Coding section?

[AnonymousSurfer]

The website offers hardware and software help, software reviews, tech support, tech news, and tech deals. Why not have a section devoted to coding help? It would attract a whole new group of people to the website looking for help and would allow a lot of programmers who already browse through the site to give tips and guidance and give back to the community. I know this has probably been suggested before but I really think it would be beneficial overall. It would give a solid alternative for people looking for answers rather than having to go through stackoverflow and hope your question gets seen.

 

[DelJo63]

It has been suggested previously and discarded, if only because it's a massive subject area and needs a well defined hierarchy of subtopics if it is to be useful at all.

Consider Programming environments:

• Languages
  • Perl,
    
  • Php,
    
  • C++,
    
  • C#,
    
  • C,
    
  • Java,
  • Javascript
• Environments
  • Applications,
    
  • Web Server,
    
  • Web Client,
    
  • Smartphone Apps
• Platforms
  • Windows,
    
  • Mac,
    
  • Linux,
  • Unix,
    
  • IBM Mainframes
  • Smartphones
    • Samsung(Droid), Apple(IOS)

and then there's the issues of moderation and avoiding proprietary sources

 

[AnonymousSurfer]

It has been suggested previously and discarded, if only because it's a massive subject area and needs a well defined hierarchy of subtopics if it is to be useful at all.

Consider Programming environments:

• Languages
  • Perl,
    
  • Php,
    
  • C++,
    
  • C#,
    
  • C,
    
  • Java,
  • Javascript
• Environments
  • Applications,
    
  • Web Server,
    
  • Web Client,
    
  • Smartphone Apps
• Platforms
  • Windows,
    
  • Mac,
    
  • Linux,
  • Unix,
    
  • IBM Mainframes
  • Smartphones
    • Samsung(Droid), Apple(IOS)

and then there's the issues of moderation and avoiding proprietary sources

Why can't it be divided up into a few sections and have people write the specific language in the post? I'm talking specifically languages, not platforms. Divide it up into a few families. Ex: C Languages(C, C++, C#, BASIC), Web Languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL, PHP, XML), and Other Languages (Java, Perl, Python). Then when someone posts in one of the families, the poster can use brackets to specifiy language. Ex:

[C] Need help with for loop
[Java] Need explanation polymorphism
[CSS] How do I style the body?

The Web Languages sub-forum would have more languages just because a lot go hand in hand. Usually a problem will involve multiple languages like HTML CSS and Javascript (or a combination of other languages).

 

[DelJo63]

Historically, the experience from UseNet has shown that a shallow hierarchy becomes useless very quickly if the participation is high.

My comments are just my $0.02 from Internet activity long prior to WWW and the W3C.

 

[SNGX1275]

...if the participation is high..

lol, participation. I know not directly related, but Alt OS gets almost no traffic. Going back less than 50 of the most recent topics leads you back go 2012. Mobile computing includes phones, tablets, and notebooks and also has little traffic.

Perhaps it would attract more members if it existed, but I don't think we have a large enough user base to really get it off the ground.

 

[St1ckM4n]

Just put it there for a couple months as a trial. Shouldn't hurt?

 

[cliffordcooley]

Perhaps it would attract more members if it existed, but I don't think we have a large enough user base to really get it off the ground.

Rarely ever will you catch a fish, without first baiting a hook. The question is if this is a direction that TS wants to go. My guess is no, or the "hierarchy of subtopics" that @jobeard mentioned would have been done already.

 

[SNGX1275]

Rarely ever will you catch a fish, without first baiting a hook.

Sure. But I don't think that analogy is a good fit for a tech forum. To attract other users you need to show up in searches, that is hard to do without something already in place (already having a programming section with active users). It is a slight catch-22..

You may wonder how we have what we have now without having something already started, I don't know that answer for sure since I didn't arrive here until Dec 1999. I do know that in Dec 99 we had a lot less forums than we do now, but they were general enough and then grew to a point where it was appropriate to fragment them into more specialized areas. At this point we don't have anything that you can really stuff any programing related question into outside of General Discussion. Another point is that the web was a lot smaller in 99 than now so there were fewer places to get help on things. There are plenty of places to ask programming questions now, starting from scratch would be pretty tough. We could create a general programming section, but that may not work either if @jobeard is correct.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Sure. But I don't think that analogy is a good fit for a tech forum.

Sure it is, fish don't always bite. Try catching a fish without preparing first. Preparing such as finding someone that will post daily topics on programming. Persistence on a daily basis is the only way TS will attract a user-base for any topic.

 

[SNGX1275]

Ok, re-reading the OP he may be talking about having that on the front page vs the forums. If that is the case, then jobeard's comments are even more true than I thought when I was looking at them from a forum viewpoint.

 

[learninmypc]

The website offers hardware and software help, software reviews, tech support, tech news, and tech deals. Why not have a section devoted to coding help? It would attract a whole new group of people to the website looking for help and would allow a lot of programmers who already browse through the site to give tips and guidance and give back to the community. I know this has probably been suggested before but I really think it would be beneficial overall. It would give a solid alternative for people looking for answers rather than having to go through stackoverflow and hope your question gets seen.

My apologies if this isn't what you're talking about, but code ?

 

[DelJo63]

I do know that in Dec 99 we had a lot less forums than we do now, but they were general enough and then grew to a point where it was appropriate to fragment them into more specialized areas. ....Another point is that the web was a lot smaller in 99 than now so there were fewer places to get help on things.

And that is the exact experience of the Unix UseNet group. Today the subject area is well defined and those seeking help know what they are after, so starting with a large bucket Software would be silly.

That said, create the singular forum w/o partitioning and see what fish we catch :grin: If the net gets too full, then repartition based upon need.