StackOverflow is a popular community that was launched by two famous programmers: Joel Spolsky (of Joel on Software fame) and Jeff Atwood (of Coding Horror fame). The aim of this site is to provide a fun environment in which to discuss programming subjects and ask coding and software engineering questions.
With endorsements from star programmers and its unique user interface (UI), this site is very community oriented and aimed at highlighting the best answers and questions through a voting system. As such it has quickly become the number one programming forum, overshadowing the dreaded – and much shadier – Experts-Exchange.
However, what not everyone may know is that Joel and Jeff have made the platform available to others for a non-negligible monthly fee, at StackExchange. Over the course of the last few months several communities have grown out of this service, some more successfully than others.
The most successful of these sites is called MathOverflow. It currently has the largest number of active participants and voters on its posts. The site offers the same UI as StackOverflow, but adds in support for LaTeX formulas. Here at Math-Blog.com we feel it’s important to promote such nice initiatives.
From the look of things (such as the existing questions and answers), it’s clear that there is some serious mathematics going on at the site. If you’re looking for interesting discussions on topics at a graduate/research level, head over to MathOverflow – you won’t be disappointed. However, please keep in mind that the aim of the site is to target those with an interest in advanced math. If you’re seeking a more basic (read undergraduate) level of math assistance, you should probably look elsewhere.
That said, what are some the other graduate level forums and mailing lists that you find useful when it comes to your mathematical research? One of my favorites is the Number Theory List.
PS: I hope you like our new look. Be sure to drop by Math Blog this coming Monday, as we’ll be publishing a really interesting post that I’m sure you’ll love. In order not to miss it, you can also grab our feed.
I agree it’s a great place. I use to check blogs about math regularly, and usually you find either blogs about math education, or blogs that are too technical (where researchers discuss mainly with other experts), but Mathoverflow is great because it has something for everyone