posts imaginable about ASP.Net and associated technologies).

It seems likely that the next release of the ASP.Net Futures will be released soon after Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5, which are both due out before the end of November, so we shouldn’t have long to wait.

Official ASP.NET MVC framework will have first CTP release in ‘next few weeks’ « codeville

Other MVC frameworks do exist for .Net, such as MonoRail from the Castle Project. I haven’t had a chance to look at this, but it appears to be an attempt at a port of Ruby on Rails like functionality into the .Net environment.

Implementing extension methods to XSLT in .Net

Most XSLT processors contain methods to call custom methods (known as extension methods) written in your favourite programming language similar to macros or robotic process automation that people use on their work to make the process easier. Java XSLT processors allow you to write them in Java, and the old MSXML processor allowed you to write the in VBScript or Javascript.

The new .Net Framework classes XslTransform (or more recently XslCompiledTransform) allows you to write them in any .Net language.

But how do you implement these? Well there are two methods you can choose from, read more below the break:

Continue reading “Implementing extension methods to XSLT in .Net”

.NET Rocks! in Tyne & Where?

.Net Rocks MousematAfter trying to catch up on the .Net Rocks shows (great shows for .Net deveopers – you learn things you didn’t even know you needed to know, and some things you didn’t need to know) I couldn’t believe it when the winner of their latest competition was from Tyne & Wear. Only problem is they had no idea how to pronounce Wear! So they said it like Where! I laughed so much it hurt :)

And for those who don’t know, its pronounced like were, or weir (as in a step in a river, which its named after, two rivers here in the north east of England called the River Tyne and the River Wear.