Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Meta

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Discussions and feedback about the site itself in Q&A format.

Filters (None)
80%
+6 −0
Is software system design on topic here?

Is software system design on topic for the software development site? For what I mean by system design, consider the "system design interview" commonly held these days when recruiting software eng...

1 answer  ·  posted 15d ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 14d ago by Lundin‭

36%
+2 −5
Don't close questions for lack of detail/confusion

tl;dr: When a question is unclear, don't close right away, especially if it's possible to discern what they are trying to ask. Instead, use comments and edit suggestions to work with the asker and ...

2 answers  ·  posted 15d ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 10d ago by Karl Knechtel‭

60%
+1 −0
Issue with the Monospace font [duplicate]

I was trying to ask a code review question but I have observed that it does not support the "Monospace font" for code excerpts properly. It is only considered partially and I see this particularly ...

1 answer  ·  posted 17d ago by aditya98‭  ·  closed as duplicate 9d ago by Alexei‭

75%
+7 −1
Email alerts for notifications

How can I get an email when I get a notification on Codidact? I missed an answer because I thought I would get an email for it.

2 answers  ·  posted 1mo ago by LyndonGingerich‭  ·  last activity 17d ago by Olin Lathrop‭

71%
+3 −0
Allow tagging answers with tools and version numbers

TL;DR If we allow answers to be tagged with technologies and version numbers, people can more easily check if an answer is applicable to their technology stack. A few days ago, I had a problem in ...

1 answer  ·  posted 4mo ago by FractionalRadix‭  ·  last activity 4mo ago by Monica Cellio‭

50%
+1 −1
The way I tried to mark up code did not work. What is the right way to do it?

The way I tried to mark up code did not work. What is the right way to do it? The line break after the first signal is ignored. Some languages use a hash as a comment. Here, it bolds the line, ac...

1 answer  ·  posted 4mo ago by TecBrat‭  ·  last activity 4mo ago by TecBrat‭

33%
+1 −4
Suggested special feature: Clinic/case study

We have special features/sections on Codidact, so maybe this is a nice use for them. What if we had a section named something like "clinic" or "case study" or "debugging"? (name suggestions welcom...

0 answers  ·  posted 6mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 6mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

66%
+2 −0
Handling common wrong approaches and misguided motivations for basic technique questions

Background This is inspired to some extent by https://software.codidact.com/posts/289597 . I'm trying to provide a large amount of content (gradually!) that novices (mainly to Python) will find u...

1 answer  ·  posted 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Lundin‭

71%
+3 −0
Are questions about (abstract) algorithms and datastructures considered on-topic?

I just noticed this question about data structures in the Q&A. Although algorithms and data structures are often (part of) a solution to a problem when writing software, this question is const...

1 answer  ·  posted 7mo ago by mr Tsjolder‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

77%
+5 −0
What categories could we benefit from having?

So far, existing Meta discussion seems to have at least hinted at the possibility of using separate categories here: To shuffle closed questions out of the way (globally for Codidact) (also) Fo...

1 answer  ·  posted 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Lundin‭

75%
+4 −0
Should self-answered Q&A use separate answers for different techniques/approaches (even if there's a caveat that applies overall)?

Looking back at my own Q&A How can I build a string from smaller pieces?, the answer is incredibly long. I'm essentially showing five different ways to solve the problem - because they all exis...

2 answers  ·  posted 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Lundin‭

80%
+6 −0
How should I organize material about text encoding in Python into questions?

I want to write one or more self-answered Q&As on the topic of text encoding in Python, to serve as canonicals and preempt future lower-quality questions. I can think of the following things th...

3 answers  ·  posted 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

75%
+4 −0
Tag creation/deletion criteria for Software Development?

Ok so we have fairly lax tagging rules here, as do most Codidact sites. Recently the Electrical Engineering community has started a clean-up of strange and off-topic tags. I wrote this over there: ...

1 answer  ·  posted 7mo ago by Lundin‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Alexei‭

84%
+9 −0
On self-answered questions, is it inappropriate to mark my own answer "Works for me" immediately?

Would it discourage others from posting answers, if they saw that a question had an answer with a "works for me" indication applied immediately? (More so than just seeing an immediate, comprehensiv...

3 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

71%
+3 −0
How can Q&A sites coexist with LLMs?

New LLMs like ChatGPT are now creating competition with Q&A sites like Codidact and StackOverflow. Moreover, this is parasitic: LLMs get "boosted" by Q&A sites because they can use them for...

1 answer  ·  posted 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

75%
+10 −2
Should we disallow ChatGPT-User crawler (and others) from scraping Software Codidact?

Stack Overflow has recently announced OverflowAI and I think this video summarises pretty well this. The main drawback is that the users are less incentivized to put effort into answering questions...

2 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by Alexei‭  ·  last activity 8mo ago by mr Tsjolder‭

88%
+13 −0
To transfer, or not to, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler to let it stay or to take arms against Stack Overflow's dominance of FAQ canonicals

Some of you may know me from Stack Overflow or the broader network. In light of recent actions by the company, I finally decided to move over to Codidact. I am a subject matter expert on Google App...

5 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by Oleg Valter‭  ·  last activity 8mo ago by Lundin‭

75%
+4 −0
Are AI prompt engineering questions on topic?

Recently, AI models like ChatGPT have shown themselves capable of generating content and even source code. Just like with human helpers, clear and precise communication is key (especially when aski...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by manassehkatz‭

75%
+4 −0
Self answered questions about an unclear quickstart

I had problems following the directions of a Google Apps Script API quickstart. I think that the quickstart instructions and code is incomplete. After a while, I finally realized that there was mis...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by Wicket‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by Alexei‭

83%
+8 −0
Should posting on Meta affect reputation?

When we launched this community, we did not yet have the ability to set different reputation grants for different categories. We've had this for a while but we failed to follow up before now, sorr...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  edited 4mo ago by Monica Cellio‭

75%
+4 −0
Best practices for posting tabular data

I am trying to find how tabular data is presented in Software Development. So far, I have found one question, How to pivot text?. The question presents tabular data using code blocks, dash to indic...

3 answers  ·  posted 9mo ago by Wicket‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by Wicket‭

71%
+3 −0
Spreadsheets apps as end user development tool / spreadsheet formulas as a form of funtional programming

I have found Can we migrate office suite related questions to the Power Users community?, apparently, with a score of +7, 3 answers, but it looks like no decision have made so far. Despite not hav...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by Wicket‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by LAFK‭

75%
+4 −0
Merge [functions] with [function]

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm new here and looking around. I suggest to "merge" functions with function. I don't know how exactly this should be done here. I think the word's singular for...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by Wicket‭  ·  edited 9mo ago by ArtOfCode‭

60%
+1 −0
Merge spreadsheet formula tags into single tag

Codidact's Software Development has multiple tags for spreadsheet formulas: excel-formula libreoffice-calc-formula openoffice-calc-formula sheets-formula It has formula with the tag usage ...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by Wicket‭  ·  edited 9mo ago by Wicket‭

71%
+3 −0
Why `excel` is set as a child tag of `openoffice-calc`?

I joined Codidact a few days ago. I have looked around to learn the platform features and how things are handled in some communities. I just found that excel is a child tag of openoffice-calc. I ...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by Wicket‭  ·  edited 9mo ago by ArtOfCode‭

77%
+5 −0
Should I delete my trivial, lack-of-research question?

I asked this trivial question recently: DocuSign eSignature API SDK: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError errors. It turns out, my problem was because I did not do enough research before asking a quest...

3 answers  ·  posted 10mo ago by Vanity Slug ❤️‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by Wicket‭

75%
+4 −0
How are software recommendations handled?

How are software recommendations handled on https://software.codidact.com/ ? https://outdoors.codidact.com/ has a "gear recommendations" section, so it seems like Codidact is open to the idea. I s...

1 answer  ·  posted 10mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 10mo ago by Lundin‭

77%
+5 −0
Server error 500 when clicking on suggested edit details

I get an error page with server error 500 when clicking the link to view my suggested edit activity on my activity page. The suggested edit has the status helpful. Error ID 6ca4f8c8-4a0d-425d-8e09...

0 answers  ·  posted 10mo ago by riQQ‭  ·  edited 10mo ago by Monica Cellio‭

77%
+5 −0
Should we allow SEO related questions?

We have recently received a search engine optimization (SEO) question. Our scope currently does not explicitly include or exclude such questions, so I thought we should clarify this. Possible opt...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Alexei‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Peter Taylor‭

75%
+4 −0
Deciding if a concept can be materialized to a tag

Note: this is inspired by the comments on this post and especially this one which mentions: We have tags for languages because people have interest or expertise in languages; likewise frameworks...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Alexei‭  ·  edited 1y ago by trichoplax‭

75%
+4 −0
interface and interface-type tags

My most recent question was tagged with interface-type. I had seen the interface tag when I was creating the question, but the usage information says Please avoid using this tag, as it is too g...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Moshi‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Alexei‭

37%
+1 −3
Closed Question Too Generic, Reason Unhelpful

The reason for closing the question as too generic was that it contained multiple questions, had many possible indistinguishable correct answers, or required extraordinarily long answers. However,...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by ShadowsRanger‭  ·  edited 1y ago by ShadowsRanger‭

75%
+4 −0
Can I repost here the answers to questions I get answered elsewhere?

I've thought that since I sometimes ask questions on chats and they are like black holes for information, whenever I get an answer I should post the question and answer here so that other people ha...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by ShadowsRanger‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by trichoplax‭

90%
+17 −0
Should we allow answers generated by ChatGPT?

We got our first (mostly) ChatGPT answer in our community. Also, a question includes an adapted ChatGPT code that does not seem to do the job. StackOverflow has already banned ChatGPT answers and ...

9 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Alexei‭  ·  last activity 10mo ago by Monica Cellio‭

50%
+1 −1
How can I get a ChatGPT answer checked?

I'm using ChatGPT to answer some questions I don't find answers for online. But there are some answers that I don't know if they are actually correct. How can I get the answer checked by someone he...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by filosoful‭

81%
+7 −0
Are questions about language design on-topic?

I was chatting with somebody who's involved with a proposal on SE for a site about language design and who is interested in other options too. Some sample questions: What are the tradeoffs b...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Lundin‭

81%
+7 −0
Should asking about book recommendations directly connected to software development be on-topic?

Context We have recently received a suggestion to allow questions about recommending books directly connected to software development. The way I see this now (pros and cons) Pros: allow more ...

7 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Alexei‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

75%
+4 −0
Participate Everywhere ability without meeting the requirements?

I noticed I have the ability Participate Everywhere even though I do not meet the requirements (Having roughly 75% of my posts to be positively received, with a minimum of 5 positively-recieved pos...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Ethan‭  ·  edited 1mo ago by meta user‭

81%
+7 −0
Asking and answering FAQ style questions

After spending my time on SO, I found that some of the FAQ style questions were VERY helpful, especially with things such as SQL injection in PHP/MySQL (for example How can I prevent SQL injection ...

3 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Can O' Spam‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭

50%
+0 −0
Renaming GNU/Linux tag to gnu

I have noticed that we have several questions tagged with GNU/Linux. I would like to rename this tag to gnu to reflect what seems to be the canonical name and also be consistent with tag naming (a...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Alexei‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Alexei‭

60%
+1 −0
Dealing with table tag

This question which is tagged with table tag. I am trying to find a better replacement for it since there are multiple types of tables such as HTML tables or data tables. The question seems to re...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Alexei‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Alexei‭

71%
+3 −0
Reaction comment doesn't appear if previous comment for retracted reaction was deleted

On this answer I just reacted with “works for me” with comment, but then retracted it because of what finally turned out to be a mistake on my end, and deleted also the comment (and thus the commen...

1 answer  ·  posted 2y ago by celtschk‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭

75%
+4 −0
The tag [caching] exists twice, shoud we blame caching?

Browsing through the list of tags I saw two with the exact same name, [caching]: One is in https://software.codidact.com/categories/38/tags/4128 and the other in https://software.codidact.co...

0 answers  ·  posted 2y ago by fedorqui‭  ·  edited 2y ago by Alexei‭

75%
+4 −0
codidact profile editing requires 30 characters but has no error message

Editing one's profile on codidact is problematic. Evidently it needs to be 30 characters or more, but there's no error message, there's just a red box around the profile post and then the save but...

1 answer  ·  posted 2y ago by daveola‭  ·  edited 7mo ago by Alexei‭

80%
+6 −0
Should I post a link to the Github repo for code reviews?

Hello. Total noob here and noob to this site. I've written a non-trivial program in Python. Code review didn't take the whole thing (400+ lines of code). Should I post a link to my Github repo ...

3 answers  ·  posted 2y ago by joe‭  ·  last activity 10mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

53%
+5 −4
Software recommendations category

Hello all, I was taking a look at proposed communities and saw the discussion about code reviews that lead to the creation of the category. In the process I remembered of Software Recommendations ...

2 answers  ·  posted 2y ago by nelson777‭  ·  last activity 2y ago by Alexei‭

71%
+3 −0
Allow question and answers textareas to be resizable

Many questions and answers on Software might involve a lot of code that typically require more width and/or height to be displayed in a way that is easy to read. Why simply not enforce resize: non...

0 answers  ·  posted 2y ago by Alexei‭  ·  edited 2y ago by Alexei‭

71%
+3 −0
Suggestions for improving the UI regarding comments

See this picture How do you answer in that thread? Hmm, there are two buttons. One says "show more". I click on that and the thread collapse. Is that "more"? Ok, so I click on the thread agai...

0 answers  ·  posted 2y ago by klutt‭

75%
+4 −0
A cleanup of "What type of questions can I ask here?"

What type of questions can I ask here? has gotten rather cluttered since we have added/removed a lot of things along the way. In particular, I think it is hard to get an idea of what's on-topic by ...

1 answer  ·  posted 2y ago by Lundin‭  ·  last activity 2y ago by klutt‭

71%
+3 −0
Should we allow questions about software quality assurance?

I would like to ask a question about the pros/cons of using a library or more generally a way of assertion of complex data models. This is more related to testing than it is to actual coding, but ...

1 answer  ·  posted 2y ago by Alexei‭  ·  last activity 2y ago by Monica Cellio‭