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Proposal: Patterns/Best Practices

I've been thinking about this for some time now. Stack Overflow is great for looking up answers to specific (mostly long tail) questions. Sometimes you find bits and pieces of what you need, and put them all together to form a good solution. There are other times where the top answers have security holes or other major issues, or simply answer the question directly without going into other things the person should consider.

While most projects/websites use the same few patterns for authentication, database connections, commenting system, etc. Developers keep recreating the wheel with every new project.

What I would love to help build is a knowledge base that's up to date, with different [patterns/best practices/full examples] to problems using the Stack Exchange system. Each solution would be up/down voted, the same as an answer is now for a question. Users could easily browse all the different patterns prior to starting their project and learn the most recommended solutions (Side benefit of preventing the same questions being asked about simple things on Stack Overflow). The same problem/question can have multiple version for different languages/platforms/technologies. For example the web authentication pattern would have a version for ASP.NET, MVC, PHP, Ruby, etc. using a Database, Active Directory, OpenID, etc.

Also just having a way to see what solutions different projects have implemented would be great. How does the login/authentication system of Stack Overflow differ from Facebook, Google, Digg, Reddit, etc? Which solution has what advantages?

I've thought about starting a site with this idea, but with a full time job and a startup that takes up the rest of my time, I don't have the capacity right now. Because this fits in well with Stack Overflow, I figured this is a good place to get the idea out there.

Is there anything that exists like this already? Does anyone else want this resource to be created?

Edit

@Warren, these examples are not what I was asking. Let me go over each one of your suggestions.

IEEE ACM Software Engineering

Focused on acadamics to ask QUESTIONS about science/research/IEE in engineering

Software Development Process

Focused on software development methods like agile, scrum, lean, etc

Software Quality Assurance Testing

Focused on testing and QA

UML

Focused on creating UML models

Code Review

Focused on posting code and having people point out errors or issues with patterns in code

Programmers

Focused on general questions about programming... not sure how this is different from StackOverflow

So once again, none of these sites have organized examples of code that follows best practices/patterns. They are not even remotely close to my suggestion, which makes me question whether you actually read or understood what I was asking.

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    Viewed 7 times, downvoted 3. This doesn't bode well. Can any of the downvoters provide some insight? Aug 3, 2011 at 20:47
  • I would love a site like this :) Jun 14, 2013 at 15:12
  • Can someone re-open this proposal? Jun 14, 2013 at 15:12

2 Answers 2

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This was tried a few times in various ways before:

I imagine the downvotes, like mine, are because this is overlaps too many other proposals (some in the beta phase).

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  • Warren, I replied to your suggestions in my original post.
    – Serge
    Aug 3, 2011 at 21:52
  • @Serge - would be better to answer in the comments, not revising your original question. Either way: yes, I did read what you asked - there are still no sample questions on the proposal. Show us what you think this should be, and then the community can decide if it should go or not. Right now, it shouldn't :)
    – warren
    Aug 4, 2011 at 0:52
  • I couldn't reply in the comments because the response was too long. I'll create some sample questions. Thanks.
    – Serge
    Aug 4, 2011 at 1:11
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I don't understand what you're proposing here. And what I do understand sounds like a combination of what already exists on Stack Overflow and Programmers combined with an ideal set of users who know exactly what they want and are able and willing to spec it out. I doubt we'll see the latter any time soon...

But, it's really pointless to discuss this. You haven't even taken the first basic steps of showing us what you want - go back to your proposal, and post some example questions. There's really no sense us sitting here discussing your idea, when you haven't bothered to lay it out yet...

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