Kinda a big announcement

The other day I was talking to a young developer working on a code base with tons of COM code, and I told him that even before he was born, everyone knew that COM was already so deeply obsolete that it was impossible to find anyone who knew enough to work on it.

有一天，我正在与一位年轻的开发人员交谈，该开发人员正在处理包含大量 COM 代码的代码库，我告诉他，即使在他出生之前，每个人都知道 COM 已经过时了，以至于不可能找到任何了解足够知识的人来处理它。

And yet they still have this old COM code base, and they still have one old programmer holding onto their job by being the only human left on the planet with a brain big enough to manually manage multithreaded objects.

然而，他们仍然拥有这个旧的 COM 代码库，并且仍然有一位老程序员保住了自己的工作，因为他是地球上唯一拥有足够大的大脑来手动管理多线程对象的人。

I remember that COM was like Gödels Theorem: it seemed important, and you could understand it all long enough to pass an exam, but ultimately it is mostly just a demonstration of how far human intelligence can be made to stretch under extreme duress.

我记得 COM 就像哥德尔定理：它看起来很重要，你可以理解它足够长的时间来通过考试，但最终它主要只是证明人类智力在极端胁迫下可以发挥多大程度。

And, bubbeleh , if there is one thing we have learned, it’s that the things that make it easier on your brain are the things that matter.

而且，bubbeleh，如果我们学到了一件事，那就是那些让你的大脑更轻松的事情才是重要的。

Since I learned to code forty years ago, one thing that has mostly, mostly , changed about programming is that most developers no longer have to manage their own memory.

自从四十年前我学会编码以来，编程方面发生的最大、最大的变化是，大多数开发人员不再需要管理自己的内存。

Even getting that going took a long long time.

即使实现这一点也花了很长很长的时间。

I took a few stupid years trying to be the CEO of a growing company during which I didn’t have time to code, and when I came back to web programming, after a break of about 10 years, I found Node, React, and other goodies, which are, don’t get me wrong, amazing?

我花了几年愚蠢的时间试图成为一家成长型公司的首席执行官，在此期间我没有时间编写代码，当我在中断大约 10 年之后回到 Web 编程时，我发现了 Node、React 和其他好东西，别误会我的意思，这些东西太神奇了？

Really really great?

真的真的很棒吗？

But I also found that it took approximately the same amount of work to make a CRUD web app as it always has, and that there were some things (like handing a file upload, or centering) that were, shockingly, still just as randomly difficult as they were in VBScript twenty years ago.

但我还发现，制作一个 CRUD Web 应用程序所需的工作量与以往相同，而且令人震惊的是，有些事情（例如处理文件上传或居中）仍然像二十年前在 VBScript 中一样随机困难。

Where are the flying cars?

飞行汽车在哪里？

The biggest problem is that developers of programming tools love to add things and hate to take things away.

最大的问题是编程工具的开发人员喜欢添加东西而讨厌删除东西。

So things get harder and harder and more and more complex because there are more and more ways to do the same thing, each has pros and cons, and you are likely to spend as much time just figuring out which “rich text editor” to use as you are to implement it.

因此，事情变得越来越困难、越来越复杂，因为做同样的事情的方法越来越多，每种方法都有优点和缺点，而且你可能会花费与实现它一样多的时间来弄清楚使用哪种“富文本编辑器”。

(Bill Gates, 1990: “How many f*cking programmers in this company are working on rich text editors?!”)

（比尔·盖茨，1990 年：“这家公司有多少该死的程序员在开发富文本编辑器？！”）

So, in this world of slow, gradual change and alleged improvement, one thing did change literally overnight, or, to be precise, on September 15, 2008, which was when Stack Overflow launched .

因此，在这个缓慢、渐进的变化和所谓的改进的世界里，一件事确实在一夜之间发生了变化，或者更准确地说，是在 2008 年 9 月 15 日，也就是 Stack Overflow 推出的时候。

Six-to-eight weeks before that, Stack Overflow was only an idea.

在此之前的六到八周，Stack Overflow 只是一个想法。

(*Actually Jeff started development in April).

（*实际上 Jeff 在四月份就开始开发了）。

Six-to-eight weeks after that, it was a standard part of every developer’s toolkit: something they used every day.

六到八周后，它成为每个开发人员工具包的标准部分：他们每天都使用的东西。

Something had changed about programming, and changed very fast: the way developers learned and got help and taught each other.

编程方面发生了一些变化，而且变化得非常快：开发人员学习、获得帮助以及互相教导的方式。

For many years, I was able to coast by telling delightful little stories about our incredible growth numbers, about the pay web site we made obsolete, and even about that one time when a Major Computer Book Publisher threatened to BURY US and launched their own Q&A platform, which turned out to be more of a Scoff Generator than a Q&A platform, but actually now almost anyone I talk to is too young to imagine The Days Before Stack Overflow, when the bookstore had an entire wall of Java and the way you picked a Rich Text Editor was going to Barnes and Noble and browsing through printed books for an hour, in the Rich Text Editor Component shelf.

多年来，我一直能够轻松地讲述一些令人愉快的小故事，关于我们令人难以置信的增长数字，关于我们已经过时的付费网站，甚至还有一次，当一家主要的计算机图书出版商威胁要埋葬我们并推出他们自己的问答平台时，结果更像是一个 Scoff Generator，而不是问答平台，但实际上，现在几乎所有与我交谈过的人都太年轻了，无法想象 Stack Overflow 之前的日子，当时书店有一整面 Java 墙，以及你选择的方式。富文本编辑器要去 Barnes and Noble 并在富文本编辑器组件书架上浏览印刷书籍一个小时。

Stack Overflow got to be pretty big as a business.

Stack Overflow 作为一家企业必须相当大。

The company grew faster than any individual’s skills at managing companies, especially mine, so a lot of the business team has changed over, and we now have a really world-class, experienced team that is doing much better than us founders.

公司的发展速度比任何个人管理公司的能力都要快，尤其是我的，所以很多业务团队都发生了变化，我们现在拥有一支真正世界级的、经验丰富的团队，他们的表现比我们创始人要好得多。

We’ve done incredible work building a recruiting platform for great developers, a “reach and relevance” platform for getting developers excited about your products, and, most importantly, Stack Overflow for Teams , which is growing so quickly that soon every developer in the world will be using the power of Stack Overflow to get help with their own code base, not just common languages and libraries.

我们做了令人难以置信的工作，为优秀的开发人员构建了一个招聘平台，一个让开发人员对您的产品感到兴奋的“影响力和相关性”平台，最重要的是，Stack Overflow for Teams，它的发展如此之快，很快世界上的每个开发人员都将利用 Stack Overflow 的力量来获得有关他们自己的代码库的帮助，而不仅仅是通用语言和库。

And yeah, the one thing I made sure of was that everyone that came into the company understood exactly why Stack Overflow works, and what is important to the developers that it is by and for.

是的，我确信的一件事是，进入公司的每个人都清楚地理解 Stack Overflow 为何有效，以及它的存在对开发人员来说重要的是什么。

So while we haven’t always been perfect, we have kept true to our mission, and the current leadership is just as committed to the vision of Stack Overflow as the founders are.

因此，虽然我们并不总是完美的，但我们一直忠于我们的使命，并且现任领导层与创始人一样致力于 Stack Overflow 的愿景。

Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus .

今天，我们很高兴地宣布 Stack Overflow 即将加入 Prosus。

Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices.

Prosus 是一家投资和控股公司，这意味着本公告中最重要的部分是 Stack Overflow 将继续独立运营，并由与运营它完全相同的团队、按照完全相同的计划和完全相同的业务实践进行运营。

Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”.

不要期望看到重大变化或尴尬的“协同效应”。

The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams.

Stack Overflow 的业务将继续专注于 Reach and Relevance 以及 Stack Overflow for Teams。

The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.

整个公司保持不变：我们现在只是拥有不同的所有者。

This is, in some ways, the best possible outcome.

从某些方面来说，这是最好的结果。

Stack Overflow stays independent.

Stack Overflow 保持独立。

The company has plenty of cash on hand to expand and deliver more features and fix the old broken ones.

该公司手头有大量现金来扩展和提供更多功能并修复旧的损坏的功能。

Right now, the biggest gating factor to how fast we can do this is just how fast we can hire excellent people .

目前，我们能多快做到这一点的最大限制因素就是我们能多快雇用优秀人才。

I’ve been out of the day-to-day for a while now.

我已经脱离日常工作有一段时间了。

Together with Dei Vilkinsons, I’m helping to build HASH .

我正在与 Dei Vilkinsons 一起帮助构建 HASH 。

HASH makes it easy to build powerful simulations and make better decisions.

HASH 可以轻松构建强大的模拟并做出更好的决策。

As we worked on that, we discovered that too much of the data that you might need to run simulations needs to be fixed up before you can use it.

当我们致力于此时，我们发现运行模拟可能需要的太多数据需要先修复才能使用。

That’s because data is often published on the web, using page description languages that are more concerned with formatting and consumption by humans.

这是因为数据通常在网络上发布，使用更关心人类格式化和使用的页面描述语言。

They lack the structure to make the data they contain readily accessed programatically, so step one is miserable screen scraping and data cleanup.

它们缺乏使所包含的数据易于以编程方式访问的结构，因此第一步是痛苦的屏幕抓取和数据清理。

That’s where a lot of people give up.

这就是很多人放弃的地方。

We think we have an interesting way to fix this.

我们认为我们有一个有趣的方法来解决这个问题。

If it works, we’ll change the web as quickly and completely as Stack Overflow changed programming.

如果它有效，我们将像 Stack Overflow 改变编程一样快速而彻底地改变网络。

But it’s kind of ambitious and maybe a little too GRAND.

但这有点雄心勃勃，也许有点太宏大了。

If you are interested in joining that crazy journey, do reach out.

如果您有兴趣加入这个疯狂的旅程，请联系我们。

The whole thing is going to be open source, so just hang on, and we’ll have something up on GitHub for you to play with.

整个事情将是开源的，所以请坚持下去，我们将在 GitHub 上提供一些东西供您使用。