Searchin' It Old School

In recent months I've grown increasingly distant for fielding any kind of random questions I may have rattling around in my head to Stackoverflow and instead electing to hit up the good ole trusty channels of IRC. Don't get me wrong, I still feel Stackoverflow is the best forum resource we have on the web and revolutionized how to organize and index the best programming intel. In my personal top 10 for best web layouts .... ever.

My gripe really lies in the degree of importance centered around the reputation system and more so the silly squabbles it creates for points. Since I rarely post there, if ever, its more of what I observe whenever I scan around. Its to the point where I've actually seen people tout their Stack rep on their resume or LinkedIn profile. I don't necessarily find anything wrong with that but it has caused the level of formality that goes into jumping in on a thread to be a bit much and god forbid suffer the dreaded down vote.

Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes its kind of nice to interact with people in a way that doesn't seem so mercenary like and are just willing to help the greater good. That is where IRC comes in. I've recently taken an interest in learning up on Backbone.js outside of work and because of its relative infancy, I have frequented its development crew's channel (#documentcloud on freenode.net) and to field/answer questions. Its a nice change of pace to say the least and I find myself hopping into a number of other channels on other topics (#jquery, ##csharp, etc.). In the real world, how often do we meticulously plan a question to our peers? Yea, we do our due diligence before bugging others but you don't need to fuss about how well groomed your question/answer is. Sometimes you don't even really know the question and are just in the ball park and need to talk through it so maybe you then you know what to hit the Stack for.

So yea, a quick thought for anyone who has forgotten Internet Relay Chat and looking for an alternative to the SO. Something I've BGC'd with Travis quite a bit on and figured it was time to put some ink to it.

"and then I put on my robe and wizard hat...."