Announcing the Stack Overflow Time Machine

Question 1

Over the years, users have told us that Stack Overflow is an indispensable tool for coders all around the world. Programmers know that when they get a Stack Overflow search result, it's likely the search is over. Following that link almost always gets a step closer to understanding whatever programming problem they face. Failing that, they can ask some of the world's most helpful and skilled developers directly. It’s hard to imagine what it was like to write code before Stack Overflow was created just over a decade ago in 2008.

If you weren't programming in the BSO (Before Stack Overflow) era, you don't know what a golden age we live in. It's not that the information wasn't available at all, but rather it was difficult to make the right connections:

In those days programmers used a variety of incantations such asAltaVista,WebCrawler,ICQ,Gopher,IRC,LISTSERV,Usenet,man and evenO'Reilly to summon answers. How many times did I come to work early in order to borrow a copy ofUNIX in a Nutshell from a possessive co-worker? (Yes, Jim, I knew you didn't have those shell commands memorized. I saw you furtively flipping through that book when you didn't think anyone was watching.) Oh how I revelled when I drove home from the university bookstore with the student edition ofBorland C++ and its glorious manuals! NowI had the knowledge!

Helping people wasn't paradise back then either. Answer once in one forum only to see the same question in another a little later. (Probably from the same asker since you could never be sure where the best place to ask was.) Compiling a FAQ might have helped people, but nobody says "I loved the FAQ! It solved my problem." Instead, they are all like "I read the FAQ, but it didn't help." Or they don't read the FAQ and just ask their frequently asked question. Nobody upvoted the FAQ.

It seems a shame that it took two decades from theinvention of the Web before a fully-featured, public Q&A engine was built. Just think of all the time (and trees) we could all have saved by having easy access tocanonical library of answers. In an effort to (retroactively) make the world a better place, we're cutting that dark time in half. We’re proud to announce a new Time Machine feature that lets you experience Stack Overflow when itshould have been around: not 2008, but 1998.

As you enjoy surfing the site, let us know in the answers below if you spot any questions thatcould have been answered in 1998 when we had:

JavaScript but not jQuery
C++ but not Boost
Ruby but not Rails
Java but not Eclipse
C but not C#
Python but not Django
Visual Studio but not .NET

And if you spot any bugs, let us know what version of Netscape Navigator you are on and we'll get our webmaster on it right away. (Sorry, but we don't yet support Communicator you trailblazers.)

Question 2

Appropriately, I got confused about the time to post this. It's been April 1 for several hours inTonga and Kiritimati (Christmas Island)

Question 3

Do you support NCSA Mosaic?

Question 4

What, no visitor counters or little image badges saying the site is best viewed in Netscape or Internet Explorer? Edit: Gah! I found the Netscape badge. Well done.

Question 5

First I thought my browser was hacked but second late it is 1. april fool

Question 6

@PikachuthePurpleWizard It’s “under construction”.

Question 7

@j08691 I’m missing the “web ring”. :-/

Question 8

i hope this wasnt your new CEOs idea

Question 9

awsome awesomeness is awesome

Question 10

"python but not django" - heaven!

Question 11

How do I get Trumpet Winsock installed again?

Question 12

Comic sans?? Anything but comic sans!

Question 13

@j08691 There's a separate visitor counter (with a Matrixy color scheme) in the upper right corner of every question page.

Question 14

Oh that Times New Roman is just... brutal.

Question 15

Maybe throw in some marching ants?

Question 16

My favourite part of the whole thing: "Proudly built in Notepad". Painfully accurate.

Question 17

1.7 MB image? Are you kidding me??!!!!!!!!!

Also, how does the date say 1919? Is that a glitch?

Question 18

I liked your Internet Explorer 6.

Question 19

@rfontoura You mean IE4, right? Unless you're coming from the future; in which case, please tell me do they have flying cars yet?

Question 20

IE6 was a huge improvement in the days...

Question 21

@AhmedAbdelhameed You thought I wouldn't notice the True Color IE6 icon in the URL bar and Quick Launch tray, didn't you! Windows 2000 + IE6 was my childhood!

Question 22

@QwertyChouskie Darn it! I was actually hesitant to add this comment and indeed hoped no one would notice since 4, 5, and 6 looked very similar. I was too lazy to find an IE4 copy for my VM and you caught me LOL! Great observation though! :D

Question 23

Weird, there shouldn't be 31 months in a year.

Question 24

Y2K is finally getting to us.

Question 25

Looked up when PNG was invented: January 10, 1996. Well I guess that passes, but not sure how popular it was.

Question 26

I believe imgur was in beta back then

Question 27

that's coz it's Best Viewed in Netscape NOW! 3.0

Question 28

@AhmedAbdelhameed in 20 years we won't have flying cars, but IE will be even slower.

Question 29

stack team Are you going to crash that kid computer with 1.7 MB image LOL

Question 30

Please don't use PNG, it was patented in 1985!

Question 31

better than the regular stackoverflow design

Question 32

@RafaelFontoura They used to say "by the year 2000", if I'm not mistaken.

Question 33

This page took half an hour to download although I have a fast 14.4kbps modem connection.

And to actually answer:this one andthis is actually entertaining

Question 34

aw the sound of dial-up...

Question 35

At least in 1998 you had the web, in 1988 you had to hope you could catch another programmer online in chat on a bbs and maybe they had some insight into the programming problem you were working on, or hope there was a forum thread available on the subject.

Question 36

Someone from the future (using time machine) told them to do so.

Question 37

@KevinCook Or worse. Summer of 1992, between high school and college, I took a summer job doing in-house development for a business graphics firm. They produced slides and prints from user PowerPoint, Word, PageMaker, etc. files (a rarity at the time), so the PostScript print jobs required some pretty heavy preprocessing on their way to the slide printers. As a result, I once spent 45 minutes on hold @ Microsoft Dev Support Hotline's C++ queue, a behemoth operation which featured a live DJ to pitch products & announce hold queue lengths and wait times, drive-time radio style, in between songs.

Question 38

Take a look on thisanswer

Question 39

Well, html has been so fscked up in the browser wars, that no one in its sane mind tries to parse it, with regex or otherwise. Oh, good old times when we were using gopher by connecting on an X.25 line to the terminal server of a VAX, going to another IP-connected VAX on BITNET, and using telnet from there...

Question 40

@ÁrpádMagosányi You have a funny definition of the "good" old times. (When replying to this message, please copy me via UUCP atmintaka!ogicse!uwm.edu!rpi!vm.ecs.rpi.edu!danaf, as I am not subscribed to the list.)

Question 41

I don't know how they did it, but this looks fineboth on 1024x768 and 800x600!

And without using a single table!

Question 42

I think they used Frontpage Express, awsome tool to create webpages with sound, animation and DHTML

Question 43

If you can afford it, Dreamweaver is the my go to choice.

Question 44

I use both depending on my needs.

Question 45

Wow, I must check out Frontpage Express, although it's hard to justify upgrading from the internet's most versatile HTML editor -notepad.org

Question 46

I think you should follow current design trends and use the amazing<blink> tag more often.

Other than that the design is great, in particular the glossy gradient text that looks so much realistic thanks to the backdrop shadow.

PS: Comic Sans MS adds a sweet human touch to the overall reading experience.

Question 47

Unicorns I can take. Trails coming off my mouse cursor I can stand. Butcomic sans? My eyes are bleeding!

Question 48

The root cause ofepilepsy busted!

Question 49

A webpage can't be totally wrong, if you have at least one "unter construction" image or text. So this site is great already, even without extra blink.

Question 50

For anybody wondering about the out-of-universe reason for the absence of <blink>.

Question 51

@rsjaffe Looks like a Santa Claus page... This seems to be a move towards creating space to have more paid advertising content on the page.

Question 52

A slap in the face also adds a human touch...And I'd take that over Comic Sans any day! I hate how my comment about how I hate Comic Sans is displayed in Comic Sans.

Question 53

What it really needs is an embedded midi audio file

Question 54

<marquee> is a decent place to experiment with<blink>.

Question 55

I'm using Ubuntu and I can't see the Comic Sans :( not sure if it's Ubuntu or just me ... Seen the Comic Sans on my colleagues PCs though :)

Question 56

@Wrzlprmft The site specifically stated it was best viewed in Netscape, so<blink> should have still been included for those using the correct browser.

Question 57

Thank you for taking into account timezones!

As an Australian, I was pleasantly surprised to wake up this morning to this masterpiece of web design without having to suffer the agony of waiting for the Earth to rotate to such a point that our local star had line of sight to the landmass commonly known as the continental United States of America, as so often happens.

Question 58

No problem! (Well, it does make your problem ours since people assumewe messed up. 8-)

Question 59

What's worse than this is waking up tomorrow and then seeing all the jokes, cause I forget then since the date is April 2nd, so it's refreshing to see the joke on the intended day! Don't worry about the rest of the world Jon, they're a bit upside down.

Question 60

Just installed Windows 98 but not able to launch 3D pinball.

Question 61

It's all about minesweeper baby.

Question 62

probably missing ActiveX

Question 63

@Stephen hand-eye coordination is the future of gaming; I'm sure of it!

Question 64

For anyone interested,this link has instructions for how to download 3D Pinball Space Cadet Game on your computer - I've got it on mine as it's as good as I can ever remember.

41686d6564 19.8k5 gold badges46 silver badges78 bronze badges · Answer 1 · 2019-03-31 20:19:19Z

547

1.7 MB image? Are you kidding me??!!!!!!!!!

Also, how does the date say 1919? Is that a glitch?

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