HN Explorer

Ask HN: What Alternative to StackOverflow?

28 points by kuon ↗ HN
This question has been brought a few times before on HN, but I have found a satisfying answer yet.

What community do you recommend to post "complicated questions"?

For example, I just posted that:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63399940/how-to-tell-ssh-to-setuid-after-pam-and-not-before-to-remap-users

and I am being told this is not "SO material".

All my latest SO questions have been in the same "vein", more architecture and design questions than strictly code question.

I'd like a friendly community that can share experience and have healthy debates over tricky questions.

22 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 60.6 ms ] thread
sgillen
I mean to be fair the user telling you the question is not SO material offered you two alternative communities to post the question in. Is there something lacking in those communities?

In general I’ve found there are specific discord/slack/whatever servers that are more open to discussion, I don’t have one for networking stuff though.

kuon
Yeah I realize my question might not be SO material, but it's also hard to put on another stack exchange site. Because the question has multiple parts, some about linux internals, some about programming, some about security…

That's what is hard, with experience I've come to have to resolve harder problems, but they are not harder because they require more skills, they are harder because they are 50 ways to approach them.

Finding WHAT I need to code has become my problem was more than HOW.

I'd like a community that can share those concerns.

potta_coffee
I've had good luck with language / tech specific IRC and Slack channels. Your mileage may vary.
fiftyacorn
Blogs or GitHub. If i can't find the soln then i can normally find the code or unit tests and solve problems from there
Lordarminius
I have had success on reddit and slack and discord.
scott31
https://www.experts-exchange.com/
maps7
For just 29,99 EUR per month
Something1234
How is this site not a scam? Like experts aren't paid and everyone pays for access. How did it even get traction?
davewasthere
This was probably _the_ QA site for development/IT questions prior to SO. It used to be completely open and I really enjoyed helping out answering questions on the site. It felt like a focussed newsgroup that was super accessible.

But then they got scammy with hiding answers to users (but allowing googlebot to index) and paywalling... and that's why when Joel announced he was working on SO, I was super keen. Was one of the first few hundred users and it was exactly the anti-EE stance that appealed.

Fuck ExpertSexChange and the horse they rode in on.

EDIT: Jeff, rather... I followed both Joel and Jeff at the time, but think it was Jeff's posts that hooked me. https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/

wingerlang
I think it might have been a joke. If I’m not wrong experts exchange was the go to site before SO because the replacement. So giving SE as the answer as an alternative is kind of funny. Maybe I’m killing the joke but hey.
austinjp
Curious, so piggy backing to ask: does anyone use Spectrum in this way with success? I've looked around some communities out of curiosity but not yet engaged much.

I actually had a brief conversation on an open Telegram group about a software issue recently, and the developer replied within seconds. I suspect that Telegram isn't commonly used in this way, though.

GrantZvolsky
If you can't find the answer with a search engine and your question is too specific for a Q&A site, dive into the source code.
non-entity
that works unless the source is proprietary and non-accesible :(
plasma
I think the commenter to your question on SO is suggesting you use one of the other SO "sites" to post under, specifically https://unix.stackexchange.com/ or https://superuser.com/ which are different categories of questions.
jolmg
I'm not sure those sites are correct either, since it is a programming question, after all. Those other sites mainly focus on software usage and configuration.
rozenmd
I've found value in individual subreddits - like /r/reactjs for React questions. Common questions still get answered, unlike on SO.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
thorin
I guess the main alternatives are:

1. Working it out for yourself

2. Reading a book

3. Asking a friend

[EDIT] I'm not really joking, I started programming in the 80s as a kid reading stuff like this as the only book

http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/VIC-20%20User's...

Then when I started working mid-90s there were cases and cases of books about Oracle products, Reporting tools, Unix, Windows, and C and Visual Basic programming all around the office! Getting to know the people that could answer questions in real life or on the phone became pretty useful!

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
peter_d_sherman
If you're a programmer, you could download the source code to ssh, then modify and recompile it to implement the functionality you desire.

If you aren't, there are many places on the web where you can hire a programmer who can do that for you, most notably Elance, Freelancer, Guru, Upwork, and vWorker -- but there are others as well.

Also, see this post if you want to host your own StackOverflow-like Q&A site:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/are-there-any-...

Also, see this other post:

"Ask HN: We need a better alternative for Q/A than stackoverflow"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21347079

Anyway, wishing you luck in your endeavors!