Stack Overflow Launches Documentation Beta to Solve One of Developers' Biggest Headaches

NEW YORK, July 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Stack Overflow, the world's largest online community for programmers, launched Documentation — a new product aimed at solving one of the industry's most frustrating pain points. 

According to the 2016 Annual Developer Survey, poor documentation ranked as one of the biggest challenges facing developers in their day-to-day jobs. Stack Overflow Documentation will complement and improve existing technical documentation by turning instruction manuals into living resources that developers can update in real time with new use cases, implementations and integrations.

"Just like we did with Q&A, the goal of Documentation is to solve real-world developer problems," said Jay Hanlon, Stack Overflow VP of Community Products. "By harnessing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world, we can create something more useful than any individual or team could on their own."

Unlike existing documentation solutions, which often provide few, if any, examples, Stack Overflow Documentation will collect examples for every use case — even ones that companies haven't thought of yet.

By providing more than standard technical definitions, Documentation will give developers the right information in the context of relevant examples, and companies like Microsoft, PayPal, Twilio, Meteor, Xamarin, PubNub, Dropbox and Twitch are joining Stack Overflow as partners to help promote the beta launch and extend their own documentation resources.

"In addition to providing a great resource for our developer community, Stack Overflow Documentation is going to help us refine our products by providing deeper insights into how devs are using our Data Stream Network," said Wendy Schott, CMO at PubNub. "We're excited to discover which specific examples and solutions gain traction in the Stack Overflow community to identify new use cases for our real-time APIs."

Documentation also provides developers on Stack Overflow with a new way to engage and contribute to the community by creating a whole new world of questions, solutions and examples waiting for contributors.

"I've always been inspired by developers' instinct to share their hard-earned knowledge with their peers," added Kevin Whinnery, Twilio Developer Education Manager. "Stack Overflow Documentation will make it easier for developers to act on that instinct and contribute their knowledge back to the projects and communities they care about, beyond our core documentation."

Developers can log in and head to http://stackoverflow.com/tour/documentation to get started.

About Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge and advance their careers. More than 40 million professional and aspiring programmers visit Stack Overflow each month to help solve coding problems, develop new skills and find job opportunities.

Founded in 2008, Stack Overflow partners with brands and employers to help them understand, reach and attract the world's developers. For more information, visit business.stackoverflow.com.

SOURCE Stack Overflow

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