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What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?

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Woohoo, 42 upvotes! – JavaAndCSharp Jul 15 '11 at 18:57

migrated from programmers.stackexchange.com Sep 10 '10 at 17:15

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From Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com:

In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues.

Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have actual source code in the questions or answers. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.

Additional Resources:

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The top paragraph in that quote should go right at the top of the FAQ. – cdeszaq Feb 10 '12 at 17:51
@cdeszaq I agree. Perhaps you should make a meta post suggesting that – Rachel Feb 10 '12 at 18:21
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Both stackoverflow.com/faq and programmers.stackexchange.com/faq list "algorithms" as appropriate topics. It's also unclear why "programming tools" falls under SO instead of programmers.se. – jamesdlin Apr 28 '12 at 1:09
@jamesdlin You need to consider the blockquoted paragraph when deciding where to ask questions, not just the bullet-point list: if you're asking about your code, ask on Stack Overflow. If you're asking something conceptual about algorithms, ask here. Most questions about programming tools aren't conceptual, which is why they're on-topic on Stack Overflow. The few that are tend to be recommendation questions which are off-topic here. – user8 Apr 28 '12 at 1:12
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So a question such as "Is there a tool that does X?" would be off-topic both on SO and here? :( – jamesdlin Apr 28 '12 at 12:44
@jamesdlin As worded, it's definitely off-topic here and probably won't do well on Stack Overflow. Instead, ask "How can I do X?" on Stack Overflow. If the answer is "use X tool", so be it. – user8 Apr 28 '12 at 20:03

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