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Proposal: Software Design and Architecture and Best Practices

How does this differ from Programmers? Nothing in the site description looks like it wouldn't fit there or on Stack Overflow.

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Programmers seems to be more about the role and position of programmers, rather than about discussions on design per-se.

As for SO, the focus seems to be on solving specific "how to problems" or debugging questions, with various languages and frameworks, such as "How do I connect a signal to a slot in QT?"; "I have this code -I want it to do X, but it doesn't - what's wrong with my code?", etc. Design and good practice seems to not to be the focus there, although sometimes they come tangentially into the discussion. I generally don't have too many "how to" questions, but I have lots of design and best practice questions. I sometimes post design oriented questions on SO that don't really get much attention.

Software Design - how to write GOOD code and design robust systems - is a separate discipline completely from the dirty details of everyday implementation. Some very important books have been dedicated to this area of development, such as "Code Complete" and the Gang of Four's "Design Patterns". It generally interests more advanced, senior level programmers who know how to do the every day tasks and have moved beyond that - it's about the "Big Picture"

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  • Why not explain, if you're bothering to downvote? If I'm wrong, I have no problem retracting the proposal.
    – Vector
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 15:56
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    (Not my down-vote but...) Programmers SE specifically includes questions about "design" within its scope. I've never been fond of the gerrymandering around what is on and off topic on Programmers, but if I had to sum it up in one byline, I would say Programmers SE is "for questions in the field of programming beyond code." Your description (design patterns, idioms, algorithms, "best practices") would seem to be a spot-on fit for that site.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 16:26
  • @RobertCartaino - Could be - to be honest, based on the questions that are posted there, I could never quite figure out what Programmers SE was supposed to be about, or how to distinguish between SO and Programmers, and so I stopped spending much time on "Programmers". "Programmers" is perhaps too broad a term - my intent with this proposal was to make the focus clear.
    – Vector
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 16:42
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    I'm not closing down your proposal summarily, but honestly, I'm not sure creating another variant on "Programmers" simply to clarify its purpose is going to be fruitful. I'd say focus your efforts on improving Programmers SE instead, but I've been down that road many many times, and I'm not all that confident of the prospects of rewriting that history.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 16:48
  • @RobertCartaino - I have no "dog in this race" other than having a site where these sorts of questions would receive appropriate attention. And many times they are not at all appropriate for SOverflow because often there is no one clearcut "solution" - it's more about discussing and weighing pro's and con's - and the questions are often not really at all related to coding per se. I propose to let it go for a week or two and see if it generates any interest - I see that since I posted it last night it has 3 followers - if it doesn't fly, so be it.
    – Vector
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 18:00
  • @RobertCartaino - If anything, perhaps such questions might best fit into the Code Review site: Post example code using one approach and ask for a review that would criticize the example in light of a different approach, etc. But that would often involve writing a good deal of working code just to create the example and post the question.
    – Vector
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 18:24

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