I spend most of the time that I’m waiting for things to happen (compiles, application start ups, etc) reading and answering questions on StackOverflow, the best site for programming related questions bar none. One of the things that makes StackOverflow so good is their “reputation” system (although I keep calling it “XP” just to see if anybody will start copying me). You get XP when other users vote up your questions or answers, and when you “level up” to certain levels you are trusted to do various book-keeping tasks on the site like editing other people’s posts or closing them. There are also various badges you can get (or “Achievements” ) when you accomplish various things like getting a certain amount of up-votes on an answer. It’s a great system, and I don’t just say that because I am in the top 15 for XP. But one of the things they do is limit the amount of XP you can get in a single day. And overnight, some of my older answers got a whole bunch of up-votes, so I started off the day with nearly my limit, and I’ve now hit my limit for the day. Which means that for the rest of the day, I’ll be answering questions out of the goodness of my heart (and a design to show-off) rather than for XP.
This also means that I might have to actually be productive at work today. Sigh.
I’ll second your vote for “best site for programming related questions”. I’ve asked several questions and have gotten answers back faster than if I got up and went down stairs to ask our “guru”; seriously, it’s that good!
I noticed you’re nearing 10,000 rep. Yours is bigger than mine.
I’m feeling pretty special: Jeff and Joel played my recorded question on the StackOverflow podcast and talked about it. (I’m the guy who asked to what extent developers should be exposed to customers.)
So that’s what you sound like! Good question.