34
votes
What is this "Software Engineering" site you speak of, and what kinds of questions can I ask there?
Why is "Programmers" changing to "Software Engineering?"
Because the name "Programmers" invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software ...
- 199k
10
votes
Are Career-Advice Questions On-Topic Here?
No.
Software Engineering is a site for asking questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or writing specific code).
Questions seeking career or ...
- 199k
9
votes
How do I ask a "Best Practices" question?
Questions that merely ask "What is the best way to do something" are not answerable. Because there are always several ways to solve a problem in computing, there is no "best" way; there is only the ...
- 199k
8
votes
What kinds of questions should I avoid asking here?
Upon skimming your headers to see if they would apply to my questions, my first instinct was to think wait some of those are actually on-topic! until I read your detailed notes. Perhaps we could ...
- 24k
6
votes
How do I recommend posting on another Stack Exchange site?
The general guidance is simple: don't. Never recommend to another user that they should take their question somewhere else.
Never use a comment to suggest other sites - it simply leads to cross-...
Thomas OwensMod
- 79.9k
5
votes
First-time user suggestion for improved on-topic clarity
I agree with your sentiment.
Frankly I think we are far too quick to close questions on technicalities. When a generous interpretation could be on topic.
For example, you could read your question ...
- 71k
4
votes
How do I ask a "Best Practices" question?
A best practice is not a silver bullet.
"Doing X is the best way to get Y in situation Z" is how most respectable best practices read to me. Usually followed with a hedge: "Well it's better than W ...
- 103k
2
votes
How do I ask a "Best Practices" question?
How do I ask a “Best Practices” question?
Best Practice can be defined as a method or process that is generally recognized to get better results.
Examples that occur to me might be:
In Python, ...
- 5,915
1
vote
First-time user suggestion for improved on-topic clarity
I've reviewed your post and the comments here.
I'm going to reopen the post, with some minor edits that help get at things that we can answer. We can't answer the question in the title, since we can'...
Thomas OwensMod
- 79.9k
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