Stack Overflow is pretty amazing
January 8, 2010
So I was plodding along in my quest to learn Objective-C, and I ran into a compile error that I just didn’t understand. My code looked something like this:
switch(foo) {
case bar:
NSString *message = @"Hello there.";
}
which yielded a compiler error like this:
unexpected interface name 'NSString': expected expression
NSString *message = @Hello there.";
To a Java programmer, there doesn’t look to be anything wrong. But Objective-C, birthed from C, is a different beast. My first inclination was to fire up Google, and pose the first question that came to my mind:
And here were the results I was given:
The first result was the same question I was asking, with an answer on Stack Overflow!
Stack Overflow went into public beta in September of 2008 (I got the answer for this question by asking “how old is stackoverflow” on Meta Stack Overflow) — that’s not very long ago. What a game changer (not to mention a time saver) Stack Overflow has become.
January 8, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Yep, it’s amazing how knowledgeable and helpful the people on Stack Overflow are.
January 8, 2010 at 9:47 pm
That is the main reason why I like contributing to such an awesome website. :)
January 9, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Indeed, stackoverflow is the next big thing. It’s probably the most valuable single source when nothing else could be found on the net. StackOverflow is ‘Expert Exchange’ done right.
OT: How did you create the decorations of your screenshots ? They look very polished …
January 9, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Hi Roland,
I use Keynote’s border effect and then use Grab to capture the adorned image. There is also a plugin for Acorn which will do this.
-Ken
January 10, 2010 at 6:41 pm
“StackOverflow is ‘Expert Exchange’ done right.”
I agree. Also interesting that Google gives the best result first, while Bing’s top entry is the generic Wikipedia Objective C page.
October 21, 2010 at 7:26 pm
switch (foo)
{
case 1:
{
int myvar = 1;
break;
}
}