Overflowing Stacks

I tinkered with Stack Overflow a while back.  I was a pretty avid reader of Joel on Software and of course I had to check out anything Joel was up to.  At the time it seemed interesting, but coding wasn't my day-to-day so it was more of a resource now and again than anything.  Since I've been getting back into development once again I've been dipping my toe back in the water.  I started by asking a few more questions based on things that I've been pondering at work and not had much lucking working out on my own.

Recently I was looking for a lightweight library for linked list and queue management since I've noticed that the RI seems to be lacking any such common implementation.  And in embedded systems not using a common data structure implementation seems to be the norm.  Previously we just built our own implementation.  But back then I pretty much just did what I was told to do.  Nowadays I tend to want to poke my head up and look around before I go a head and build something like that myself.   Less than 24 hours later I've got 2 different ideas for open libraries or at least small implementations of those basic data structures that may work quite well in the RI.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to clone the massive SVN repository with all of its bloat, but that's probably a whole other post.

What I'm finding interesting though is just how quickly I feel myself getting sucked into the whole mechanic of reputation, awards, badges essentially amounting to a form of personal status or street cred.  I'm patrolling the un answered questions looking for a place where I think I can add value.  I'm checking back in with the site just to see if my questions have been voted up or not.  I'm actually mildly pleased with myself when I get that feedback that someone else felt I'd asked a good question.  I'm eagerly awaiting the moment when I get my answer voted up by someone or get a checkmark from the question asker.  They really are onto something here.




And now I'm even proudly posting my "flare" on my blog for all to see.  As long as they don't implement some form of ganking I can see myself working to improve my rep with the Stack Overflow clan.  Oh look I've gained a new privilege.  Sweet.