Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. Stack Overflow is the flagship site of the Stack Exchange Network, created in 2008 by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky as a more open alternative to earlier Q&A sites such as Experts Exchange. The name for the website was chosen by voting in April 2008 by readers of Coding Horror, Atwood's popular programming blog.
It features questions and answers on a wide range of topics in computer programming. The website serves as a platform for users to ask and answer questions, and, through membership and active participation, to vote questions and answers up or down and edit questions and answers in a fashion similar to a wiki or digg. Users of Stack Overflow can earn reputation points and "badges"; for example, a person is awarded 10 reputation points for receiving an "up" vote on an answer given to a question, and can receive badges for their valued contributions, which represents a kind of gamification of the traditional Q&A site or forum. All user-generated content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribute-ShareAlike license.
As of April 2014, Stack Overflow has over 2,700,000 registered users and more than 7,100,000 questions.
