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Five years ago, we invested in Domain-Driven Design. Conferences, workshops, consultants. The works.

The goal was simple: help humans navigate complexity. Make domain experts and developers speak the same language.

We had no idea those same boundaries would matter for something else entirely.

yrizoson APIs as Infrastructure: Optimizing for Change

APIs need to stay stable even as the systems behind them keep changing. Each version becomes a contract that cannot move, while data models and requirements evolve around it.

Keeping everything working without slowing development is harder than it seems, and common approaches often break down once incremental changes start to accumulate.

yrizoson The End of Coding as We Know It: AI is doing to code what photography did to art

Thanks, glad it resonated.

I'm at that stage in my career where I don't code much anymore, so I don't really share the same anxieties younger developers have about Gen AI. That might partly explain my more optimistic view.

yrizoson “Zero fucks given” in other languages

Oh, I've heard it - a lot :) But it's probably not used as much anymore, it's been a long time since I last heard it.

yrizoson Ask HN: How would a programming language look if designed by non-programmer

It's not uncommon for programmers - even for the great ones - to produce code that looks like it was written by non-programmers...

yrizoson Stack Overflow Sunsetting Documentation

There will be a data dump.

yrizoson Stack Overflow Sunsetting Documentation

That's not a useful metric. The questions that today show up as locked for historical significance were simply closed before the historical significance lock was introduced.

Conversely, the lock was introduced to stop those highly interesting (but ultimately useless) questions from getting deleted. If anything, it's a step in being less strict.

yrizoson Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star

Hey, "Why are there so few female programmers?" (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5780/why-are-...) is still an acceptable question, it's closed, but only because it's a dupe of "Career Prospects: Women at Management positions in Software" (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93462/career-...)

Also, while the community in the good old days was certainly vibrant, it wasn't huge, and it's not huge today either. But at least now we're steadily growing: http://www.quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com

Lastly, I love how you say that the graphs don't include deletions, and one of them (supposedly) show deletions and undeletions. You kinda screwed up the queries there, the graphs don't make sense ;)

yrizoson Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star

It was closed and re-opened a few times (full revision history: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions). Every time that question got shared somewhere, it started getting crap answers instantly, everyone ignored the fantastic community curated top voted answer and went ahead and added yet another one liner saying "learn css".

No one wants that question closed, but at the same time only a handful of people actively prune it every now and then. Right now it's open, but if it starts generating crap answers yet again, we might close it. And then silently re-open it when no one's looking, hoping that the next troll that visits the site won't notice.

However, keep in mind closed doesn't mean dead, we have lots of great (but closed) questions (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=...), if at some point a question becomes incredibly troublesome, closing it is the easy - and reversible - fix. Killing crap answers, rewording the question to be a bit more specific, etc, is a very slow process, but it happens.

yrizoson Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star

From June 3, 2010 to September 29, 2010 Programmers was a Q&A site for anything and everything that didn't fit Stack Overflow.

From September 29, 2010 and onwards Programmers is a Q&A site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.

Why people still complain about the change in scope more than two years after it happened, is beyond me. In retrospect, it might have been a better idea to close the original site and create a new one from scratch, but that's all in the past now.

yrizoson Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star

NPR, the original version of Programmers, was an experiment, and, well, it failed. Pierre and a few other equally exemplary contributors from the good old days decided to move on, and that's that.

Unfortunate, but we can't do anything about it now, especially since the site's experiencing steady growth and an overall increase in quality since the new scope was solidified. The majority of the community seems to be quite happy with the current direction of the site, no one has called me an evil nazi mod on our Meta site in months ;P

For anyone interested in more details on the change in scope, and the history of the site in general: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/wha... (ignore my extremely unhelpful answer there, please ;)

yrizoson Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star

Disclaimer: I'm a Programmers moderator.

The original version of Programmers was called "Not Programming Related", and it was created as a site for anything and everything that didn't fit Stack Overflow (What's your favourite programming cartoon, etc).

What you are describing is actually the current scope, that seems to be working just fine. You're right that questions that fit within the site's scope rarely have a definitive answer, but a definitive answer is not what we are looking for, just a finite and somewhat limited set of good/great answers.

Here's a few recent example questions that probably explain what the site's about better than I could ever:

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-f...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-ca...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161568/critiq...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-i...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154247/experi...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158779/how-ha...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-in...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-bos...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-s...

None of these questions would make it on Stack Overflow, and that's the gap Programmers is filling.

yrizoson Stackoverflow Is A Difficult Community to Participate In

http://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/basketball ;)

yrizoson Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

There's no incentive in closing a question, other than helping the site reach it's goals, and the primary goal for any Stack Exchange site is useful, not interesting or popular (not that they are mutually exclusive, but also not to be confused).

This specific question was turning into crap fast, with answers like "Sounds like your friend is a bit of a dick. Noone wants to work for him." (since deleted). Closing it only prevents further answers, as it was obvious they were deteriorating. Still, the closure and any closure, is reversible, people always have the choice to vote to re-open if they feel the closure wasn't justified.

yrizoson Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

And a few deleted ones. "Sounds like your friend is a bit of a dick. Noone wants to work for him." is one of them (yeap, just that), the whole thread was turning to crap. Closing is only meant to prevent further answers, and this one was deteriorating fast.

yrizoson Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

Hundreds of people engaging in a question is actually a very good hint that it's Not Constructive (just a hint though). Remember, Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site are about questions and answers, not discussions.

yrizoson StackOverflow unwinding?

Heh, the good old "high-quality content" argument... Any links to the almost-always-crap content you consider high quality? Don't get me wrong, it could actually be high quality, it's just that it rarely is... Links or it didn't happen.

yrizoson StackOverflow unwinding?

Why would you want Stack Overflow to be about "wide-open your minds", when Hacker News is perfectly suitable for that?

yrizoson StackOverflow unwinding?

Penalised? You spend some imaginary points and in return you get more chances for a good answer to your question... That's a fair tradeoff, if you ask me...

yrizoson StackOverflow unwinding?

Bunch of obnoxious punks, them Programmers moderators... Especially the Greek guy...

yrizoson Stuck due to “knowing too much”

Dude, we already have one: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ ;P

yrizoson Stuck due to “knowing too much”

Heh ;)

So, you're goofing off on chat, a discussion oriented medium, and not on Stack Exchange, a platform that's feverishly against discussions.

But on more than one occasion you've asked for Stack Exchange to change it's stance on discussion oriented questions and become more discussion friendly. Assuming that happens, how soon do you think it'll be before you dismiss Stack Exchange as goofing off?

yrizoson Stuck due to “knowing too much”

http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/

Also, four of the close voters are regular users, only ChrisF is a moderator (notice the ♦), but it doesn't really matter, as it takes 5 close votes to close a question and his otherwise supercharged close vote was a regular user vote here (being the fifth).

yrizoson Stuck due to “knowing too much”

Hey, thanks for noticing!

yrizoson Stuck due to “knowing too much”

Hm... The titles seem awful, but at least the "Is hiring a “chief intern” a good idea?" one has a very specific set of parameters. It can be answerable with specific answers, and sufficiently answered by a very small set of answers. That said, the answers so far are...

The "Is there a viable alternative to the agile philosophy?" one is from Nov 2010, a more relaxed era, when the site's scope wasn't as well defined as it is today. It was bumped on the front page by a minor edit (argh). I'm on the fence on this one, and I'd prefer it be closed by five regular users.

yrizoson Stuck due to “knowing too much”

Hey frankc! You're right Analysis paralysis is on topic on Programmers, the question however is not constructive, in the Stack Exchange sense. The close reason was a bit misleading (now changed), but at the end of the day closed means closed.

As to why it is not constructive: We don't like discussions. Ok, that's a lie, we love discussions, especially heated flamewars, after all we are programmers. However we haven't yet found a good way of moderating and curating such questions on Stack Exchange, we have an array of excellent tools at our disposal, none of which was designed with free flowing open ended discussions in mind.

This is more of a "it's not you, it's us" problem and it's a discussion we seem to be having at least once a week but the bottom line is, open ended free flowing discussions don't work on the platform, and unfortunately we have to close them.

Feel free to bring up any issues you have with Programmers on Meta, especially when it's about closed questions. Sometimes all it takes is a small edit to make the question a bit more focused for it to be re-opened...

yrizoson Stuck due to “knowing too much”

I don't think you really now what Programmers is about ;) "What kind of fabric is best for covering programmers' chairs?" would be closed in seconds...

yrizoson Dear StackExchange: Thank You

Nah, they don't like discussions there either... Check out the FAQ: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq