I just noticed there are a bunch of these: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features

Someone should start a hidden features of D.
It should be free stack overflow rep for anyone who wants it.
I'll get around to doing it eventually if no one else does.

--bb

"Bill Baxter" <wbaxter@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.222.1222129662.19733.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
>I just noticed there are a bunch of these:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features
>
> Someone should start a hidden features of D.
> It should be free stack overflow rep for anyone who wants it.
> I'll get around to doing it eventually if no one else does.
>
> --bb

Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login, modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).

It's not perfect, but it's still a beta.
I'm at least curious to see if it works out long term to be a good
place to ask and find answers to programming questions.
Anyway, a lot of eyeballs are on it now, so a D presence can be a good
advertisement for D.
So far the D presence is not strong.  It doesn't help that the search
function is currently unable to search for either  "d" or "d
programming".  Doesn't even work for searching tags.

--bb

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
> "Bill Baxter" <wbaxter@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.222.1222129662.19733.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
>>I just noticed there are a bunch of these:
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features
>>
>> Someone should start a hidden features of D.
>> It should be free stack overflow rep for anyone who wants it.
>> I'll get around to doing it eventually if no one else does.
>>
>> --bb
>
> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login, modal
> dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first created
> these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
>
>
>

Reply to Nick,


> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login,
> modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first
> created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
> 

you don't even need to log in and it works without JavaScript at all. (or it's suposed to do that, havent tried it my self)

Bill Baxter wrote:
> I just noticed there are a bunch of these:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features
> 
> Someone should start a hidden features of D.
> It should be free stack overflow rep for anyone who wants it.
> I'll get around to doing it eventually if no one else does.

http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?EasterEggs

> 
> --bb

"BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d327f38caeb130eba3eae@news.digitalmars.com...
> Reply to Nick,
>
>
>> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login,
>> modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first
>> created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
>>
>
> you don't even need to log in and it works without JavaScript at all. (or it's suposed to do that, havent tried it my self)
>

Maybe it's just because it's beta, but when I was there, attempting to vote on anything resulted in a "you must log in to vote" message, and disabling javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript" header strip.

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 9:00 PM, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
> "BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d327f38caeb130eba3eae@news.digitalmars.com...
>> Reply to Nick,
>>
>>
>>> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login,
>>> modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first
>>> created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
>>>
>>
>> you don't even need to log in and it works without JavaScript at all. (or it's suposed to do that, havent tried it my self)
>>
>
> Maybe it's just because it's beta, but when I was there, attempting to vote on anything resulted in a "you must log in to vote" message, and disabling javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript" header strip.

I wasn't aware that disabling javascript was really a reasonable option these days.  There goes, like, almost every site, ever.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
> "BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d327f38caeb130eba3eae@news.digitalmars.com...
>> Reply to Nick,
>>
>>
>>> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login,
>>> modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first
>>> created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
>>>
>>
>> you don't even need to log in and it works without JavaScript at all. (or it's suposed to do that, havent tried it my self)
>>
>
> Maybe it's just because it's beta, but when I was there, attempting to vote on anything resulted in a "you must log in to vote" message, and disabling javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript" header strip.

I think you do need to log in to vote.  Otherwise the "reputation" score would become pretty meaningless.  It would be too trivial to just vote yourself up.

I agree that Ajax sucks, but in my opinion about the only thing worse than a web app using Ajax is one *not* using Ajax, requiring 23 pages of slow click-and-reload options just to do the simplest thing.

After having used StackOverflow for bit now, I think the biggest problem standing in the way of it achieving its goal of being the definitive place to find excellent answers to tech questions is the lack of editability.  You can't edit other people's good answers to make them great answers.  And I find I just can't bring myself to copy someone's good answer and edit it myself to make it great.  I tried it once and I still feel scummy for having "stolen" that guy's answer like that.  Stealing answers and making them better is the way it's supposed to work from what I understand, but I think most people are too polite for that to feel like the proper thing to do.  Plus doing that flagrantly violates the DRY principle which will make most programmers cringe.

I think what they need to do is for each question add one definitive "community answer" that works Wiki-style.  Anyone can edit that answer and it should ideally reflect the union of the best individual answers given by folks.

--bb

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
>> "BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d327f38caeb130eba3eae@news.digitalmars.com...
>>> Reply to Nick,
>>>
>>>
>>>> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login,
>>>> modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first
>>>> created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
>>>>
>>>
>>> you don't even need to log in and it works without JavaScript at all. (or it's suposed to do that, havent tried it my self)
>>>
>>
>> Maybe it's just because it's beta, but when I was there, attempting to vote on anything resulted in a "you must log in to vote" message, and disabling javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript" header strip.
>
> I think you do need to log in to vote.  Otherwise the "reputation" score would become pretty meaningless.  It would be too trivial to just vote yourself up.
>
> I agree that Ajax sucks, but in my opinion about the only thing worse than a web app using Ajax is one *not* using Ajax, requiring 23 pages of slow click-and-reload options just to do the simplest thing.
>
> After having used StackOverflow for bit now, I think the biggest problem standing in the way of it achieving its goal of being the definitive place to find excellent answers to tech questions is the lack of editability.  You can't edit other people's good answers to make them great answers.  And I find I just can't bring myself to copy someone's good answer and edit it myself to make it great.  I tried it once and I still feel scummy for having "stolen" that guy's answer like that.  Stealing answers and making them better is the way it's supposed to work from what I understand, but I think most people are too polite for that to feel like the proper thing to do.  Plus doing that flagrantly violates the DRY principle which will make most programmers cringe.
>
> I think what they need to do is for each question add one definitive "community answer" that works Wiki-style.  Anyone can edit that answer and it should ideally reflect the union of the best individual answers given by folks.

Hmm... I just noticed that you can check the "Community owned" box when you post an answer.  I guess that's the polite way to steal people's answers without being annoying.  Maybe that solves my concern.  I'll have to try that option out and see how it works in practice.

Another problem is that often you end up wanting to have a discussion with the people interested in the question that runs along side actual answers.  The format is not conducive to that since every post has to be an answer or a comment tucked away underneath someone else's answer.  I think a "discussion" tab on each question page would help keep the answers page cleaner, and help it feel more like a community.

Kinda like how every regular thread on news.digitalmars gets paired up with an OT thread for random discussions.  :-)

--bb

"Jarrett Billingsley" <jarrett.billingsley@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.238.1222220079.19733.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 9:00 PM, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
>> "BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d327f38caeb130eba3eae@news.digitalmars.com...
>>> Reply to Nick,
>>>
>>>
>>>> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login,
>>>> modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first
>>>> created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
>>>>
>>>
>>> you don't even need to log in and it works without JavaScript at all.
>>> (or
>>> it's suposed to do that, havent tried it my self)
>>>
>>
>> Maybe it's just because it's beta, but when I was there, attempting to
>> vote
>> on anything resulted in a "you must log in to vote" message, and
>> disabling
>> javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript" header strip.
>
> I wasn't aware that disabling javascript was really a reasonable option these days.  There goes, like, almost every site, ever.

Which is very unfortunate in my opinion. Actually, that very fact is *the* single reason I've reluctantly started leaving JS turned on in my browser by default instead of leaving it off by default. If Firefox or IE had the JS (and process-orientation) from Google Chrome (I'm not about to use Chrome for daily browsing as it is right now), then I *might* sort of change my mind on my whole "JS is evil crap" a little bit (though still not entirely - like Flash, it's one of those things that just *begs* to be abused - and that's a dangerous thing considering the quality of most web developers these days. Shit, it used to be that you had to actually know what you were doing before getting hired to write code...[unintelligible old-man mumbling here...]).